Hey hexbears just want to update everyone.
We took the weekend to properly consider and are removing: programming.dev , aussie.zone , and lemm.ee from our allow-list.
We will look at refederation with lemm.ee after local-only communities are developed. When that feature is available we would really like to consider changing every hexbear community to local-only except for chapotraphouse, askchapo, news, and the_dunk_tank. The final say on if a community is local only or not is 100% up to the mod team on that community.
The reason for this is that lemm.ee despite having twice our monthly active users has a 700k annual comment rate to hexbear’s 1 million, in addition lemm.ee has very little active communities that do not exist on hexbear.
Resulting in lemm.ee benefit of federation being votes and views, with a secondary benefit of comments.
However, as expressed by users belonging to marginalized groups, comments from .ee users are often lib-shit and in some cases outright hostile. While many on hexbear love dunking on these lost libs the duty to protect marginalized users is much more important.
The end vote for programming.dev and aussie.zone was a tie, so we decided to break the tie in favor of defederation. The decision on lemm.ee was much harder as the average user did express desire to remain federated however the admin team decided that a temporary removal from our allow-list was the best option.
As an admin team we have never wanted to prioritize growth, and we wanted to give federation with liberal instances a try, however we consider providing a safer browsing experience for marginalized users more important than the opportunity to dunk.
While user side instance blocking and local sort are options, neither address the issue of federated instance users coming into posts in hexbear communities to make reactionary comments.
Thank you everyone who gave input and please provide any feedback, comments, concerns, etc in comments.
final vote count:
federation
all 32
aussie.zone 27
lemm.ee 41
programming.dev 27
lemmy.blahaj.zone 5
defederation
all 40
aussie.zone 19
lemm.ee 4
programming.dev 19
lemmy.blahaj.zone 43
Silly hexbears, you won the popular vote, but forgot to factor in the Hextoral college! A classic blunder
Disappointing. I’d hoped the community here would not pointlessly isolate itself but that appears to be what it wants to do.
Gonna have to and use something that’s not defederated from everywhere.
I also find the reasoning a bit flawed. We need user turnover and influx, not for growth, but in order to keep a stable environment. Without it, hexbear just becomes the same 20 bitter people arguing with each other ready to eviscerate each other over minor disagreements in the next pointless “struggle session”. As what happened for years before federation. Federation has improved the signal to noise ratio in some ways.
Also with per instance and per community blocking in the latest versions of lemmy, I wonder how necessary this all this. Will users still see federated comments in hexbear posts, if they have blocked the instance?
Yeah, pre-federation Hexbear was noticeably worse compared to now. I really don’t understand what people see in pre-federation Hexbear. I guess it was less openly bigoted, but seeing all those bullshit struggle sessions and people who you regard as your acquaintances arguing over the stupidest shit isn’t exactly great for your mental health either.
Federation Hexbear was truly something else, and as we’re heading towards post-federation Hexbear, I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.
Let me know what you find, a community with consistent negative growth and no path to positive growth isn’t going to last forever, so it would be good to know where others end up as the slow and steady drip of users out of Hexbear continues.
There’s always Lemmygrad of course, though it’s not a leftist-unity platform and the general vibe is very different (more serious ig?)
But man we should at least stay federated with lemm.ee, that instance’s admin has been very reasonable and it hasn’t caused much trouble at all; nothing that banning any troublemakers can’t fix.
I agree. The community agreed too if you look at the votes, but that’s the way it goes. It’s not a democracy and nobody is pretending it is.
Unfortunately I believe that Hexbear is a left unity platform in name only if there isn’t anyone that Hexbear is trying to be unified with.
pointlessly isolate
however we consider providing a safer browsing experience for marginalized users more important than the opportunity to dunk.
As far as I’m concerned that’s what moderation is adequate for, not the defed button. Without isolating itself Hexbear was already one of the best spaces online for marginalised people, particularly lgbt, period, I can’t think of something comparatively better. Compromising the ability to spread leftist ideas to others in order to go above and beyond already being the best just isn’t necessary, it’s actively detrimental even.
