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.

  • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
    1313·
    11 months ago

    That’s cause that’s not the problem.

    A variety of opinions is great, an army of zealots coming in to shit up the place but assuredly not tolerating the same behaviour towards them? Nope.

    This is simply an attitude issue, not a political issue, and we wouldn’t even be discussing this if the instance were far right instead of far left, despite stalinists and fascists being functionally identical.

    • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemmy.world
      181·
      11 months ago

      Look at my comment thread. I have a guy calling me a woke tankie for a simple disagreement. The shit slinging is already present in and among lemmy.world users. Having (potentially) more shit slinging is not going to change much. I’ve browsed hexbear a handful of times and was looking forward to their federation. By and large, conversation on there is pleasant to neutral. It’s a bit cringe at times and occasionally hostile to non-leftists. You see the same from the right and centrists as well. That’s just how online political discourse goes. If anything, I’d say the online right is a lot more hostile, bigoted and prone to harassment than the left. But I could be biased.

      The way I see it, the admins are basically saying that political arguments are fine among our users and those from other instances, just not hexbear and lemmygrad. Which is pretty silly and a tad dramatic

        • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemmy.world
          2·
          11 months ago

          Fair enough! For what it’s worth I think the admins statement was self righteous and pretty fucking stupid as well. But it is what it is, communities are more than their admins and I think they’d make a good addition to Lemmy. And at the end of the day, there’s nothing stopping me from making a hexbear account or one on an instance that federates with them