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.

  • JilanicoEnglish
    10•10 months ago

    Avoiding echo chambering (is that a verb?) will take work. Admins and mods should be willing and ready to do that for the health of the fediverse.

    Fwiw, I was a reddit mod for a sub of 4.3 million, so I’d like to think I’m not being naive about this, but I could be wrong…

    • @[email protected]
      9•10 months ago

      As others have pointed out, the population of the whole fediverse is currently less than a bunch of subreddits with far less than 4.3 million users. Mod/admin energy shouldn’t be taken for granted, but people are way overstating the potential for issues.

      A game thread on any popular sporting event has way more comments and problems than basically any post in the history of this place.

    • ANGRY_MAPLEEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      I would like to start off with apologizing for if this comes off harshly.

      I respect that you were a mod for a community that size, but I’m not really sure that I can give that much credit without knowing more. Reddit had all kinds of mods. Good mods, bad mods, sleeping mods, controlling mods, chill mods, etc. Reddit hasn’t exactly had much of a great reputation for many of it’s mods and admins, you know? I’ve seen some very bizarre things happen on that website in the past regarding certain mods, to put it one way.

      Since this is a different platform with different groundwork, I would imagine that the tools would probably be at least a little bit different. Maybe the mods who used to moderate 24/7 have decided to spend more of their time on their hobbies or with their loved ones. Maybe they are on a different platform. Maybe they got bored of moderating, who knows.

      I think that we should make sure that we keep human expectations for people if we want to keep our mods good and happy. I think that that’s another way that Reddit really messed up. Reddit’s 24/7 pressure to constantly moderate probably led to a lot of mods becoming burnt out. If people try to treat volunteers as employees, they’re likely to lose many of those volunteers. I mean, these people are already going our of their way to help contribute.

      I have to say, I see a hell of a lot more "other people need to do xy " on this thread, than I see “I think x is missing. I’ll help add it!”.

      • JilanicoEnglish
        2•10 months ago

        Not harsh at all 🤝 I respect your perspective, but I stand by my comment. If we sign up for a job, we should do right by it. Also shameless plug: the community was r/streetwear and you can find us at [email protected]

        P.S. feel free to peruse my history on r/streetwear to judge if I was a lazy/crazy mod