Context
As you probably now, Hexbear is a fairly large leftist instance, whose users are notorious for being very loud in the communities of every instance they federate with. For a long time they blocked all instances, preferring to remain isolated. Recently, however, they have started allowing some large instances into their allow list.
Yesterday they expanded said list by including the popular sh.itjust.works (SJW) instance.
Some Hexbear users immediately jumped on the train by creating posts in [email protected] making sure everyone was aware of their presence and calling out what they thought was bigotry on SJW’s side:
- Example 1
- Example 2, the post included in the meme, now removed
Currently, there’s people on both sides calling for mutual defederation, as one Hexbear sees the other party as “bigoted” and “politically illiterate infants” while many people on SJW are just tired of the political spam.
Where do we stand in this mess? Comfortably on the sidelines, enjoying the popcorn while it lasts.
Same. I’ve seen very little from them, but a lot of complaints about it. I’ve seen a bit of a tussle in the comment sections on posts that explicitly call them out. Usually it’s just one of them though. Honestly, it feels like very few individuals are causing an issue and blocking the users is probably more fediverse friendly, but I still leave it up to the instance admins. Instances can defederate with them if they have a problem. They’ll still see other stuff but those instances won’t see them or their comments.
It’s pretty rare from my experience to just see one of them in a post. They seem to always post together as a group and spamming pictures to the point it’s hard to read the thread. You’re either lucky, always active at times these people are not, or your instance has already defederated from them.
I’ve only seen their comments in the past few days and I have seen their posts, though not recently. So it’s entirely plausible. But again, I defer to those who have more data. I’m entirely on board if instance admins determine it’s a big enough problem. I just want to make sure it’s at least considered whether it’s a user problem or instance problem is all.