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  • So I was just looking through literature.cafe a bit, and came across this excellent comment chain by Janvier. It outlines the history and culture of Hexbear, and makes a very solid argument for defederating them.

    TL;DR- Don't defederate Hexbear because they're a bunch of genocide-apologist authoritarians. Defederate them because they're annoying, and will burn out your moderators.

    • Personally I think it’s an extremely toxic community that represents the worst of the internet. They’re extremely set in their ways and provide no meaningful content or discussions on the platform. That’s totally fine for them but they can do whatever they want in their own safe space.

      I would prefer them to be defederated mostly because I can’t block an entire instance.

    • I commented on here already about our instances interaction with hexbear. It's a disaster that led to somehow them defedarating from Blahaj for being not safe for their LGBT members even tho Blahaj is like one of the most accepting instance for LGBT people. Many of us were trying to ask our admin to defederate from them because those on our instance felt unsafe. Felt like a "no u" moment they tried to pull before we defederated them for not being safe for our members lol.

      Then Blahaj started getting spammed by a new user who was calling a bunch of trans users anti trans. They also said our admins was anti trans even though she was openly trans. Then that user began spamming across lemmy how Blahaj and it's admin were anti-trans and should not be visited.

      Also saw that user get a Blahaj user banned from lemmy.world even though nobody in that discussion was commenting on an lemmy.world community. It has a lot of shit so everything below is just that story.

      What happened was another trans Blahaj user commented on a post on some 3rd instance and the OP of that post basically said "I know your reputation from elsewhere and your comment here proves your anti-trans reputation". The Blahaj user went wtf and then realized the OP was one of those commenting on the original trolls post and was basically saying the Blahaj user was anti trans. The Blahaj user was rightfully pissed and accused the OP of being an alt of that troll since they wrote in the same style as the original troll (I honestly was feeling the same as I read it all). The OP wouldn't reply and just stuff like " I refuse to reply to you" or "please don't talk to me" or "I respectfully ask you to not engage with me". It all felt trollish since that OP was the only who started the argument and now refused to engage after starting.

      After the 3rd attempt at an reply , a lemmy.world admin came in saying that if the Blahaj user replied one more time to OP then they would be permanently banned from all of lemmy.world. Keep in mind this wasn't even on lemmy.world and the whole thing started because OP insulted a trans user by stating they were anti-trans. The Blahaj user was still pissed since she got insulted for saying she has the reputation of somebody who would hate everything she was and replied again. The original troll from way earlier came to the post & replied to her and tagged the lemmy.world admin saying they needed to be banned for being a chaser and replying after being told not to. Then the Blahaj user got banned.

      It still feels so fucked that a lemmy.world admin would step into that 3rd instance and threaten the Blahaj user with loss of access to the biggest lemmy instance if she didn't ignore being called an anti-trans. It really helped show me the short comings of lemmy since every instances admin will probably just take what a user from their instance state as fact and ignore the other person.

      Sorry for that long comment. It's just that I saw how hexbear will twist words in their favor like with claiming Blahaj isn't safe for their LGBT members and then strangely had new accounts show up calling trans Blahaj users as anti-trans and realized that it was just way too on the nose as where could these users have came from.

    • A bit misleading description of CTH on reddit, because they most certainly developed their obnoxious behaviour and jargon already back then, and they did very little to combat racism and fascism there precisely becuase their obnoxious behaviour was counter-productive to such goals (also there were other subreddits far more active and useful in combating fascism and bigotry on reddit such as r/againstallhatesubreddits, which did actual work on deplatforming fascists).

      But other than that it is an apt description of their behaviour here and why they pose such a problem for lemmy in general.

  • OK, first time I've seen the dread Hexbear brigading in action. So, thanks, I guess?

    Now I understand why they warrant defederation. I'm glad on on a Lemmy instance that defederated them, and suppose I'l have to find a kbin instance that does as well (apparently this one doesn't defederate them if I'm reading this correctly?)

    The irony is that, although I've been in the fediverse a while, today I literally made my first kbin account.

    • This post was created by someone from the sh.itjust.works instance.

      Do a CTRL+F search for Hexbear Accounts, if you can't find any, your instance is defederated from them

  • Calling this present thread a "struggle session" is dismissive at best if not downright insulting and I expect better from our mod team.

    • What's insulting about "struggle session"? I will concede that it was dismissive, because I was dismissing demands for immediate defederation, which contradicts our decision making process.

      • Ehhh... I'll try to assume the best here and just quote what Wikipedia has to say on struggle sessions.
        If you read that and still think that's an apt choice of words, then... idk? yikes?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

        Struggle sessions or denunciation rallies were violent public spectacles in Maoist China where people accused of being "class enemies" were publicly humiliated, accused, beaten and tortured by people with whom they were close. Usually conducted at the workplace, classrooms and auditoriums, "students were pitted against their teachers, friends and spouses were pressured to betray one another, [and] children were manipulated into exposing their parents". Staging, scripts and agitators were prearranged by the Maoists to incite crowd support. The aim was to instill a crusading spirit among the crowd to promote the Maoist thought reform. These rallies were most popular in the mass campaigns immediately before and after the establishment of the People's Republic of China and during the Cultural Revolution.

        Regardless of where one stands on this particular topic, I don't think this is a term we should ever want associated with anything, let alone our vote discussion threads?

        The discussion should be an integral part of the vote and decision making process and to me, dismissing it or shitting on in kinda stinks up the whole thing.
        Dismissal, and implying the discussion is a sham, coming from someone in a position of power... I mean yea, that's kind of insulting? — not to me, but to the ideals of this place and the agora.

        I can't really know your intent, and while I prefer to assume the best, it's not really a good look.

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