Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman

As a member of Hexbear for 3+ years I just want to say that this isn't acceptable over here and would land people with a very serious reprimand or a permaban if they don't admit to being in the wrong for this. The use of "subhuman" in particular is fascist behaviour and I'd assume it is wreckers rather than longstanding members, it's not language that socialists are fond of.

The only other thing I will say is that I genuinely appreciate that you're building this community with your userbase and having these conversations, it's the correct way to create a unique community culture and have people care about the space.

I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don’t have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content.

This was why my eyebrows raised when I saw the Hexbear admin response when they claim that "Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods". Kremlin propaganda is rife in communities like chapotraphouse, and it certainly seems like the mods there let anything slide as long as it is isn't outright incitement to violence.

I challenged claims made in a couple of different anti-Ukraine posts and despite the fact there were maybe one or two users whose responses were thoughtful, the majority were outright calling me an idiot and a ~~retarded liberal~~ (edit: correction; dumb fuck)

So far, my impression of HB's userbase is pretty negative because the posts on there that make the front page here tend to be the more shit-posty ones.

That said, I appreciate @sunaurus for the stance he's taking. There is some positive and thoughtful content on HB - you just have to block the noisier and more idiotic communities so it doesn't get drowned out.

Thanks for that very thoughtful statement. I am fine with keeping them federated and letting individual users block what they don't want to see. I find it interesting to see what different communities have to say, even if I find it abhorrent.

I'd like to stay federated with hexbear. They bring important information to conversation that people are otherwise not exposed to. American school-taught history is NOT the gold standard in truth.

I feel a little sorry for the Lemm.ee users here that came to make measured, personal posts specific to the annoucement. There's a fair amount of long off-topic arguements happening in bits of the thread now and that probably makes it harder to read and manage.

This is something that's often been pointed to as a pure result of Hexbear users or federation with Hexbear and given rise to accusations of 'brigading here and in the past'. While I don't think every segue into debate has been useful here, and have also told comrades that I didn't think this was the place for specific comments (which they removed) I also think there's some important context to point out - and I hope it helps lemm.ee users wondering about all this traffic not to fall into the trap of assuming the worst based on a couple of comments:

• Hexbear is a very big and very active instance. A very small proportion of users posting in a thread (especially one explicitly about them) can seem like a lot to a lot of instances.
• Hexbear doesn't have downvotes and Hexbear users do not have the ability to downvote posts or comments on other instances. This creates a culture where if people disagree, they tend to reply, not downvote instead. Another reason we're very active.
• This thread has constantly been at the top of people's feeds on Hexbear. if they're not only set to 'local'.
• Finally - and I say this fully acknowledging and appriciating the many ordinary, good faith, pleasant lemm.ee commenters that I've enjoyed reading and talking too even when I totally disagreed with them - a lot of these off-topic arguements and more heated comments do not come from nowhere. While not at all the majority, I do see a pretty shocking amount of actively hostile, hateful, and insulting behaviour here. Sadly, quite a bit of it would be banned under Hexbear's moderation policy against things like slurs and hate speech too.

So try to keep in mind if you see salty Hexbear users replying to people that, just in reading through this thread myself, I've the following instances of abuse or smears against my comrades (and they continue popping up). So I absolutely support them defending themselves (as long as they stay within the rules here):

• Dimissal as the pejorative "tankie" - 4 times (although we actually think this one is pretty funny usually)
• Users stating that Hexbear users are propagandists - 8 times
• Stating that people from Hexbear are specifically paid Russian/Chinese bots/propagandists - 10 times
• Direct equivalences of Hexbear posters to Nazis or just straight up calling us Nazis/fascists - 7 times
• Insults regarding mental health or IQ that would be classed as ablism on Hexbear - 8 times
• Dismissing users as children - 2 times
• Claiming Hexbear users are using vote-manipulation (impossible, as explained above) - 4 times
• Accusations of deliberate brigading rather than just commenting, being active - 11 times

I've tried not to count repeated instances from the same users. But sadly that's not all. Just a handful of the following are comments that have been made against Hexbear users in this thread, without any kind of equal hostility. As far as I can tell they all still remain:

• "You guys are like cancer"
• "Braindead fucking tankies"
• "Get fucked"
• "Asshole" (multiple)
• That our beliefs are "moralistic bullshut"
• That some of our beliefs are "a criminal ideology"
• A comment that simply states "No Russians"
• That we're "evil" (multiple times)
• An elaborate comparison to us "vandalising a Jewish graveyard" and other Nazi equivalences
• And of course a comment that explictly minimised the Nazi death toll with glee, seeming to imply they should have killed more. On the subject of disagreeing with equating the hammer and sickle to the swastika (hidden with spoiler tag, for those who don't want to see it repeated)...
  
  spoiler

  "you are right, it is nor really fair to nazis, who killed measly 17 million people, compared to impressive 100 million killed by communists."

There's also been numerious instances of users misgendering Hexbear users. I'm not going to put all of these down to malice, but at Hexbear we display our pronouns for a reason - we love our trans comrades! You don't have to, but could you please at least respect them and not misgender them?

Again, this isn't the majority, but it's honestly disappointing and worth keeping in mind amongst some of the louder, minority yells of 'brigading' etc.

I posted a comment in the_dunk_tank without noticing where I was. While many people were heated over what I said, it was a misunderstanding due to a lack of specificity and ignorance on my part. After I clarified what I was intending to say, discussion ensued and it was ended on good terms.

The vast majority of users I interact with from hexbear are thoughtful, insightful, kind and genuine individuals that care deeply about humanity and moving forward. The hate that they have is for fascism and actual fascists.

To defederate hexbear would be a disservice to the idea of federated social media.

I've seen the hexbears at work and don't doubt that they'd class some of my views as woefully liberal but in the main I am enjoying being on a site where the left is so unapologetic, doesn't go for all this centrist bollocks and is unafraid to call out bullshit.

Having seen the Overton window constantly shifted to a narrower aspect ratio and then shifted rightwards on reddit was a very disheartening experience and I think seeing active hexbears on all threads will be useful in stopping the uptight right when they inevitably decide that that the fediverse needs shifting towards their own Volkish views.

I generally agree. I thought hexbear was fine until I saw some of the spam/trolling you mentioned, and then the genocide denial... That got me to start blocking communities there.

With that said I think exploding heads is probably just as bad, if not worse since the mods aren't against the content posted there. I know you said you didn't want to defederate and I kind of understand why, but at least keeping a close eye on the users there would be appreciated.

I've seen more posts complaining about Hexbear than actual objectionable things they've done. Maybe that's a sign of effective moderation, but in general I agree that defederation should always be a very last resort, and it doesn't feel like we're even close.

Also, with the ability for users to block instances coming soon, I think everyone will be happy then. At least, users anyway, it will still be down to the admin team to determine if the moderation workload is excessive and act accordingly - but that decision is and should be up to you.

Hexbear is making Lemmy unbearable for me. There's no function for a user to block everything from a server. I don't want to see their communities, their users, their posts, their messages, or their votes showing up.

I block communities as they come up, I block individuals as they post, but it's never ending.

Every popular post is over-run with tankies shitposting, grinding real conversation to a halt.

They're not people open to having a conversation in good faith. They're ChapoTrapHouse shitposters who got kicked off reddit for being pro-violence shitposters.

Their Moderation Policy is incompatible with ours, as they allow hate speech as long as it's directed towards the "right" people.

A first timer looking would see 90% tankie crap and would leave and not come back.

I've contributed less since they were joined simply because I don't want a herd of tankies yelling at me with nobody else even reading it.

Until such a time that I, as a user, can bock everything from a server I support defederation. Or at the very least put a giant poop emoji next to everything from that server so it's easier to skip. They seem to like poop.

My view is that this federation of theirs is just sketchy. Their announcement post reads as some barely veiled call to propagandize the Fediverse, and the instance itself seems almost proud in a way to have developed their particular methods in their isolation. Though from what I've seen, those methods are mostly just whataboutism and "just asking questions", not anything particularly novel.

