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Suddenly seeing more hexbear posts. Did we re-federate with them?
(sh.itjust.works)
Home of the sh.itjust.works instance.
Seems like most of them either don't like that we have an anti-lemmygrad community (which, honestly, TIL), or they don't like that we have a noncredibledefense community.
Basically we have a couple anti-communist communities.
That's the only reasons I saw in that thread that were actually related to our instance.
My reservation was specifically that the MeanwhileOnGrad comm has a charicature of Xi Jinping where his skin is colorized to be yellow. I think that turning an Asian person's skin yellow as a charicature is racist, and I felt that allowing that on a comm reflected poorly on the instance. I don't mind that people hold different views from us (as many on lemm.ee and lemmy.ml do), but we don't tolerate racism or bigotry. Despite that, I did vote to federate, in part because it's such a small comm.
While not a subscriber to that community, I'm 99% certain that's merely to enhance the Winnie the Pooh comparisons he notoriously hates.
Yes, upon reflection, them depicting an Asian person as yellow isn't great, but I think the majority will see it just as Pooh.
While the comparison to Pooh originates from a meme in China, many of us would argue that the comparison in general has racist connotations especially when used in the West, and that that image is a perfect illustration of why we think that.
We'd also say that the Pooh story has been exaggerated pretty wildly, along with many redditor memes about China. Rumors can get out of control sometimes, especially when people get dismissed for fact-checking and accused of being bots or paid agents, and so on. Winnie the Pooh isn't banned in China, as some might believe, and it's pretty easy to verify that by looking at the website for Shanghai Disneyland or searching "Pooh" on any Chinese platform such as baidu.com or weibo.cn.
Pooh may not be banned, but some gifs get intercepted on Wechat and that's enough to be notable.
This is such a reddit urban myth, in reality I'd be surprised if he's even aware of the comparison.
Also "it's not racist to depict him as yellow, because it's referencing another instance of us depicting him as yellow" doesn't make it better.
Thank you, those communities aren't very serious so I didn't even think of that. Users on the lemmygrad screenshot community do seem to be spending too much energy on something they dislike but that's up to them. Better they have a place to contain it. As for the other, I'm still not sure I really understand it, but it doesn't seem like anything worth hating an entire instance over.
ETA: those are communities hosted here though, that's nothing to do with our federation policies. I guess their silence speaks volumes here.
Non-credible defense is pretty much just NATO- aligned defense/military memes. I could absolutely see some finding it offensive if the Russian/Chinese/Non-NATO military being competent and having good hardware is important to them.
But yeah, your edit was my point- I didn't see anyone talking about who we're federated with. Most of the people that voted no just didn't want to federate with anyone.