Meta (lemm.ee)

This type of thread does not work. There are too many misunderstandings and wrong assumptions between users, people treat each other as enemies and the thread just devolves into a flame war. I expect this thread will need to be locked very soon.

I am 100% convinced that the negative image many Lemmy users have of Hexbear is completely wrong. These "hexbear discussion" posts are just a constant escalation, where more and more users mutually attack each other, and these attacks pull in further "neutral" users into the conflict, forcing them to "choose sides". It's completely unnecessary and in fact counterproductive - I am sure that in fact most of us want the same things, such as good living conditions for all humans globally, sustainable use of the planet's resources, etc.

I really hate seeing users get harassed on Lemmy, regardless of what instance they are registered on. I don't really know how to solve this constant drama and internet fighting (other than simply isolating users through defederation, which I'm not interested in doing), so if anybody has any ideas, please let me know.

Side-note: over the past few weeks, I have received several DMs from users directly attacking me for not defederating Hexbear. This instance is provided through volunteer effort, I am not planning to respond to feedback in the form of demands or attacks, so I am not responding to these DMs directly, but I will write a generic response here:

1. Lemmy allows you to block users and communities
2. Lemmy will soon also allow you to block instances
3. You always have the option to switch to another instance with a different approach to federation, or start your own

I like y'all. When I see @hexbear I know what I am about to read isn't going to be thinly veiled racism or capitalist bootlicking, while both less common on Lemmy than Reddit still do make their appearance. I like your bantz and images. Also special shoutout to the Disco poster.

Y'all are incredibly obnoxious, brigading and dogpiling threads with your politics when the post has nothing to do with it, and you fill comment sections with emoji spam and inside jokes. Stop being disingenuous, it doesn't take long looking at the hexbear instance to learn that y'all federate with instances specifically to "dunk" on them. I feel bad that lemm.ee still has to interact with your ilk. This reminded me to block hexbear in my app though, since I can unfortunately see this post, so thanks I guess.

Because they are fascists cosplaying as leftists. They attack, brigade, harass, threaten, and suppress when anything brushes their ass hairs the wrong way, whether it's real or perceived. It all looks and feels and sounds exactly like the alt-right, just using the other side of the spectrum this time. It would not surprise me in the least if we find out in a couple of years that they are malicious actors from certain countries trying to fuck with our politics yet again, this time burning down the left just like they did with the right.

Is there any reason to think it isn't rooted in the difference in political alignment? The very existence of such deep left thought is going to cause a lot of political stress on people not used to having their ideology challenged, be them centrist or even moderately left.

Personally I think it's healthy to be exposed to it but I think I'm in a minority here.

The war in Ukraine is also likely exasperating things.

While I'm mostly neutral on Hexbear, I do have one significant issue with it: Your emojis show as giant images on other instances, and hexbear users seem to love using those emojis everywhere. I'd recommend using spoiler tags to hide them when posting to other communities until that's fixed.

I try to engage everyone in good faith, but I'm also out of step with the majority of time zones on lemmy.

I'm not that scrappy. We don't have downvotes (which don't have notifications), so generally people reply instead (which do have notifications). The sincerity of any response is going to vary wildly. If I personally am going to respond to a post about Tiananmen Square or whatever, the initial poster is going to have to wade through a bunch of answers I will charitably call "tedious".

That said, if a certain sort of poster who trips some wire responds, or we get called something that implies you won't take us seriously (e.g. genocide denier is a more common one among others we'd consider on the left), why bother with civility or politeness? Even if you started to hear a doorknocker out, how quickly will your patience dry up when they start calling you a liar and a paid shill for inscrutable foreign agents?

I’ll give you my own personal reason. I've had to literally change instance because I had the misfortune to disagree with some of them. It was a political conversation and the level of hate and trolling was the most toxic I've seen on Lemmy. The amount of messages and replies that attacked me and/or mocked me was enough for me to made me painfully aware overnight of what hexbear is simply because all the attacks/trolling was obviously from the same instance.

There was (and in my opinion still is) no point in seeing their answers since a great amount of their replies were just pictures or gifs of things like the butthole of a pig, literal shit and things of that caliber. Additionally, every posts or discussion that talks about them, inevitably draws their attention and they start to spam the same kind of stuff, relishing in the idea that they are hated, simply replying with things like "cope, seethe, rent free etc".

I've also personally blocked all the instances from hexbear I could and a lot of users from there because I don't come to Lemmy to be called names, harassed or to try to have conversations with trolls.

