Hey folks

I have been receiving a lot of messages every single day about federation with hexbear. Some of our users are vehemently against it, others are in full support. The conversation does not seem to be dying down, rather, the volume of messages I receive about it seems to be increasing, so I am opening this public space where we can openly discuss the topic.

I am going to write a wall of text about my own thoughts on the situation, I’m sorry, but no tl;dr this time, and I ask anybody participating in this thread to first read through this post before commenting.

Before I go any further, I want to be clear that for anybody who participates here, it is required to focus on the quality of your posts. That means:

  • Be kind to each other, even if you disagree
  • Use arguments rather than calling people names
  • Realize that this is a divisive topic, so your comments should be even more thoughtful than usual

With that out of the way, there are a few things I want to cover.

On defederation in general

First of all, I am a firm believer that defederation must be reserved only for cases where all other methods have failed. If defederation is used liberally, then a small group of malicious users can effectively completely shut down the federated network, by simply creating the type of drama between instances which would inevitably result in defederation. In my view, federation is the biggest strength of Lemmy compared to any centralized discussion forum, so naturally I think maintaining federation by default is an important goal in general.

I am also a believer in the value of deplatforming hateful content, but I think defederation is not the best way to do this. Banning individual users, banning communities and establishing a culture of mutual support between mods and admins of different instances should be the first line of defense against such content. There are some further steps that can be taken before defederation as well, but these are not really documented anywhere (in order to prevent circumvention). The point is: for myself, defederation is the absolute last resort, only to be used when it is completely clear that other methods are ineffective.

Finally, I am wary of creating a false expectation among lemm.ee users that lemm.ee admins endorse all users and communities and content on instances we are federated with. Here at lemm.ee, we use a blocklist for federation, which means our default apporach is to federate with all new instances. We do not have the resources (manpower, skills and knowledge) necessary to pass judgement on all instances which exist out there, as a result, users on lemm.ee are expected to curate their own content to quite a high degree. In addition to downvoting and/or reporting as necessary, individual lemm.ee users are also able to block specific users and communities, and the ability to block entire instances is coming very soon as well.

Having said all that, in a situation where all other methods do indeed fail, defederation is not out of the question. Making such a call is up to the discretion of lemm.ee admins, and doing it as a last resort is completely in line with our federation policy.

Regarding hexbear

Hexbear is an established Lemmy instance, focused on many flavors of leftism. They have quite a large userbase who are very active on Lemmy (often so active that they leave the impression brigading all popular Lemmy posts). One important thing to note is that while some forms of bigotry seem to be quite accepted by many hexbear users (but seemingly not by mods - more on that below), they at least are very protective of LGBT rights (and yes, I am quite certain that they are not just pretending to do this, as many users seem to believe). Additionally, while I have noticed quite high quality posts from hexbear users, there are also several users there who seem to really enjoy trolling and baiting (very reminiscent of 4chan-type “for the lulz” posting), and it’s important to note that this kind of posting is in general allowed on hexbear itself.

The reason this whole topic is important to so many people right now (despite hexbear being a relatively old instance), is that hexbear only recently enabled federation. A combination of their volume of posts, their strong convictions, the excitement about federation, and the aforementioned trolling has made them very visible to almost all Lemmy users, and this has sparked discussions about the value of federation with hexbear on a lot of Lemmy instances.

My own experience with hexbear

I want to write down my own experience with interacting with hexbear users, mods, and admins over the past few days. I believe this experience will highlight why I am hesitant to advocate for immediate full defederation from hexbear at this point in time, and am for now still more in favor of taking action on a more individual user basis. Please read and see how you feel about the situation afterwards.

Background

My first real contact with hexbear users was in the comments section of a post in this meta community requesting defederation from hexbear by @[email protected]. That post is now locked, because several hexbear users very quickly started doing the aforementioned “for the lulz” type spamming of meme images in the comments (these are actually just emojis, but they are rendered as full-size images on all instances other than the source instance, due to a current Lemmy bug).

I did not want to take further actions in that thread in general (for archival purposes), but I did take one action, which in retrospect was a mistake: I removed a comment which contained the hammer and sickle symbol. I ignorantly associated this symbolism with Kremlin propaganda, and the atrocities my own people suffered at the hands of the soviet union during the previous century. Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all. I am grateful for users who pointed this out to me without resorting to personal attacks.

Let me be clear here: while I do not have anything against leftism or communist ideas in general (in fact in today’s world, I think discussion of such ideas is quite necessary), Kremlin propaganda has no place on lemm.ee. Any dehumanizing talking points of the Kremlin on lemm.ee are treated as any other bigotry, and if communist symbolism is used in context of Kremlin propaganda (that is the context in which I have been exposed to it throughout my whole life), then it will still be removed. But there is no blanket ban on communist symbolism in general on lemm.ee, and discussing and advocating for leftist and communist topics (as distinct from the imperialist and dehumanizing policies of the Kremlin) is certainly allowed on lemm.ee.

