Hello users of Hexbear, we wanted to do a federation check-in.
So far these are the instances in question but please use this post as a suggestion for other instances to either federate with or defederate from or to comment your thoughts on federation in general.
kbin.social / fedia.io
Please comment to vote:
indicates you want to federate with all the instances listed above
indicates you want to defederate with all the instances listed above
indicates you would like to defederate with some and federate with others (please include what instances you want for each)
Here are some relevant posts/comments:
https://hexbear.net/comment/4515862
https://hexbear.net/comment/4510892
(Nath is an aussie.zone admin)
https://hexbear.net/post/1592684
https://hexbear.net/post/369410
(we would selectively not federate with their /c/196 community)
kbin.social and fedia.io are kbin and mbin respectively which is very similar but also distinct from lemmy. These are the two largest instances but we may look to add more in the future. There is an issue with those two as they deanonymize the modlog and allow users to inspect the upvotes for a post/comment. If users vote to federate with kbin/mbin instances and we experience moderator harassment they will be defederated from immediately.
My personal opinion follows:
I think that lemm.ee primary worth is the 1.7k daily active users.
programming.dev has active programming communities
aussie.zone has a lot of australia specific communities
lemmy.blahaj.zone has specific queer communities
kbin.social and fedia.io value is from userbase
https://the-federation.info/platform/184
https://the-federation.info/platform/290
https://the-federation.info/platform/73
hexbear is 1.75k users per month compared to .ee 3.6k and kbin.social 4.6k
Removed kbin and mbin due to moderation / user self-deletion federation problems
How do I interpret this? Are we gonna defed all as it stands? Fed lemm.ee but nothing else?
Drama has pretty much died as federation has normalised. The only thing that happens now is that we get a gentle amount of chuds with dogshit opinions, and expose our views to some quiet lurkers that have later on months down the line talked about how influential we’ve been on them.
The dogshit opinions are good additions to the hex because they’re not overpowering and they inspire useful actual answers to their dogshit takes. These answers are useful to onlooking lurkers still learning.
The influence is good and valid.
Sources of new users are thin on the ground and should not be limited.
There will be an initial wave of shit until the worst users are banned. But that will taper off into something good overall.
We should not re-federate with blahaj (or any server) unless they have corrected the things that caused our defed. Doing so will significantly agitate users here that wanted it and cause lasting bad blood that harms Hexbear. It’s not an option at all until something drastic is taken from their side to address the original issues that caused it.
I think this is what all the DEFED EVERYONE folks are missing. Hexbear will die without new users. We need to get new users somehow. Federation is that somehow. Voting against any and all federation is voting against the future of Hexbear.
I wouldn’t say fine. Hexbear managed to tread water and it was a tonne of manual work to do drives offsite that put Hexbear in spaces where it might grab a few users at a time. What Hex needs is systemic growth caused by the organisational structure of the site, this then provides growth without labourers actively working on generating the growth. The site has in fact grown a little bit since federation, compared to pre-federation where it was just breaking even with frequent drives, often performed by individuals taking it into their own hands to do too.
We need to get new users somehow. Federation is that somehow.
I disagree, we were getting plenty of new users before federation from outreach on reddit and other places, and just plain old word of mouth. And frankly I don’t think bringing in new users should be our primary goal, at least not above fostering a safe and welcoming space.
This was a tonne of manual labour though, often performed by people taking it into their own hands out of personal concern/anxieties for hexbear. If the organisational structure of the site provides growth we’re much better off. We have actually grown a bit compared to pre-federation too, which shows it works.
And frankly I don’t think bringing in new users should be our primary goal, at least not above fostering a safe and welcoming space.
I don’t think new users means discarding the latter. There’s no suggestion on my part that we weaken hexbear’s rules. New users that fit in will provide the growth, new users that do not will get themselves banned.
We should not re-federate with blahaj (or any server) unless they have corrected the things that caused our defed. Doing so will significantly agitate users here that wanted it and cause lasting bad blood that harms Hexbear. It’s not an option at all until something drastic is taken from their side to address the original issues that caused it.
