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.

  • shufflerofrocks@lemmy.world
    2710·
    1 year ago

    I’m genuinely asking - is this a joke comment? This is the literally the same thing Musk and Spez made for Twitter and Reddit.

    People invested time into their communities here, many joining here after seeing the loads of discussions and admin posts stating their intention to defederate as little as possible. Supporting the use of defederation for creating echo chambers is silly af, I don’t wanna deal with toxic fellas but I also don’t want defederation without any legitimate basis.

    People are allowed to give their opinions on discussions here, the server admins aren’t supposed to be overlords like the big social media and their CEOs - that’s the reason we all moved here.

    • histy@lemmy.world
      73·
      1 year ago

      I don’t know which comment you are replying to because lemmy won’t show me the context. But from your comment I see some problems.

      You talk about the echo chamber, I don’t see how federating with them is going to solve anything, most people don’t discuss on the internet in good faith and much less are interested in changing their opinion, and from the rhetoric I saw in their statement, and in posts on the instance, no one there will change their minds either. I only see chaos and a loss of new users who will come here to see this type of speech and leave. Another important point, why is lemmyworld suddenly an echo chamber and hexbear is not?

      The main problem is that from what you say it sounds like this is going to change something socially, that people are going to see this or other rhetoric and suddenly become interested in politics, or religion or go out on the streets to overthrow an oppressive government, I don’t need to say that this will not happen. Most people are here either to see memes or to be part of specific communities dedicated to some hobby or maybe the profession they have.

      Finally “the server admins aren’t supposed to be overlords like the big social media and their CEOs” the problem with your statement is that, lemmyworld is not the only instance that exists, the content of other instances is not controlled by any admin of this one, you are free to find an instance that aligns with your ideas. The creation, maintenance, administration, costs and headache are not paid by me I am just a guest here, I do not pay anything even with my information since it has no trackers. This is an opensource project where other people are working for free for my entertainment, I will not demand that something change for me, if at any point I find that this one doesn’t serve me anymore I’ll look for another server, the same way I did with reddit, and with all that being said I believe they have the right to do whatever they want with their server.

    • ANGRY_MAPLE@sh.itjust.works
      33·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think Lemmyworld has a CEO lol.

      What profit are they making from people aside from voluntary donations that get used to keep the server running? How is Lemmyworld a company to you, and not an instance run by an individual?

      The person running the instance could hypothetically just kick everyone off tomorrow, and there would be feck all anyone could do about it.