Update:
The comments from this post will not be removed as to preserve the discussion around the announcement. Any continued discussions outside of this thread that violate server rules will be removed. We feel that everyone that has an opinion, and wanted to vent, has been heard.

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Original post:
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.

Our code of conduct and server rules can be found here.

The announcement included several concerning statements, as highlighted below:

  • “Please try to keep the dirtbag lib-dunking to hexbear itself. Do not follow the Chapo Rules of Posting, instead try to engage utilizing informed rhetoric with sources to dismantle western propaganda. Posting the western atrocity propaganda and pig poop balls is hilarious but will pretty quickly get you banned and if enough of us do it defederated.”
  • “The West’s role in the world, through organizations such as NATO, the IMF, and the World Bank - among many others - are deeply harmful to the billions of people living both inside and outside of their imperial core.”
  • “These organizations constitute the modern imperial order, with the United States at its heart - we are not fooled by the term “rules-based international order.” It is in the Left’s interest for these organizations to be demolished. When and how this will occur, and what precisely comes after, is the cause of great debate and discussion on this site, but it is necessary for a better world.”

The rhetoric and goal of Hexbar are clear based on their announcement: to “dismantle western propaganda” and "demolish organizations such as NATO” shows that Hexbar has no intention of "respecting the rules of the community instance in which they are posting/commenting.” It’s to push their beliefs and ideology.

In addition, several comments from a Hexbear admin, demonstrate that instance rules will not be respected.

Here are some examples:

“I can assure you there will be no lemmygrad brigades, that energy would be better funneled into the current war against liberalism on the wider fediverse.”

“All loyal, honest, active and upright Communists must unite to oppose the liberal tendencies shown by certain people among us, and set them on the right path. This is one of the tasks on our ideological front.”

Overall community comments:

To clarify, for those who have inquired about why Hexbear versus Lemmygrad, it should be noted that we are currently exploring the possibility of defederating from Lemmygrad as well based on similar comments Hexbear has made.

Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. However, based on their comments and behavior, no positive outcomes can be expected.

We made the decision to preemptively defederate from Hexbear for these reasons. While we understand that not everyone may agree with our decision, we believe it is important to prioritize the best interests of our community.

  • @RightHandOfIkarosEnglish
    -5•1 year ago

    I don’t understand why Lemmy is constructed in a manner where instances are automatically federated with other instances by default. Wouldn’t it make more sense, from a security standpoint, to change that so instances are automatically defederated with all other instances by default?

    Thats like creating a new social media account where you are automatically friends with everyone else, and you have to selectively remove people as they become problems.

    • TheSpookiestUser
      20•1 year ago

      It would be safer, but would also then require instance admins to go actively seek out new instances to federate with, which would make it harder for new spaces to grow.

      • @RightHandOfIkarosEnglish
        3•1 year ago

        I certainly agree it could be more difficult to grow, but the cost of slower growth to keep nefarious actors from “infecting” instances may be a good tradeoff, IMO.

        Of course, I don’t know all the details, and can only comment on my own knowledge of how Lemmy works, which may be wrong. But I would imagine that such a system, whereby instances are federated by default, would not be in the best interests of instance hosters or end users.

        • TheSpookiestUser
          5•1 year ago

          Oh it may be worth a try, I don’t feel too strongly on it either way. My only worry is that it would make the entire network too granular and stilted to navigate if you really want to see most of what is offered.

    • @[email protected]
      6•1 year ago

      Lemmy wouldn’t grow the same way if this was the case. You would have a handful of servers, all “approved” by someone else to join the network. It wouldn’t at all be the same feeling of community run servers.

      The problem you are experiencing now is again because of the size of Lemmy.world. People care about what they are deciding about hexbear because they are so big. If they were a smaller instance, people would have lots of other large instances to choose from.

      They do have choices still but since like 95% of the communities are on Lemmy.world, it has become a big centralized network now. If you don’t federate with Lemmy.world today, you won’t see much content.