Has anyone else noticed how prevalent Hexbear posters have suddenly become? Maybe sometime last week I noticed nearly every political post had at least one long thread of Hexbear users that do nothing but repeat CCP talking points while waving anyway anything even remotely reliable as Western propaganda. That or getting all excited about trolled libs. The way they tell it, you’d think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
Not to mention, their info on the Fediverse observer is either straight up wrong or there’s some serious botting going on. According to that, the instance is less than a month old, yet somehow they already have one of the largest, most active userbases, along with far and away the most comments of any instance.
Seems to me like Lemmygrad on steroids. Considering we defederated from them, seems like a no-brainer to block Hexbear as well.
So glad this thread could become such a perfect microcosm of why we need to defederate.
Their stated goal is to disrupt conversation to deny “shit libs” a platform. Users who do this should be banned as trolls if they continue, IMO. Unfortunately they seem to get special protection on lemmy.ml, perhaps unsurprisingly.
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Mention them even once and all of them show up spouting memes and essays and shit :-\ Some of their words sound great and even like that’s a place for me but somehow none of their attitudes do. Maybe at least they’ll help tilt the place a bit more toward actually-left (always good, as far as I’m concerned) if they truly are leftish but also hopefully they aren’t going to make every thread a mess of them all showing up and loudly sniffing each other’s emissions.
You may want to look through this comment section again
Oh hell, this is gross. I half-resent you bringing me to look at this.
Am just gonna go ahead and hope I’ve successfully blocked this pile of meme-trash.
Edit: So, blocking hexbear.net blocks all comments under this post, somehow?? Ugh.
After the 4th “HuR LiBs MaD” post from them I just filtered the whole instance.
How does one do this? I can block users & communities, but not instances.
The Connect app has a block instance option, but not sure if it actually applies it to your account or just hides them from your feed in the app.
I use Sync and it has the option to filter the entire instance.
Meh… I don’t think defederation is necessary. Personally, my biggest issue with Hexbear is, as with most other socialist-oriented online spaces, is that it’s hard to find discussion that isn’t focused on it, and especially international socialism since my main focus is my community (hence why I chose this instance). It’s not really my thing, I hate terms like “shitlib” and “tankie” and my big interests are outside of my worldview- that’s not to say I don’t care about it, far from it, but it’s not something I talk/think about all the time.
That being said, it can be refreshing once in a while to have an explicitly anti-capitalist instance whose discussions don’t puppet ones pushed by massive, capitalist news organizations. Not only is it another perspective but there’s sometimes totally new stuff that I end up learning.
Idk. I think the biggest reason we shouldn’t defederate as opposed to, say, lemmygrad, is because Hexbear explicitly supports left unity as far as I can tell, so I think it’s fine to keep federating.
I appreciate the activity, personally, though everything being political gets very tiring for me. The fediverse should be diverse and I believe things will get better with time. It would be premature to defederate. It’s ok to have world views challenged, especially when the discourse is constructive and coming from a desire to reach and foster understanding. I’m hopeful we’ll see that come true over time.
I just noticed them today when a post from their community reached my front page. They called my server, lemm.ee, which is just a neutral general Lemmy instance, a racist neo lib instance and should be defederated. No idea what’s up with them but I did notice them show up out of nowhere.
edit: oh this thread definitely convinces me they’re a toxic as hell lemmygrad 2.0. Luckily there’s a Lemmy PR that allows instance blocking. It’s just being tested right now and then will be merged.
Honestly, federation with Hexbear has improved my Lemmy experience 1000%. I think it would be silly to defederate because a vocal minority of libs don’t like their worldview to be challenged. You can individually block the instance if you don’t appreciate the vibe.
As far as I can tell they embrace leftist unity which is something we could all use more of.
Were you a redditor? If so, you might remember r/chapotraphouse getting banned - they had been quarantined for quite a while before that, so they were ready to migrate when the ban came down. Idk if Hexbear is the first/only place they went or just where most ended up, but it’s definitely the same vibe as the subreddit, with a little bit of discord thrown in with the emotes.
I will admit to being not the most observant person - especially as I’m in the process of switching medical providers right now, so I’m between ADHD prescriptions and definitely not as with it as I could be! - but when I poked my head in over there, I saw fellow anarchists posting, so I had consequently dismissed people saying they were churning out “CCP talking points.” It mostly seems to me they churn out bullying - for everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders (which I mostly approve of, or at least find amusing). And Pig Poop Balls, of course. What did I miss?
It smells crazy in here
Gullible, unstable people and bots
Well, when they announced they were intending to federate, the entire comment section of the post about it was people planning to disrupt other instances. That’s their goal entirely.
It certainly highlight the need for lemmy to implement a way for users to ban instances instead of relying on instance admins to thread the needle between being too strict or too lax with defederation option.
Haters gonna hate. Hateful people congregate wherever they’re tolerated and blast their hate as hard as they can until they’re kicked out.
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Where does MLK fit in there? He may not have literally used lib as a slur, but he wasn’t shy about seeing them as an impediment to progress.
“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
“I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
