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.”
- https://lemmy.world/comment/121850
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1487168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/1476084
- https://lemmy.world/comment/171595
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3648500
Overall community comments:
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526128
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3526086
- https://www.hexbear.net/comment/3652828
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.
- https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158656
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/882559
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/540170
- https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/446529
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.
Yes, as “western countries” famously is not just the US.
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Every European country has social security
Achieved by the ideology of the very people you’re currently suppressing. All you’re doing is moving this community hard-right, alienating the left by saying “this is not for you”.
How do you think this discussion is gonna go down every single time this community ever gets linked anywhere now? It’s gonna be “the community that banned socialists” and it’s gonna attract the neoliberals and the far right as a result while ensuring everyone that leans remotely left says “oh, fuck that then”. It’s a completely shortsighted move for the future of the instance. It’s going to have nazi bar syndrome.
As soon as we had that PM where you said “survival of the fittest” to me I knew something was up. You literally quoted Thatcherite/Ayn Randian philosophy to justify selectively not intervening in name squatting and community theft, a move that completely fucked over this instance’s potential to work with any subreddit modteams in further hastening the reddit migration. Livid that I was led on by this place to begin with.
Oh you mean that time where you asked me to remove the current mod from [email protected]? Where you asked me to either add you as a topmod or rename the existing one because you were the moderators of that community on Reddit?
I told you to pick it up with the current one or to create it on another instance. I said that with your entire reddit community behind you you would quickly become to bigger “gamingcirclejerk” without me having to intervene. It was in that context that I called it “survival of the fittest” of communities on instances. Nothing too philosophical about that.
Feel free to post our entire conversation here.
Yes I do mean the time the official gamingcirclejerk team asked you to stop the misrepresentation of this GCJ, which is literally stealing the branding, and the graphics created by the official team on the subreddit, and presenting itself as a continuation of it. I asked you to resolve it. Whether that meant putting the official team in charge, or whether that meant some other resolution, because attempts to reach out were being ignored. I am not misrepresenting that conversation, neither are you really I don’t see a reason to contest that other than me as topmod, nobody suggested anything other than the existing team being added to it, most likely in the existing hierarchy but we didn’t get that far in conversation did we? So given there’s no much disagreement on the content let’s just skip to the end eh?
And there was no response from then on.
After discussing it with some of the team gossip got around various reddit mod backrooms and bish bash bosh nobody wanted to have anything to do with this space anymore because it doesn’t respect the work and effort people put into creating those communities and bringing them up to what they are today.
Like, what exactly did you expect this response to do? Inspire faith in the way this team respects other teams, wants to maintain positive relations and genuinely does care about the work people put into their communities? It was flippant. And the expectation was that same flippancy about everything would be the experience modteams would all get if communities were made here - so they weren’t, with completely valid concerns.
And now what’s happening? More incredibly shortsighted decision making. This topic is going to come up every single time lemmyworld is ever mentioned now. It is going to haunt the site. And on top of that the site already struggles with clear wreckers trying to harm it, coming from fascists or from some other instance that wants to see it fail or maybe reddit, who the fuck knows. And now it’s taken the risk of adding thousands of extremely pissed off and sleighted leftists to that, completely unnecessarily, because you know damn well they absolutely wanted to play nicely. Are these the actions of an instance carefully thinking about its health(avoiding drama that inspires unstoppable wrecker behaviour that constantly cripples the site) and maximising its growth(networking with and promoting the transition of users from elsewhere) while promoting a positive environment(making people nice to each other instead of hostile)? Fuck no they’re not.
You seem to be leaving out the parts where you asked me to remove the current mods from the community. And where you said that the GCJ community “might not understand my actions” and become hostile basically.
So honestly I already stopped caring about whatever you had to say afterwards.
Nah mate pretty damn sure I told you I wasn’t sure what the position of the team would be until further discussion… A further discussion that didn’t happen because ignoring that response sealed everything.
At this point communications have clearly broken down to the point we will nitpick forever though.
I told you I would contact the moderator of the community if you let me know what you would be willing to give. I asked you if you were willing to work with the current team and you said “that depends on the vibe”. So you were asking the community to be forcibly handed over to you while giving me NOTHING to work with. And instead of having a discussion with “the team” to find out what their position was you relied on me to do your bidding.
The moderators of [email protected] weren’t even using any of the artwork or branding you were talking about. I went over to the subreddit and both the banner and icon were completely different.
The amount of reddit mods that contact us and asking for some kind of special treatment is insane. This is not reddit 2.0, but good news: LW is not the whole fediverse. Why not make your gamingcirclejerk community on lemmygrad or hexbear?
Is that the best you’ve got? Systems that have been “gradually dismantled for decades” but still provide a higher quality of life for their citizens than not just the US but every single authoritarian government. Also the list is a lot bigger than two countries.
Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?
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Are you sure? And yet, even if it is, it’s still providing better quality of life for more citizens than anything that came before it.
You mean there’s a number of voters that would vote for non-socially democratic parties and that those parties would try to dismantle socialised institutions? Surprised Pikachu.
You are aware that there’s idiots voting for anti-social parties in even the most socially advanced countries too right, you’re not just disingenuously blaming the ineffectualities of the system on those that support it, right?
What does the CIA have to do with the anti-social masses in all the other countries around the world? Doesn’t take a psyop campaign to find authoritarian morons.
Yeah, like how their populace votes.
No shit. Just like a country that engages in good faith democratic representation and supports social services can also provide better healthcare and happiness index ratings than the US, Russia, and China.
What on earth are you on about? The USSR provided guaranteed housing and employment for all citizens. Cuba has a world-class universal health system despite more than half a century under economic sanctions. China will exceed the living standards of the Western working class within this generation. And the “welfare” states of the West, even before they were dismantled, were only possible under capitalism because of the enormous wealth that the West had accrued by economic imperialism.
How’s that USSR working out?
Yes, Cuba, a country that despite not having the ability to exploit ‘the global south’ still has better health and happiness than “exploitative” countries, refer to my last point from the rest of the conversation below that you chose to ignore, you’re agreeing with me.
China has just been through the harshest pandemic lock down of all countries and still failed to avoid economic suffering, are you really so ignorant to think their populace is happy? The same populace with 24% unemployment in the under 25 age bracket? The same populace under the boot of an authoritarian leader that disallows dissent?
Do you practice being this stupid or does it come naturally?
Can you name a single Western government with a higher approval rating than the CPC?
So it’s both. Avail yourself of your ignorance.