100% agree. Ultimately, we defed from Blahaj because one of their power mods is a bigoted shithead and the admin is a two-faced backstabbing dipshit. “uwu im just a smoll bean admin i can’t help it when the mod of 196 keeps on shitting CARCOSA including airing out CARCOSA’s dms to 196 uwu” Fuck off with that duplicitous bullshit.
I don’t know what this site was like having never heard of it until a couple months ago. I found you all through Lemm.ee federation. Today I’m reading communist theory, have become vegan and am working on my delibification. That wouldn’t have happened or have taken longer if not for you guys and federation. I would have stayed a smarmy ignorant lib although maybe a bit happier and less stressed.
Edit: I feel compelled to make it explicit that this is not a vote either way. I’m offering this perspective since the goal of federating was stated as radicalizing libs like me to show that it can work. The judgment of whether there are enough people like me to make federation worth it, in particular since this seems to affect trans comrades disproportionately, is for others to vote on.
how do we pull in -pilled people like you without destroying the good vibes here from the sludge of reactionary posters that infest reddit-alikes? serious question and it’s not just aimed at you.
I do not think its possible to recruit from general society without exposing oneself to it. I think that’s what the vote here is about, do we want to recruit via federation, which means exposing people here to the chuds, in hopes of catching some open to radicalization or do we want to make it a truly safe place.
Moderation of the chuds will only ever be effective after they posted so I don’t think you can have a truly safe space which is also exposed to the outside.
Congratulations, you are the one true leftist on this site, good job.
I nominate you for hexbears highest honor: A ban
My sarcasm detector isn’t very good, does that mean you think I’m full of myself and should be banned? Pretty sure I’m misunderstanding something that since that seems overly harsh lol
Thank you for asking, I am also bad at conveying tone over text.
I wrote this as a joke, referring a common in-joke: That there is only One True Leftist on this site, and the rest of us are just liberals. By being a good person, you’ve shown yourself to be The One True Leftist.
It’s just a very bad joke meant to poke fun at the site. I don’t think you’re full of yourself, you seem very nice.
Stop trying to refed with Blahaj. Apart from the chasers, the trans users there are brain wormed libs. They aren’t comrades and for most they’ll never be. They’re brained wormed libs and that’s their home. Otherwise those users would be here.
Why the fuck would we federated with blahaj again? For what possible reason?
It will be a day and people will whine about how fucking terrible the posts are. Like last time.
We have a lot more emoji than last time, but unlike last time, our emoji scale correctly on federated instances, so we won’t get any complaints about oversized emoji
I understand the impulse to try and pull two rather queer instances together. But I don’t understand anyone saying it’s gotten better over there or they’re trying to clean up.
I check there from time to time, and I’d say it’s worse than r/196 at this point. It’s more distilled. Like the people who stuck it out are even more redscare-brained than the regular crowd.
When I do see some reasonable stuff there, it’s the same two hexbear alts and one is Carcosa. Then of course they’re weird with those two in replies.
It’s well intentioned to want to bring the two communities together, but it’s unrealistic and will probably just deepen divides.
I check there from time to time, and I’d say it’s worse than r/196 at this point. It’s more distilled. Like the people who stuck it out are even more redscare-brained than the regular crowd.
I got the idea that Ada wouldn’t remove 196 mods specifically, who attacked our admins and defended chasers. If she is not hesitant to remove reactionary mods of other communities, federating could maybe be worth it
Tbh they’re not any worse than instances we’re already federated with, and if anything they at least seem to take transphobia more seriously than the others.
I got banned from one of their comms for briefly mentioning transmisogyny, so they don’t really care about trans women
From OP:
(we would selectively not federate with their /c/196 community)
With 196 out of the way, there’s several good communities there that we lost in the defed
!blahaj@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!colombia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!egg_irl@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!ftm@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!gamedev@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!lgbtq_plus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!mtf@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!nonbinary@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!pointlesslygendered@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!socialanxiety@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!transprogrammer@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!ttrpgs@lemmy.blahaj.zone
!unixsocks@lemmy.blahaj.zone
It is still the same admin
True
and the same userbase
Not so much, /c/196 has 24 times as many users as the second most popular community, /c/mtf. See their top 10 communities:
I made a post the other day asking Hexbears to tone down their AES rhetoric so we have more room to interact with the other instances and like 99% of the responses were unequivocally no.
I think the answer is very clear here.