Compromising the ability to spread leftist ideas to others in order to go above and beyond already being the best just isn’t necessary, it’s actively detrimental even.
By what metric? We’re federated with other instances still. They aren’t all far left. They’re reading what we’re saying and the message is still getting spread. Our ideals are spread through interacting with people offline too. Not being able to reach ee users doesn’t make for the fall of hexbear.
Hexbear was already one of the best spaces online for marginalised people, particularly lgbt, period, I can’t think of something comparatively better
When marginalized users are actively saying please make this compromise (not even fully defed), I don’t think it should be such a difficult decision or be misconstrued as isolating. We’re not isolated and that was never an option in the poll
The thing is, no matter how well moderated the site is (and I believe it already has exceptional mods), you can’t stop some users from seeing the ridiculous fascist takes before they’re taken down. There’s a reason some users need to be banned instead of just selectively taking down their bad posts, the same principle applies to whole instances.
I don’t think Hexbear has ever been the place to radicalize libs in, either. It’s been a place for people who already had the right ideas to find likeminded people and get access to more resources, sure, but we’ve never really tried to be the first step in the pipeline. I don’t see the problem with compromising our ability to reach libs if it means we’re losing good comrades who don’t wish to see the occasional fascist stroll in here.
Concerns that this is gonna lead to a gradual declination of the userbase are more well-placed, and hopefully we can figure out a way of attracting the right kinds of users to Hexbear. But I really don’t see why it’s of any use to attract people that have no interest in picking up a book or even watch a video longer than 4 minutes. I realize that we have some comrades here that we brought over from .ee, sure, but the juice ain’t worth the squeeze IMHO.
Man, I don’t even fucking want to but I’ve done jack shit online for months maybe even over a year except post here and unlike in the past when it felt like my online activity actually did something I feel like it’s not now.
These spaces are theatres of operations (lemmy, reddit, tiktok, twitter, etc) and even though I despise most of them they’re spaces communists need to be creating more of us in. With Lemmy, it was about building something that was going to eventually create its own theatre-of-operations that disrupted existing ones, and hexbear was going to be connected to that so I could always justify it.
Were you leaning towards just plain lemmy.ml for your account instance or somewhere else? Only reason I don’t say lemmygrad is for wider leftist appeal (nothing against Lemmygrad y’all are great)
Lemmy.ml or lemm.ee, maybe? The latter due to reliability of lemmy.ml being low and my private chats with the owner way back being pretty okay compared to most libs. Or just creating the one I’ve had in my head for years. I don’t dislike the grad folks either but just prefer a space that isn’t sectarian. It will probably take me a week to make my mind up tbh.
Lemm.ee is better imo if you want as little people to immediately write you off as possible. Lemmy.ml, despite being the flagship Lemmy instance, is too associated with the “tankie” devs.
And it sucks to see you (mostly) go, but it is what it is. Just stop by the news megathread every once in a while.
Oh and if you find a newer instance that’s cool, give me a head’s up. I don’t think it’s wise at all to be invested in a Lemmy instance that’s against federation. Like, what’s the point then? You might as well just turn Hexbear into an old-school forum. God knows we’re still missing shit that has been available in forums for decades.
If you wanna get a stark picture, make your outside account with a different name and pfp and post here.
There’s a significantly different standard applied to outside accounts.
Not making a judgement about it right or wrong, but it exists.
Admins made a call and you should stand by it. There’s not a solution that will make everyone happy because there is no agreement about what the site is or should be. Those who want it to be a safe space are not going to agree with the people who want a platform for radicalization and dunking.
Personally, I was fine with lem.ee federation, but I don’t want it at the expense of my marginalized comrades if that’s the choice at hand. But again, if that’s the consideration at hand, I wish we had better mechanisms for measuring popular sentiment. @AcidSmiley@hexbear.net brought up a lot of valid concerns, but is she speaking on behalf of a much larger group or just for herself? I find it hard to say.