Hexbear user response

Coming back to the events of the past few days: soon after my removal of the comment containing the symbol from the meta thread, two posts popped up on hexbear. One was focused on insulting and spreading lies about me personally. Another was focused on diminishing the horrors of the soviet occupation in my country. In the comments under both of these posts (and in a few other threads on hexbear), I noticed some seriously disturbing bigotry against my people. There were comments which reflected the anti-Estonian propaganda of the current Russian state, things like:

  • Suggesting that my people has no right to exist
  • Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman
  • Claiming that anybody critical of both nazi and soviet occupations is themselves a nazi and a holocaust denier

I expect to hear such statements from the Russian state - here in Estonia, we are subjected to this and other kinds of bigotry constantly from Russian media - but to see it spread openly in non-Russian channels is extremely disturbing. Such bigotry is completely against lemm.ee rules in general. Additionally, my identity is public information, because I feel it’s important for the integrity of lemm.ee that I don’t hide behind anonymity. Considering this, I’m sure you can understand why I am very worried about my own safety when people leave comments in many unrelated threads (where my original posts are not even visible), baselessly calling me a nazi and a holocaust denier.

Note that the goal of this post is not to start a new debate in the comments about the the repressions of the soviet union in Estonia or other occupied territories, but if the topic interests any users, I can recommend the 2006 documentary The Singing Revolution (imdb). The trailer is a bit cheesy, but the actual film contains lots of historical footage from the soviet occupation, and also many interviews with people who experienced it, who share stories which are deeply familiar to all Estonians. If anybody is interested in further discussion, then I suggest making a post about it in the Estonian community here: [email protected].

Hexbear admin response

After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response:

  1. They immediately removed the personal attacks and dehumanizing comments containing Kremlin propaganda from Hexbear, and assured me that such content is always handled by mods
  2. They told me that while there are all kinds of leftists on hexbear, Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods
  3. They implemented some additional rules on hexbear to try and reduce the trolling experienced by many other instances, including ours: https://hexbear.net/post/352119
My personal take-aways

Let me play the devil’s advocate here and employ some “self-whataboutism”: among all users that have been banned on lemm.ee for bigotry, the majority were actually not users from other instances, and in fact people with lemm.ee accounts. If we judge any larger instance only by bigoted posts that some of its users make, then we might as well declare all instances as cesspools and close down Lemmy completely. I believe it’s far more useful to judge instances based on moderation in response to such content. Just as we remove bigoted content from lemm.ee, I have also witnessed bigoted content being removed from hexbear.

At the same time, I am aware of some internal conflict between hexbear users over the more strict moderation they are now starting to employ, and I am definitely keeping an eye on that situation and how admins handle it.

I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don’t have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content.

Where thing stand right now

I am not convinced that we are currently at a point where the “last resort” of defederation is necessary. This is based on the presumption that our moderation workload at lemm.ee will not get out of hand just due to users from that particular instance. My current expectation is that as the excitement of federation calms down (and as new rules on hexbear go into effect), the currently relatively high volume of low effort trolling will be replaced by more thoughtful posts. If this is not the case then we will certainly need to re-evaluate things.

Additionally, nothing is changing about our own rules regarding bigotry. Especially relevant in the context of Kremlin propaganda, I want to say that dehumanizing anybody is not allowed on lemm.ee (hopefully I do not have to spell it out, but this of course includes Ukrainians, LGBT folks, and others that the Kremlin despises), and action will be taken against any users who do this, regardless of what instance they are posting from.

Finally, I am very interested to hear thoughts and responses from our own users. I am super grateful to anybody who actually took the time to read through this massive dump of my own thoughts, and I am very interested to get a proper understanding of how our users feel about what I’ve written here. Please share any thoughts in the comments.

  • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    I’ve mostly seen anti war takes from them

    They’re highly critical of Ukraine and keep blaming them for the bloodshed. They’ll say Ukraine needs to surrender to stop needless deaths, but either they’re completely naïve and think Russia would instantly stop fighting forever, or they’re quite happy for Ukraine and it’s culture to cease to exist. They’ll never directly come out and say they support Russia, but their criticisms against either countries are one sided against Ukraine, and it’s extremely rare they’ll say anything about Russia.

    IMO is much better than all the pro war news and views in the lib instances

    I’ve not seen any “pro war news”. I see news on the war, but I doubt there’s many people who want the war. People just want Russia to leave Ukraine more than anything.

