The last few posts made here, they've shown up, made the most inane, idiotic, and pointless comments, upvoted each other in a frenzy of circle jerking, and generally made a pest of themselves.

They're a nuisance, and add nothing of value to the Lemmy experience.

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 59 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Here's my view. Lemmy.nz is intended for an NZ audience. Hexbear has been defederated from 5 of the top 8 largest instances. This is problematic for us, as their All is much more likely to show lemmy.nz posts than All on other instances. It starts to feel like we're being brigaded, even though we aren't, because their instance is the 10th largest Lemmy instance and yet they don't see most Lemmy posts (but they do see ours).

I don't have a problem with international audiences occasionally posting in our posts, even people with no connection to NZ. I think it provides some great perspective on our issues. But when you post a thread, and it gets overrun with international users, I think this becomes a problem.

This may not seem fair on them, but what I want is a friendly-feeling community, and recently we have had a different vibe.

Personally, I have become less inclined to participate. I've written up a post about the Papakangahorohoro street, then decided not to post it because by the time I'd written my 150 word article the thread had such hexbear comments as "Get over it crakkkas" and "sounds like the crackers should go back to europe if they dont like it".

I want to participate in a friendly community, and the last couple of days I have felt like I didn't want to participate because of the hexbear participation - and the participation of others stemming from that. For that reason, and no other, I think we should defederate. However, I want to hear what others think. Some counter-arguments would be great.

[–] nick@campfyre.nickwebster.dev 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I have been attempting to avoid defederating with instances from mine but with HexBear I just kind of had to because they were taking over every popular post.

Edit: I did read OP's initial exchange and I think OP massively overreacted and the HexBear commenters were largely fine. However, the wider issue still stands which is why I did in my case.

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[–] takeda@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Here’s my view. Lemmy.nz is intended for an NZ audience. Hexbear has been defederated from 5 of the top 8 largest instances. This is problematic for us, as their All is much more likely to show lemmy.nz posts than All on other instances. It starts to feel like we’re being brigaded, even though we aren’t, because their instance is the 10th largest Lemmy instance and yet they don’t see most Lemmy posts (but they do see ours).

I could be wrong, but my understanding is that when instance like hexbear is defederated, they can still see your posts, they can even comment and vote on them. You just don't see it anymore. They would have to defederate on their side too, to completely block it.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 14 points 1 year ago

You're on kbin.social, so I'm gonna make some assumptions about how it works, because I really only have a decent understanding of lemmy - though I'm assuming this is how other activitypub federated services work too.

While it may seem like you (on kbin.social) are replying to this post (on lemmy.nz), that is not the case. You server has a copy of the reply and all the other posts and comments. When you comment, it gets posted to the kbin.social community (magazine?) called !newzealand@lemmy.nz.

Behind the scenes, your server will syncronise your copy with the official lemmy.nz copy.

A user on (say) lemmy.world will also have a copy on their server. Your server will not send your comment directly there, rather it sends it to the only source of truth (the community host server), then the host server will send it out to all servers where there is a subscriber.

By defederating, they will no longer get any updates for any lemmy.nz communities, but will still see their own comments (and other users on their server will see them).

Honestly, I'm not sure what happens when e.g. a lemmy.nz user posts to lemmy.ml who are one of the few large servers still federated with hexbear - do the comments go to hexbear? Not sure. Do hexbear comments made to lemmy.ml federate back to lemmy.nz? Again, not sure (I suspect not).

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[–] eagleeyedtiger@lemmy.nz 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does lemmy not have a block user function where you won’t see their comments? I guess that doesn’t help when you want to wholesale block users from an instance.

I personally haven’t seen anything worth defederating over so far. In any case I usually just scroll past or don’t interact with comments that are inflammatory. However as you’re the admin it’s your call. My only reservation is that we don’t have many contributors as it is.

Also you should have posted your 150 word article anyway.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Personally I would much prefer the smaller, tight knit group of NZ and NZ-adjacent posters over a swarm of non-NZ users that are posting here because they can't see the vast majority of posts on lemmy (out of the top 8 servers, there are about 36,000 monthly active users. Of those, about 2/3rds of those users are on servers that have defederated with hexbear.)

My 150 word article would have led to more... discussion - and I just didn't have it in me to start a conversation like that where there were already aggressive and flippant comments.

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I have temporary blocked hexbear so we can have the conversation in peace.

Edit: Apparently I needed to hit save, so now we are temporarily defederated from hexbear.

[–] sylverstream@lemmy.nz 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've read the various comments about it and have no idea why you would have to defederate with them. As long as they play by the rules it should be fine. Just downvote if you don't agree. The voting system will take care of it.

I think defederation should be a last resort.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 30 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Currently less than 1/4 of the votes on this post (the post itself) are from users subscribed to this community. Hexbear users far outnumber us, it's not even remotely close. With 5 out of the 8 instances with over 1000 monthly active users having defederated them, we are showing up much higher in their All feed. Lemmy.world defederated them, and they have more users than all the other 7/8 put together. Over 2/3rds of lemmy content is no longer available to them, so they see our posts about random NZ stuff, and decide to comment on them. Because there are so many of them, it floods the posts.

Basically, it takes us from being a community of NZ and NZ-adjacent people, to being a community of international hexbear users talking about NZ. It completely changes the tone of the instance.

It's not something they have done (other than whatever made the others want to defederate), but the point of the fediverse is to curate who you federate with in order to build the community you want, then people join the instances that curate the way they want. I'm not so keen on a community of hexbear users talking about NZ. The occasional one was fine, but to have our threads swamped is just not what I'm here for.

Also, hexbear users are filling all the posts from different instances trying to decide if people want to defederate or not. It's bad taste.