I guess all this is to say, I’m fine with the decision, but I don’t think we should be making decisions that affect everyone’s experience here in such an ad hoc way. Whether it’s one Hexbear one vote, full dictatorship of the mods, or some third thing the criteria for decision making should be clearer and better structured.
Well, i definitely wasn’t speaking for the majority. Maybe i wasn’t even speaking for a majority of the trans people on here, i frankly don’t care about that tbh. My views on transness are driven by what i need to not only survive, but to thrive and be happy and that is very different from how we are commonly supposed to be and allowed to feel, because the ways we are supposed to be and allowed to feel are part of controlling us and exterminating as many of us as possible without the liberals noticing. I refuse to walk into that trap. And if that means that i live my life as a tripple gay nonbinary transfem bog witch kinkster headed deeply into her queer villain arc, so be it. It’s honestly kinda fun when i’m not bothered by all the straight people out there and the little pissbabies who want to be like them.
Anyway, speaking on behalf of a large group would be the very opposite of what i’m on this world for. Basic facts of my day to day life put me permanently at odds with democracy-as-majority-rule. Slightly less so with democracy-as-finding-consensus, or democracy-as-doing-right-by-as-many-people-as-possible, but let me be perfectly clear here: When you’re one of the weirder subsets of a minority that is roundabout 1% of the population and that 1% isn’t the 1% hoarding all the wealth, democracy means you’re fucked.
I’ve learned that the hard way over and over again during the last 3 years when i was rapidly yanked out of experiecing the world as a white imperial core leftist fucking nerd who at least mostly passed for a straight-ish man very old boy and was thrown into experiencing the world from the perspective of a political football seeing increasingly heavy use. Having hope for liberals taking political action to improve my living conditions is always a disappointment and a deeply sobering experience. It leads to the painful realization that even the part of our institutions that is not openly arguing for my opression is a spectrum that looks exactly like this:
So yeah, i’ll be honest here, i’m glad that the survery results were not taken as a binding vote. What @CARCOSA@hexbear.net has posted itt has shown me once more that the mods of hexbear are people i can actually count on, and some of the reactions here, including yours, my cherished French guy talking about prison a lot, have shown me that there are still many people on this site who deeply deserve my affection and respect. The overall discussion has also shown me that a sizeable number of hexbear users are contrarian, irony-poisoned, uncaring LARPers who are liberal in the most violent ways and who will continue trying to push the site in a direction that aligns with their relative privilege, whether it’s as white cis dudes or as marginalized people who have in some way managed to at least grown numb and callous enough to not feel like an open wound after walking into conversations happening within dominant society. I get that this is a survival skill, i’m not judging people for learning to not give a fuck, but i’m not like that, i am a complicated, emotional mess as people tend to be when they go through puberty again in their 40s, but given that i’ve been hormonally incapable of feeling the way i need to feel for most of my life, i am not willing to give that up even if it hurts me. I’m sorry when it hurts people around me, and that has happened way too much in my recent post history, partially because this entire shitshow of a struggle session coincided with a bit of a rough patch happening in my life, but that’s how it is now. It doesn’t excuse me being an ass, but i hope it explains it, especially to those who got caught in the crossfire without deserving any of it, like my dear comrade @Nakoichi@hexbear.net.
This still sounds angrier and as more of a doomer post than it’s supposed to be, but i already had to rewrite the entire thing because i misclicked once after finishing it for the first time. Honestly, i’m fine rn, there’s beautiful and precious things happening in my life and if i wasn’t still glowing from them, i wouldn’t have risked logging into this account after going on a verabl abuse spree a few days earlier and wouldn’t even have seen that you pinged me. I don’t really know where i’m headed on this site except that i’ll not be publicly active under this account for opsec reasons, i’ve just shared a lot since i’ve come here and even when you’re careful that’s risky when reactionaries want to gut you. But i may be checking my inbox once in a while just in case.
tl;dr: Democracy is a fuck and if you want to run a site full of all kinds of marginalized people by majority vote, you are still full of liberal brain poison and need to do some fucking self crit.
