Blåhaj Lemmy is a Lemmy instance attached to blahaj.zone. This is a group for questions or discussions relevant to either instance.
Unless they start brigading heavily or cross a line in terms of the communities they house, we won't be defederating them.
Their own communities are, quite something, but their admins have told them to be on their best behaviour when engaging in communities outside of their instance, and so far, they seem to be doing that
I think the fact that they’re more active in this thread than the blahaj folks is fairly emblematic of the problem. They can't seem to help themselves with the brigading and they do seem to be drowning out local opinion with tankie rhetoric and spam.
EDIT: Just pointing out that if this were a blahaj exclusive thread you would get a very different sense of where popular opinion actually stands.
EDIT 2: I was initially pretty excited about federating with hexbear but I think after seeing the effect it has on the overall tone of discussion I'm pretty disappointed.
Not having downvotes does not, by any means, mean you need to post your disagreement. Our instance also does not have downvotes. You ARE drowning out exactly the sort of discussion this community is for. I can guarantee what you would like to say has already been posted and upvoting those posts and moving on IS the appropriate way to handle this issue in a meta community for an instance you are not a part of.
Have you been in the news communities of late? Any time Russia/Ukraine comes up they're flooding it with Russian apologia and silly emoticons.
Yeah the "whAt AbOuT UkraInian FASciSm" thing is pushed really hard over there.
to be on their best behaviour when engaging in communities outside of their instance
They weren't in Lemmy.ca, got defederated for shitposting, and being trolls over there.
This aged poorly lol
Hexbear is really queer friendly and polite. It's also one of the few actual leftist spaces on here after the homogenization of lemmy.world and lemmy.ml. The main goal I've interpreted from Blahaj.zone is to be a queer-first and affirming space on Lemmy, so one has to prove that Hexbear is a large enough systemic threat to Blahaj's members to warrant defederating.
I don't think I'd describe hexbear as polite, they seem to get pretty rowdy, even antagonistic at times. Otherwise I agree though. It would be a shame to cut off one of the largest queer friendly instances out there.
Yeah, Hexbear is old Chapo, they left Reddit for Lemmy years ago. Because honestly, ChapoTrapHouse was a problematic community sometimes.
As someone else said, how are they queer friendly when they vehemently support anti-LGBTQ+ countries?
My issue isn’t with their takes or politics. My issue is the vibe. Maybe it’s because I’m older, and I want to have maybe an actual conversation with someone without having to deal with comments that consist of a pig pooping.
To be clear, when I said that it feels like t_d, I didn’t mean the political takes. I meant the edge lording and name calling. Granted, it’s mostly in their own community, but if you look at some of the behavior of their users here you’ll see what I’m talking about, and it’s leaked into other communities too.
I defederated my instance.
I thought lemmy.ca's justification pretty compelling. They are self-avowedly more interested in trolling, harassing other users, and crapping on other people’s politics. They don’t even make a secret of it.
It’s unfortunate because they do seem really queer and queer-friendly. But they seem to be totally uninterested in doing anything other than dunking HARD on anyone to the right of Lenin. So… passing on seeing that, personally.
They're the kind of far-left types the rest of us should avoid being associated with because they ruin all of our image in the long run.
I thought this was a bit overkill, because they seemed well behaved for the most part, although a bit annoying every now and then. But this comment section shows exactly why we probably should. They're so combative and seem to completely dominate the discussion.
Yeah, I came into this thread expecting to defend letting blahaj be federated with hexbear, but I'm left seeing a comment section being armwrestled by hexbear users, when this post should really be predominantly blahaj users weighing in on the pros and cons, and the impact of hexbear onto our instance.
Checking this thread from an instance that has defederated hexbear is a wildly different experience.
Hexbear has a reputation for brigading. They do this intentionally to deny everyone else a platform and shut down any real discussion. They aren't here to talk in good faith.
They aren’t as bad as I thought they’d be but some of them really are too combative. I’ve seen them get into arguments with people for not being the correct type of left I don’t know how to respond to them because I’m not a polisci or world history major.
I’m also pretty tired of those huge emojis. The pig butt thing was funny maybe once. I don’t know what the right answer is I’d just wish they would chill.
Some of the users takes on the CCP are garbage, but a few garbage opinions doesn't warrant defederating.
Edit: You know what on second thought let's defederate. There are a lot of tankies shilling for countries that hate the lgbtq.
It can often get tense with them and I don't agree with some of their takes, but they are definitely a voice to consider seriously and worth arguing (in a polite way) with.
Unlike those conservative right echo chambers, most of them are actually educated, historically literate and smart, and they actually provide sources for their claims instead of hand waiving and using every falacy in the book.
The problem is that they are in support of regimes which are currently or historically anti LGBT+. There is no further discussion to be had. Even if they claim to be whatever, they are against us. Their ideology is incompatible with our freedom and possibly our lives.
You cannot be pro Soviet, pro Russia, pro China or whatever else and LGBT+. You would fight against that for the same reason you fight against Nazis. The ecological politics or so are irrelevant at this point. Even if you agree with that, don't forget that they want us gone.
This is so close to the Nazi bar problem and I fully understand why defederation might be the best course of action. Personally I don't know what the right call is, but I blocked the instance using the Connect app anyway.