If there was much content or interaction from them that was just neutral, it'd be much easier to swallow, but everything they post or comment always seems be a dog whistle at minimum. And maybe I'm just not noticing all the users not doing that, but the ones I do notice are all over.

All in all, I'd be more in favor of defederation. I've seen enough of this from the right already to have an idea of where this is going, and barring a larger effort from the instance to change, would rather it just got nipped in the bud.

Please don't defederate unless moderation becomes impossible. People should curate what they want to see on their own. Part of why I joined lemm.ee was that the content is not pre-curated, but I have a wide selection to choose from myself.

as a lemmy.world user, I can’t tell you all enough about how much our quality of life has improved since we defederated form hexbear.net. far less moderation is necessary and general browsing is far more pleasant not having to constantly be bombarded by those awful stickers and brigades of trolls with their endless baiting and attacks.

why should users and mods be constantly burdened day I and day out with users from an instance whose entire ethos is that of shitposting trolls? if lemm.ee is supposed to be a nice place, why would you intentionally let in a group of people you know have zero intention of comporting to your expected code of conduct and have a well-established pattern of behavior that’s hostile, combative, and toxic towards a large portion of your user base?

yes, defederation is a last-resort option, but what other choices do you have when current user and mod options simply aren’t sufficient? defederation isn’t permanent, and if, by some miracle, hexbear users suddenly become well-behaved, lemm.ee can always re-federate with them. if they weren’t the titanic problem they genuinely are, several other instances wouldn’t also be currently discussing defederation in addition to those which already have.

I’m reminded of an old post I once saw about a bartender who kicks out any Nazi who enters his bar, even if they're well-mannered and isn’t bothering other patrons. Even though they may be polite and bothering nobody, eventually, they come back with a friend, then another, then then 10 others, and then BOOM, you’e a Nazi bar.

Don’t make lemm.ee a toxic, hostile, troll-filled hexbear bar. keep it nice. keep it safe. ❤️

edit: not even a day later, and I get this pvt message from a lemm.ee user warning me of this scary-ass comment they got with a stalking/death threat they received from a hexbear troll, with a list of users they feel slighted them and other hexbear users.

HEXBEAR USERS ARE DANGEROUS. HEXBEAR USERS ARE TERRORISTS.

names blurred for safety

i don't have anything in particular to add, I just want to repeat that clicking on "all" isn't brigading.

update 19/8/2023: i have first heard about hexbear 1 day before this thread, i really didn't give care about them before

after they did an excellent job to introduce themselves in this thread, i'd like to change my stance to DEFEDERATE NOW! 😆

Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all

imagine i vandalize jewish graveyard, put swastikas all over the place and my defense is "man, swastikas were used all around the word through history, they don't just belong to nazi germany, you know?" is your reaction going to be "well, you raise some interesting points"?

i doubt that.

"argument" like that is just an asshole trying to obfuscate the facts and delay the consequences of their own action, it is classic propaganda method.

Hexbear admin response After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response:

do you feel that response is actually going to change something and it is sincere, not just an effort to obfuscate the reality in the line with what i said above?

or is it like this?

the comrade below actually suggests that there is a time and place for such rhetoric, it is just not right here, right now. you have to think politically and wait for our moment, comrade!

i generally agree with your liberal approach to federation, unfortunately sometimes the reality forces you to take some pragmatic steps and i don't think anyone would blame you if you took the easy solution, you are not obligated to dig through pile of shit.

i am also not a fan of pseudoliberalism in the style of "just let everyone make their own decision". it is like saying we don't need police, lets just let everyone to deal with the world themselves. it is obvious nonsense, most people just want to go about their business and they appreciate the fact there is relatively safe environment behind their apartment door.

I'm firmly in the "tone it down" camp on Hexbear (especially on other instances) and I appreciate people's patience and I'm glad that some people have gotten past our rough exterior. I'm hoping things will quiet down and stabilize before we burn our bridges. I'm glad to hear that your experience with our mods was positive and that you're focusing more on that, over the years I've come to trust our mods and I believe they're committed to making this work.

