And we shouldn't allow this concept to go unchallenged here on Lemmy.
Commenting on an active post is not brigading
Posting a link to something is not brigading
Commenting on something you were linked to is not brigading
The only thing that might be brigading, but isn't because it isn't a real thing, is someone explicitly going, "Hey everyone, go here and harass this person"
It's all fine and good that we have some new rules to keep the peace with other instances but we must fight against 
If the purpose is to convert people via federation, it’s good to remember that nobody likes being told what a fucking idiot they are and how selfish they are and that their whole worldview is wrong. I’m not trying to defend libs here, but it’s very rare that arguments are won on the internet. If someone makes a false claim then correct them and leave it for other people to read, but there is no point getting caught up in debates with people who probably don’t have much interest in politics anyway.
Debate perverts are the real sickos.
I don't know what the purpose is. I haven't really communicated with the "real world" on reddit in a couple of years now and seeing what the "real world" of reddit is like - shocking politic ignorance, bizarre faith in long since discredited and discarded propaganda, willfull ignorance mixing with genuine ignorance mixing with incuriousness, I don't know how we could possibly have a positive interaction with, frankly, redditors.
The problem is that everything is politics, and everything is specifically vicious, destructive liberal politics. It doesn't matter if it's bike infrastructure or treatment at work or the weather; It's all deeply entwined with politics and most of us on Hexbear are completely rabid political animals who've gotten really used to not letting lies and falsehoods go uncommented on. Fedditors are posting "normal" things without realizing how deeply those things are tied in to their liberal brainworms, then we... do our thing - That's not the case, this is what's really happening, fifty citations, here's why people think that, here's what we think is more accurate.... and they're calling us tankie bots again.
It's a lose lose.
Caveat: yes when you show someone why they're fucked up and wrong they will mentally block that out. But at the same time 100 to 1000 people will see that thread without commenting, and a lot of them will find your point convincing.
Ever post an imgur link to reddit? It has a view counter, and when your reddit thread gets like 45 upvotes and 7 comments, that's 10,000 hits to the imgur post
Who says we were ever trying to 'convert people'? That's not how these things work. If they have an interest in reading further and developing their understanding, they will do it themselves. We cannot and should not try to hand-hold online people.
The internet is for dunking, chapo posting is understanding that what this entire place is, and what it is good for, is skinner-box behaviorism. Hit the button, get a treat, hit another button, get a shock. They don't like the shock, that is why they are bitching about us. But if they got a treat, then their brain stops working and they move onto getting the next treat.
These are things that people have either forgotten, or lessons that need to be re-learned about generalized posting.
[Sankara quote]
This isn't an attempt to develop Africa and convince multiple at-odds ethnic groups to develop their country in harmony and not backstab each other for political dominance. It's posting habits and practices in an obscure online Western forum.
Marxism and materialism are not about blindly applying idealist quotations from people in vastly different material circumstances, it is about recognizing the particular material circumstances you are in and behaving accordingly.
Eh, ok, i disagree that the quote cant be applied to these circumstances but otherwise fair enougj.
It's not just that you can't convert them so you shouldn't try, it's that by antagonizing them you push them even further away from mutual understanding. We set up the pretense that all their future interactions with leftists will be no better than the time their shit opinion got PPB'd. It's not rational, but it's how this stuff often goes. I get the frustration of being met with absolute nonsense when you're trying to have a proper discussion with someone, but I think we also have to consider the ramifications of creating an absolute shitstorm whenever someone posts uninformed bullshit.
FWIW I am pretty new here so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but when I first encountered a bunch of bears in a thread my first thought was "what the fuck is wrong with these people." I had to sift through many pictures of shit-smeared pig testicles to find out what Hexbear was really about, and even further to find out that you're all a bunch of really great people. Not everyone will take the time necessary to separate the rhetoric from the culture like I did out of curiosity. Most will see the worst and form hasty, unfair conclusions about the community and it will only poison their interactions going forward. It sux and I don't think Hexbear should water down its culture for the sake of any other community, but I think we all could do with being a little more mindful of how aggro we can be when we dunk and what it looks like to people who just want to laugh at shit memes on their phone.
See and that's fine. We want people who do their own work. That's the point. It weeds out people who merely react to content. That's the strategy, that's the mechanism, and based on my very old personal experience, it works.
It's about quality, not quantity.
I suppose I can understand that justification, yeah. I've always considered it a matter of quantity, i.e. the more people you have in support the better, but In terms of fostering a community/movement I can see the merit in filtering out people who won't make the effort to understand or learn further since they're just as likely to be swayed by something else at a later point. Hope you don't think I'm trying to "change" this community, I just have the outsider experience fresh in my head still and can understand some of the more flippant reactions we have gotten.
I totally understand your trepidation. Sometimes people can get a little out of pocket. I myself generally prefer to stick to the hexbear instance and deal with things that come up through that. That being said, as a dedicated old-head of forum posting in general (I have been on different forums here and there since 2007) I have yet to see or be with anything that creates as consistent (and actually relatively insightful) local culture as to the chapo posting method. It's more aggressive than I personally am, but It just works for cultivation purposes. Our posting dominance and the reaction it has had proves it,
Let them react how they will. They are only showing their own ass.
In my experience, people feel as bad when you politely tell them they're wrong, it doesn't matter how civil you are, politely getting owned still feels like an attack. When most people say "civility" they mean "jerking me off and saying I'm mostly right while only kinda disagreeing one some details", which often just reinforces their worldview.
Most of the "debate" we get here are people repeating thought termination cliques or assuming the things they think they know are fact are "common knowledge" that God himself saying it's wrong still wouldn't disprove it to them. Mocking it demystifies it. Also I've had a couple epiphanies after people bluntly telling me what a dumbass I was being, so I think incivility at least sometimes works.