This is a good way to put it and one of the reasons I'm so perplexed about how queer the instance is. I genuinely don't understand how LGBTQ+ people can simp for regimes that simply want to/wanted to murder them.
And before someone jumps in with "but America/the West/liberals are trying to do the same thing"... if you don't think it's easier being queer in the US, even with all the problems, than in Russia or North Korea, I just don't know what to tell you.
That's... not the kind of debating I've seen them do, but sure. As far as reasonable debate goes: if you have to brigade and spam, you've already lost. What exactly the message was just doesn't matter.
On the one hand I am not mad to have different ideologies here but they seem to go out of their way to pick fights which is pretty grating for what is supposed to be a memey, supportive community. Also whenever someone points out a one negative thing about a communist country they seem to counter it by saying a western country did the same/worse, which isn't wrong but doesn't address the point? If they could just accept a fault here or there it would go a long way in seeming less aggressive.
I've had some interesting and insightful conversations with people from Hexbear for the last few days. However, we did reach a point where people from Hexbear started defending the Taliban and North Korea. There are tankies on Hexbear. Probably a lot of them. It's something people should know.
I mean I'll admit my bias as a politically-minded leftist, but I like them. I don't agree with all their takes, but it feels like a positive way to poke some holes in the echo chamber a bit.
Hexbear is widely old Chapo. They're an odd bunch, but honestly I'd defed Lemmy.world long before Hexbear was in sigh.
Hexbear leans meme-tankie but on the flipside they’re very supportive of queer people. I don’t agree with them on everything, but I don’t feel unwelcome there either, so I personally disagree with both defederation and the comparison to T_D.
It’s not their political stance or my agreement or disagreement I think makes them like t_d. It’s the general vibe of most things I’ve come across. It’s a vibe that’s very edge-lord. Like “if you’re offended by me talking about that’s you’re problem” kind of vibe.
FWIW, I’m very leftist and actually agree with a lot of the stances I see on there, which makes it worse. I pop open a comment section and go “oh goddamnit” and block another community.
Ffs I was a long time /r/chapotraphouse user and even tried to use the website after the sub got banned (nothing against it even, just didn't really have enough of my interests to really keep me) But y'all gotta admit this is pretty fucking embarrassing. Like this is a instance meta post on a pretty small, very explicitly pro trans leftist instance, do ANY of you think you would have actually been defederated in the first place? Like genuinely, do you not think you would've just had people like me say "naw they're chill". But instead you put an odd couple hundred comments on this thread when the biggest in the little bit, has about 40? And get this, it's also a thread a defedding from an instance, but actually deserved it, and our admin had already been on the case? Embarrassing.
Big time edit: This was the comment I had originally typed out, and while I still believe quite a bit of it, I'm kinda disgusted by the amount of Russia apologia and pro war sentiment generally. But let me guess, I must be pro nato?
I've had only very positive interactions with hexbear users. They definitely have their own vibe within their communities from being unfederated for a while, but I don't see why that is a reason to defederate. If you don't like hexbear comments sections then just... don't open them??? Do you even want to be in the fediverse?
It's more that they bring that behaviour out into other communities and make them unappealing. Several news communities become unusable if certain topics come up since they federated.
It's exactly the same vibe as the donald and the users are just as bad as the Donald users were.
I'd second this. I've gone through and blocked most of their communities manually but they definitely threw off the vibes. They're not a fun bunch to be around.
i've been filtering hexbear's communities from my all feed with uBO^1 because of the tankie vibes, but outside their own communities hexbear people seem to behave themselves reasonably well. considering lemmygrad is defederated i can expect them being defederated as well just because of the politics, but they don't seem too brigade-y to the communities here.
to be fair i've been blocking all the politics and politic-adjacent communities left right and center so perhaps i'm just not seeing the bad parts of hexbear, but shitposting wise they seem alright.
the only real gripe i have with hexbear is that lemmy's handling of emoji in general suck and man do they like their emojis. but that's a software issue more than anything
Idk, but if you're a person of color, don't go to tankie instances because they're seriously racist over there
I've been blocking individual communities as they pop up in my feeds.
I wish there were an easier method for this (like via the vertical "..." kebab menu) without having to click into the community directly.
Hexbear has the highest proportion of people with neopronouns in their names that I've seen on the entire fediverse, and for that reason alone I would prefer that they stay federated.
But the brigading, harassment, disinformation campaigns, bad faith arguments, and excessive emoji spam aren't a problem? Those reasons alone are why they need to be defedded. My instance did so yesterday and the site has been all the better for it.
Let's chill on the defederation unless it's really bad for a while.
You can filter out instances with Ublock Origin for desktop and Sync for mobile. This will remove any posts and comments from users from that instance. It's a lot easier than trying to get your instance admin to defederate a major instance or setting up your own while still getting rid of hexbear for you
My opinion is please defederate. Thank you.
seems like its home to a lot of irony poisioned predominantly white leftists but i think comparing it to t_d is a stretch.
i wonder if theres any leftist instances that are worth spending time on, theres not very many of them and it seems like the ones that are out there either have started to die out or have been widely defederated from due to toxicity.
i wish there were larger spaces focused around real world political action, organization and solidarity because there would be so much value in having that on a platform like this.