As has already been mentioned and acknowledged, clarification on Kremlin propaganda would be appreciated. I agree with removing false information, but I'm of the belief that it's important to understand the positions and perspective of every nation, especially those considered enemies, for the sake of peace. I do not trust any source from any state implicitly, but rather I believe in gathering information from a variety of sources and critically examining each. I grew up in a "post 9/11 world" and in that context, any attempt to understand the motivations or historical context behind that event, beyond "They hate us for our freedom," was treated with suspicion, along with all sorts of lies about Muslims in general. Since then, I don't go along with hating who I'm told to hate, at least until I feel I've investigated the matter fully. To that end, I think there is value in listening critically to state-affiliated sources, from every side.

I look forward to having productive discussions in the future.

I really have no problem with communist or leftist views, but some of those guys need to take a chill pill. I'm cool with bashing the fash and social welfare programs, I'm not cool with basically talking about how everyone to the right of Stalin needs to die or how Tianenmen Square was a wholesale fabrication by the west. I typically just roll my eyes, block the bullshit and move on with life, but it's been really dragging down my lemmy experience.

Well written. We’re luck to have you.

Defederating from Hexbear would be a hugely disappointing move. They have a lot of insightful posts that I want to see interleaved with my other subscriptions. It would be a true shame to defederate from them because a subset of their users are immature/shitposters (where isn't that the case?). The point of federation was to not require every user to have N separate accounts on every forum. They show up in everyone's feed because they have a lot of users and activity. That's a ~~feature, not a bug~~ success!

I'm a fan of hexbear and like being a lemm.ee user. Hopefully things work out.

For anyone keeping count, I've switched to my lemmy.world account (which has defederated from Hexbear) and the comments on this thread are at 209. When I logged out of my Lemm.ee account there were over 800, so that means roughly 600 of the comments on a meta thread for the lemme.ee instance are from Hexbear users, or in threads started by them.

Edited to remove some slightly frustrated and possibly less than civil comments.

I just gave up and started blocking all of their subs.

Good, I like having them around. They give the fediverse the spice of life that prevents it from becoming just another necrotic pool of internet backwash filled with stale memes and pandering comments like what late Digg became and what reddit has been turning into.

Props for staying calm throughout all this. The initial rush of excitement seems to be pretty much over, which means things ought to mellow down on the timeline. I'm sure Hexbear can coexist with the fediverse the same way /r/cth coexisted with reddit, which is to say by showing up and ballin' for Marx and pushing the boundaries of acceptability. Except this time there are no ad revenue sources to placate by banning anything outside of the Overton window.

I can totally understand your strong feelings towards the USSR. I understand you've conceded that the hammer and sickle isn't strictly soviet symbology and can represent other things, but I would like to ask you whether or not you would think of the "stars and stripes" or the "union jack" (or really most western iconography) as hate speech given the centuries of pillaging, rape, genocide and dehumanization that they represent in many parts of the world.

Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods

I mean all you have to do is glance at any Ukraine thread on any instance federated with hexbear to know this is a lie.

These people are trolls, plain and simple. The mods/admins are no exception, they are just slightly more self aware than their users when it comes to diplomacy. They will say whatever they think you want to hear in order to get one more day worth of trolling in.

As a Hexbear user and one of the people your mod and OP interacted with in that thread, I find a good chunk of this post concerning and often spurious.

First, personally, I am one of the people who accused him of engaging in behaviour that was tantamount to Holocaust denial. I did so after his repeated, blunt, assertions of false equivalency between the undisputed horrors of Nazi Germany and those - some true, many disputed, some outright refuted - of the Soviet Union. I explained that this practice is known as the 'Double Genocide Theory' and even linked to articles by Jewish historians and Holocaust academics that explained the issues with the theory and the history of its official use to whitewash far-right movements, particularly in post-Soviet states. Instead of receiving a modicum of serious engagement he instead deliberately and grossly misrepresented and dismissed not only my point but the work of the Jewish academics I linked before leaving with an insult.

