this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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Main, home of the dope ass bear.

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Did you struggle session ur asses to death or something? I’ve never seen this site move so slow. Gonna post my butthole on main to get this place moving again

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[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 29 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

All sites experience user churn and all sites must put effort into combating churn with a new influx of users or experience the effects of negative user churn.

I used to spam the site over on the spaces I moderate on reddit but burnt out on doing it and there's essentially no effort from any section of this site to find other sources of new hexbears like there used to be.

The site was getting a sort of no-effort natural in-flow of new bears from lemmyverse but defederating from everything (or being defederated from) removed that no-effort source.

I wouldn't be against doing more to push the site elsewhere again but I would not want to be doing it alone.

[–] Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There's nobody left to defederate from

[–] Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I thought we federated back for a brief period, or did they all just pull out from us?

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 11 points 2 weeks ago

preemptively, as a last resort

[–] Kefla@hexbear.net 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Did I give them permission to pull out? Absolutely not, I will not stand for this cowardice

Wait are we talking about internet forums

[–] Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net 3 points 2 weeks ago

I knew I opened myself to that as soon as I pressed “reply”.

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 14 points 2 weeks ago

We use an allowlist

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Do we not get new users from lemmy.ml?

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 22 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Lemmy.ml users have no reason to become main Hexbear users when they can just post here from lemmy.ml, they would just reduce their ability to use anywhere else on the platform for no real gain. The users that came across from lemmyworld and elsewhere were leftists that decided they wanted a leftist instance to be their primary space because they didn't like the leadership of those other spaces. There's no real reason to leave lemmy.ml when you can use here and can't really say their leadership is any less left than here.

A socialist user is likely to leave a liberal instance for a socialist instance if they see it and like it. A socialist user isn't likely to leave a socialist instance for another socialist instance particularly if it reduces the range of content they get access to. The benefit of federation to us was always being able to suck socialist users out of the liberal spaces or convert left-sympathising liberals into socialists and then take them.

[–] TankieTanuki@hexbear.net 11 points 2 weeks ago

no reason to become main Hexbear users

We got emojis and our upvote button is cuter hexbear-retro

[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Being defederated from .world, at the very least, is a plus. Lemmy as a whole has trended towards being monopolized by .world, and if you're federated with that instance, it mostly ends up the same no matter which instance you're on.

Having the site's own distinct character is something I would call a huge benefit. It's good to have access to a wide range of users, but not so wide that it becomes just like Reddit but federated. The centrist instances and the worst of the shitlib ones are good to defederate from, but the rest are good cross-pollination material.

[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

We are vastly more active and would be more powerful than .world, their comments sections would be completely different if we were in them.

but not so wide that it becomes just like Reddit but federated

I've always felt that should be handled by bans, not by defederation. Banning the hoggiest hogs and just leaving behind the ones that are capable of being influenced.

The initial federation shock would be large but over several weeks the worst of the worst would be filtered out by bans, leaving behind a generally ok crowd that just need influencing.

Some of them would convert to bears, some of them would not.

This was basically the formula that worked for CTH. Although, CTH's modteam was considerably more unhinged than Hexbear's.

[–] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 6 points 2 weeks ago

In that way it's kind of like tending a garden. You rip out (user ban) what threatens to bring down the diversity and integrity of it, maybe you prune (removing posts) some of the intended stuff that doesn't grow in the right direction, and you keep looking for more stuff to plant (users and content).