I think it’s time to now. Please stay safe out there, comrades. But make sure to actually go out there. Make sure to tell the ones you care about how you feel for them. Make sure to remember that a better world is possible.
Puberty sucks I kinda just zoned out till I got my pair of big tits
Being a teenager again when you aren’t a teenager is also a weird feeling. Being trans is tough y’all even without dealing with bigotry, take naps regularly (unironically, helps with puberty issues and also resets your mood when having a bad day)
Your perspective on the federation issue was very enlightening and I appreciate how much passion you have for this place and what it means for marginalized people. I hope you stick around whether its on this account or another one, you’re a wonderful valued comrade and I appreciate you
Separate from the issue of federation (where your perspective is fair enough), I’m genuinely appalled at people so roundly supporting the anti-democratic horseshit. Aren’t the people on this website supposed to be fucking socialists? Do they have no concept of class consciousness? They are just completely ideologically incoherent if they think this shit flies.
To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one’s suggestions to the organization. To say nothing to people to their faces but to gossip behind their backs, or to say nothing at a meeting but to gossip afterwards. To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one’s own inclination. This is a second type.
~
It’s been made pretty open and safe to contribute to the federation discussion, I don’t understand why folks would feel the need to not participate in the thread and instead through backchannels. If that many folks didn’t feel comfortable with lemmy.ee federation they should’ve d
I value both your perspective, commitment to ensuring a safe space for marginalized comrades, and work put into this project. I understand and empathize with your position as I can’t imagine it’s easy and you and the rest of the team have demonstrated a desire to protect our marginalized comrades; but I don’t think it’s impossible for Hexbear to be able to act as both outreach and a safe space. I value my own safety from fascists and absurd bigots, but I don’t think mass defederation from cooperative lib instances is the way to do it.
Has the team considered conducting a study on marginalized populations on Hexbear to try and evaluate if defederation is really wanted from the marginalized groups on Hexbear? It seems like a lot of folks aren’t arguing on the importance of keeping folks safe, but instead on how many want that specific tactic to be used. Perhaps if we take a survey of the real lived experiences of those who we’re focusing on we’d have concrete evidence to point to for admin decisions atleast.
Basically, it turns out a DM vote is worth more than a comment vote. That’s what it boils down to. There’s no point in tabulating the votes if the admins aren’t going to honor them anyways. They might as well just have a discussion thread and make their decision based on the vibes of the thread. It would’ve saved them the trouble of keeping track of votes and be more honest.
I don’t think it is coincidence that the pro federation users didn’t go to the effort of dming the mods. Like you might prefer federation but not being federated is unlikely to make the site inaccessible to you because of a lack of shitlibs posting reactionary comments.
I slightly lean toward federation but overall don’t care that much. My vote should be weighted less accordingly.
I don’t think there’s anything dishonest in running a poll then deciding based on new information not to do as the poll suggests, when you clearly explain your reasons and have a dialogue about them like we’re doing now.
do you see how “I want to dunk on libs” and “federation makes me feel unsafe on this website” aren’t equal positions that require the same consideration? even anarchists don’t go this far.
Yeah I feel like this is mostly an issue of tooling. There is some desire of mine that wants this platform to be more open so we can get the word out to more trans people, and the other desire is to form an anti transphobia task force that hunts down every transphobe and forces them to drink their own pee. This is mutually exclusive due to bad tooling
Disappointed with decision to defederate from lemme.ee. Obviously the userbase broadly didn’t want to and I felt we had been in a very good balance with them for a long time. It’s really not about dunking, it’s just about a broader pool of users and communities to interact with.