Personally, I can't see anything that could help in change the culture when the people at the top AND the people at the bottom don't seem to have any interest in changing. I definetly give props to people like you for trying to change it and I'm sorry you get bunched up with less pleasant users, but I'm here to look at photos of pets, talking about plants and books and other silly things that don't deserve that level of hate. I certainly want nothing to do with it.

That was my personal view and experience. Hope it helped with your questions

For an illustrative example of why every sane person who has had contact with "hexbearians" is exasperated by them, just look at any comment made by a "hexbearian" in this thread. Y'all are delusional af, and combative to boot.

I didn’t have any direct interactions with “hexbearians” but I do see a lot of posts and comments by them.

Honestly, people from Hexbear do comment a lot more, and seem more ready to defend their position (which can sometimes lead to petty arguments), but I don’t really care - I can always just skip a few comments.

Your politics also don’t align with mine at all, but I still find a lot of posts on Hexbear communities interesting or funny, so I don’t see what the big deal is there either. I think people with differing political opinions only benefit by discussing and sharing knowledge.

I don’t see why people who want to block hexbear.net don’t just block some communities they don’t like and users they see commenting a lot.

We are upset that we can’t use the emoji >:-[

I have observed truckloads of lemm.ee users being banned on hexbear.net, meaning that they won’t see any Hexbearian’s reply to them since Hexbearians aren’t able to see their comments.

Oh, could they ban me too? Please.

i hope I don't come across as too aggressive when I say all this, because I genuinely do like most of the interactions I've had on the extended lemmy-verse and I've been pleasantly engaged with a lot of folk here. hope we can stay federated and lots of y'all are cool as hell

So i'm personally biased here but I've noticed a lot of folk outside of Hexbear take internet discussion way, way too seriously. It's treated as if we're academics writing papers in an institution, or we're politicians being moderated in a debate. People get very, needlessly upset over frankly harmless personal insults, like being called stupid or childish or whatever. Outright bigotry and slurs shouldn't be used, of course, and that shit should get banned ruthlessly. But calling someone stupid or a baby? Or being shown an emoji of shit? Come on now, grow up. It's not something to think about for days or weeks afterwards. Go outside. It's not a big deal, it's just a web forum, it's not senate and nothing we're doing here is genuinely changing politics or the world by posting. It's just a forum to pass the time and relax. The most impact I've seen is when we do mutual aid like the recent indigenous fundraiser that comrade @Nakoichi@hexbear.net has been doing. Sometimes we'll add stuff to online discourse, but that's about it, but that's fine. It's not shameful to just be an internet forum.

It's very strange to me especially since I've been on the internet for decades now and just gotten used to it. People online will insult you, they often won't take you seriously, and they don't have to either unless they feel like it.

Maybe I'm an interloper in a specific kind of posting culture I was never involved with. I never posted on reddit at all, but nothing about my time on Hexbear has felt any different than the countless other forums or IRC channels I've been on in the past. But from comments around other instances, you'd think we're feral goblins spraying shit absolutely everywhere, only speaking in strings of random gibberish spam and death threats. You'd think we're some malicious group of hackers or a coordinated culture jamming effort rather than just...a bunch of disaffected leftists using an insular web-forum in a tale as old as the internet. The only real difference between hexbear and other forums I've been on have been: There are more users, there's more of a hardline ban on bigotry (transphobia, racism, etc), and it's stuck around for a lot longer and there's more of a chill, cooperative vibe.

The accusation of trolling and lying about our beliefs is the most confusing thing to me. Y'all don't think there are leftists out there? You think it's unthinkable to have genuine admiration for places like China or North Korea? Well there's a big wide world out there with people of every stripe, every single conceivable opinion is held by someone out there, and some stuff is a lot more popular than you'd expect. You don't have to respect Marxism or whatever, I don't honestly care, but you probably should admit that it's a real political ideology with real supporters in the world. Don't automatically assume someone is being dishonest or trolling just because they have a political stance that's inconceivable to you. Like I don't respect liberalism or fascism, but I do acknowledge there are a lot of liberals and fascists who are earnest in their views.

in any case I hope we can all stay federated because I do like that aspect of the internet, wide interactions with people who want to interact

Fixing emote scaling would make it less jarring to see them out in the wild. The ppb moratorium has cleaned up threads a lot and hope it continues. Honestly at this point, I'm more annoyed by posts about hexbear/defederation than I am about the instance, especially people who have made it their entire personality to campaign for censoring it from lemmy entirely.

Give me the ability to block entire instances and call it a day.