Secondly, what exactly constitutes Kremlin propaganda? This is a usually completely baseless claim that is thrown constantly at Hexbear uses, but also almost any marginally left or anti-war figure on the internet. A small but vocal group of cynical users that cannot and will not tolerate opposing viewpoints use it to shut down debate and to smear people. As your mod/OP stated, Hexbear does both refute and ban clear instances of actual Russian (or other) state propaganda when it's demonstrably untrue or breaks our very strict rules on bigotry of any kind. But much of what was smeared as Kremlin propaganda was not, because it was not.

Your very own mod/OP engaged in a version of that in the thread on Hexbear and when pushed on what it meant variably either ignored the question or cast the net as wide as anything Russia (state, politicians, or media) have ever said. Several people made the point that a Russian source can say can say something that's factual, or identify something true and use that as part of a political narrative. Does that objective truth suddenly because false as soon as it's spoken by Russian lips? These questions were ignored.

Personally, I'd prefer that there isn't defederation, that the bad feeling that's undoubtedly been created by members from both instances, is moved on from, and to explore and engage with more of lemm.ee afresh. I also recognise and respect that decision as being lemm.ee's to make, but felt that users deserve to hear some of the other perspective. Especially when I do not believe your mod/OP is either willing or able to be clear eyed or act in good faith around contentious issues like those highlighted in this thread. Which of course is also to be considered, and decided by, users of Lemm.ee.

This post already has a lot of comments, but as a relatively new Lemmy user, I also want to add that I agree against defederation except as a last resort. However, that said, I do find most of these hexbear posts and users very annoying.

I consider myself extremely left-leaning, but I’m also not someone who enjoys engaging in political discussion online. One day recently, my Lemmy feed was suddenly inundated with these “chapo” posts (I don’t even know what a chapo is) and the attitude of the posts and comments is very disheartening. They are obviously aggressive and angry, and while I don’t like homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, and so on, I also don’t want every other post on my feed to be a hate post. Even hating the bad guys gets old really fast. I get it. I was a hater when I was younger too, but I can’t take two steps online today without stumbling into rage or hatred.

A couple weeks ago when I joined Lemmy, it was still feeling cozy enough and positive enough for the most part that it felt like a little safe haven. I started telling all my friends how great it was (as long as you don’t mind porn or are willing to filter out NSFW) and I was excited to post and comment to contribute to the content. But all of a sudden one day these hexbear posts and users started popping up and now I’m embarrassed that I even recommended this place.

I generally agree with their messages when they are standing up for the rights of others and talking about tearing down corrupted establishments, but the sarcasm is so dense and dripping with hatred that it’s almost impossible to tell what they’re talking about or advocating for, so I absolutely do not want to get involved with their discussions.

Anyway, all I’m saying is even though the content is not what I want to see and not what I think is healthy for this sort of site, defederating is serious and breaks one of the best parts of what Lemmy has to offer. We should let the instance moderate itself for a while, even if it means putting up with some noise while things calm down. Letting users filter entire instances will be a fantastic feature when/if it arrives, but for now I’m fine just ignoring the posts or blocking the communities if they are really bothering me

First of all I would like to offer my support to Sunaurus for this post. I thank him for raising this issue to our instance and for continuing to be discussion led and transparent. I also ask that we discuss this so we are best informed on the Hexbear subject.

I also agree what Sunaurus is saying but would add;

We try to encourage people to engage in a healthy way here on Lemm.ee. Also looking throughout the Fediverse which is growing at the moment we look to encourage that same engagement. This will ensure it’s long term success and resilience. I believe that healthy discussion promotes new ideas, innovation and learning. I do not believe that any abuse, victimisation, harassment or active discrimination has a place.

In the recent days I have seen increased reports coming from content or comments made by Hexbear users. However from what I am seeing although there is a lot, mostly they do not cross the line for significant action although a minority do. So at this time from what I have seen Defederation is not obvious a decision to me. I am expecting the behaviour and style of comments to calm once the excitement of Federating passes. I am also encouraged by the positive steps of the Hexbear admins.