I try not to be a "my way or the highway" kind of guy, but I haven't yet seen a good counter-argument to my other post.

[–] sylverstream@lemmy.nz 13 points 1 year ago

Thanks Dave. I had not noticed it at all until this post.

But I get your point, this should be an instance of mainly NZ people. If hexbear seems to take over it's probably a good idea to defederate.

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[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 22 points 1 year ago

Downvoting doesn't work when there's more of them than there are of us, and they all upvote each other.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution that works, eh dave?

I feel the fact you decided this was necessary kinda proves my point though.

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really, I messaged @dave so he could be on top of it if it got 'interesting'.

Now you have got very anti hexbear and 'they' have not been antagonistic in this thread.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 9 points 1 year ago (31 children)

No, but they have absolutely flooded the thread. They certainly got antagonistic in the previous thread though, basically calling everyone who disagrees with them racist.

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[–] MORTARS@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lmao you toadie, listen to yourself

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And now the alts show up.

[–] MORTARS@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Swing and a miss

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, you've had the same hostile attitude right out the gate as the Hexbear crowd, of course people will think you're one of them.

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[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

Thank you. They show up like ants any time Hexbear or the CCP is mentioned.

[–] cloventt@lemmy.nz 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

If you’re getting that worked up about mild non-offensive inane comments I hate to imagine how worked up you get using a self-checkout machine. Chill out.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Holy shit dude, have you used one?

Please place item in bagging area. Are you using your own bags? [Yes]. Please wait for staff member to come over and give you permission to use your own bags. Would you like a receipt? [No]. Please take this 30 centimetre long piece of receipt paper that isn't a receipt, it's just printed with stuff you don't want.

I don't think it's justified getting all upset about a few comments, but if I saw an article about someone getting arrested for smashing a self-checkout machine then I'd assume the machine probably deserved it.

[–] MORTARS@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It constantly thinks I've placed an improper amount of weight and I'm stealing. As if I'd steal at the most watched area of the store like a chump. And the attendant has to come over four times!

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[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Once again, the issue is that none of them actually participated meaningfully in the discussion, just turned the thread into one big circle jerk.

None of the individual comments were particularly bad, it's the overall effect that is the issue.

[–] AngrilyEatingMuffins@kbin.social 16 points 1 year ago (18 children)

the overall effect he's objecting to is a general anti-racist sentiment, just to clarify that for everyone

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[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

Every time I read a stupid comment and then check the instance 100% of the time it's hexbear.

So far I've not seen any rule breaking posts.

Edit: I made this comment after only seeing hexbear users in few nz thread but after seeing more and seeing how the partcipate. I think we should defederate. They will never participate in good faith as they are an extremist instance. Majority of the big instances have already defederated with them so its not like we will be singling them out. On the point of "diverse viewpoints", policy so far bans extreme right wing instances and extreme leftwing instances. All the reasonable view points that a hexbear user could provide can be provided by the many leftists across other instances.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 13 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's exactly the issue. Nothing of value comes from their instance, but they do follow the rules.

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[–] fritata_fritato@lemmy.nz 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I would not support defederation based on this exchange. Surely the bar must be high for such an action?

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[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

So as an update, Hexbear have defederated us after a brief chat I had with an admin. They updated their instance on it here:

Removed lemmy.nz from our allow-list due to irreconcilable political differences between the instances. As well as them committing to permanently blocking hexbear.net

https://hexbear.net/comment/3833816

That's not quite how I remember the conversation going, in fact I feel like I said it wasn't permanent (or at least that's what I was trying to imply):

Thanks for reaching out. I do intend to monitor the situation, in particular when more granular tools are available. But for the moment I think we will just watch from the side lines.

But hey, it is what it is.

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[–] 50MYT@aussie.zone 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I have filtered out a lot of the spammer accounts that just spew nonsense.

On one hand I'm lucky I can do that with sync. But on the other hand we shouldn't have to resort to whackamole.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I wouldn't mind if it was a few "bad apples", but every single fucking one of them are here to start arguments, call people racist, and generally act in the most abrasive manner possible.

[–] AngrilyEatingMuffins@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (16 children)

i mean, bro, you're being racist as fuck in that other thread.

i'm not from hexbear, you gonna start a thread about kbin, now, too?

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[–] glasschewer@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What's the argument there? People shouldn't have oppositional discussions online? You just want to live in an echo chamber?

One of the saddest things about silicon valley social media products is the way they silo people off and prevent exchange of ideas.

And here on lemmy, reddit users who got used to it silo themselves off willingly.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemmy.nz 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The issue is, there is no discussion or exchange of ideas happening, just a group of people behaving like seagulls.

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[–] tokyo@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

People can disagree without being assholes or abrasive about it. I think that’s what ops referring to

[–] MORTARS@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a common perception of people who are unable to bear someone disagreeing with them. I've looked at the actual discussions they're complaining about. Not impressed by this attempt to turn a tantrum into a site issue.

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[–] murl@lemmy.nz 13 points 1 year ago

Seems like a good move. It's a crap dynamic at this point. Maybe later we could re-federate once the numbers aren't so skewed. If people from there feel the need to discuss NZ issues they still have options. They can join here. They can make their own NZ sub if NZ issues are so important to them.

[–] ParkingPsychology@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you're going to defederate from everyone that's stupid, you're going to be very alone. And then there's the technical difficulty of having to defederate from yourself.

Might I suggest that next time you spawn, you do so on a planet that does have intelligent life? Kind of pointless to complain about idiots when you were the one that decided to be a human just before planetary annihilation.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 8 points 1 year ago

It wouldn't be defederating from everyone. Only defederating from extremist instances who only seek to push their views on everyone. Eg exploding heads, hexbear and lemmygrad.

Nothing they say is relevant to the nz threads they post in.

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