    Most leftists are anti Russia since its a capitilaist, imerialist, oligarchal shit hole, but they also are anti US and NATO for similar reasons.

    As I mentioned above, it’s not balanced at all. You don’t see the same (if any at all) anger towards Russia as you do the US, Ukraine etc.

    50% of their mod team is trans and they are one of the few instances with pronouns built in to it. They have a good argument that of the biggest instances they are the most trans friendly. Can’t speak for smaller instances or individual communities though.

    It’s great that trans users have a space they feel at home and safe with. But it’s sad that they have to do that in the first place. Ideally they should be welcome on any instance and treated fairly just as anyone else but sadly that’s not reality. As much as Hexbear is brought up about defederating, toxic anti-trans, or any toxic discriminatory users should be put on a public ban list so people can choose to ban them.

    I’m not really for them to be defederated though, but I think it’s important to at least discuss it like OP has here, as it brings up behaviours that get brought to attention to their mods and highlights that many people feel that their behaviour can be seen as damaging to the wider Lemmy community.

    • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      Both sides in a war are responsible for bloodshed, but if there is a dominant view on Hexbear it’s that the biggest responsibility for the conflict lies with the US who created the modern Russian state, strung it along, then encircled it and escalated against all advice, backed the 2014 coup and the far right militias that carried out an 8 year civil war, continue fuelling the war for profit, and have sabotaged any attempt at peace talks. There are plenty of posts and even an official statement making this clear.

      • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        Well yeah, unfortunately when you’re in a war then bloodshed is unavoidable. But it’s not like they invited Russia to invade.

        dominant view on Hexbear it’s that the biggest responsibility for the conflict lies with the US who created the modern Russian state, strung it along, then encircled it and escalated against all advice

        I think their ideology is blinding them into creating such a narrative. Not saying the US doesn’t meddle in other countries but this is really far fetched and just assumes that Russia is blameless and just happens to doing exactly as what the US wants. I don’t think it’s that unrealistic that this is purely Putin on an imperialist conquest attempting to cement himself in history as a great Russian leader. Not everything is about the US. Sometimes other countries have their own agendas.

        then encircled it

        Not 100% sure what this means but I’m guessing it’s in regards to NATO? I don’t think the ex-soviet states needed any US meddling to convince them to join.

        • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          But it’s not like they invited Russia to invade.

          That’s not the the case in any war and I’ve given a (admittedly very simple, broad strokes) overview of some of the material conditions that led to the war, even just in Ukraine - particularly the predominantly Russian speaking separatist regions wanting security guarantees after 8 years of being shelled by the Ukrainian coup government and terror attacks by neo-nazi militias that they state either couldn’t or wouldn’t reign in.

          I think their ideology is blinding them into creating such a narrative. Not saying the US doesn’t meddle in other countries but this is really far fetched and just assumes that Russia is blameless

          Hexbear doesn’t have a single ideology. It’s a left unity instance that had a broad range of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist ideologies.

          Nothing I’ve stated is far fetched, but all documented fact that a cursory reading of post-soviet history would support but if you like and are interested I can provide you some sources and reading?

          No one on Hexbear thinks Russia is blameless. Views on Hexbear range from ‘this war is a travesty’ to ‘this war is a tragedy that could have been avoided by taking dozens of different decisions over the last two decades’. Again, I can give you some further examples and reading if you’re interested. But you claimed Hexbear users blamed Ukraine for the war and I said that “if there is a dominant view on Hexbear it’s that the biggest responsibility for the conflict lies with the US” for contributing most to the material conditions that eventually made a conflict like this sadly inevitable. But that doesn’t get Russia off the hook for also being a capitalist state also waging war and no one has stated that other countries don’t have their own agendas.

          Not 100% sure what this means but I’m guessing it’s in regards to NATO.

          Yes, NATO encirclement is part of it and was warned about by everyone from hawks like Henry Kissinger to former heads of NATO to Joe Biden himself before they went and did it anyway, but there’s also other aspects like the stationing of nuclear weapons, construction of new military bases, as well as coups, proxy wars, and funding destabilising groups on Russia’s borders.

    • spiderplant@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The narrative is never as black and white as either US or Russian sources would have you believe.

      The Ukraine is publicly against any peace talks and the US arms industry is making bank off the war so the US puts very little pressure on the Ukraine to sue for peace.

      Russia claims that the US blocked early peace talks. Not sure if Russia would have gone to them in good faith but I guess we’ll never know.

      Any articles dehumanising Russians such as calling them orcs(this was everywhere) helps justify the continuation of the war. Any articles not calling for an immediate end to the war on humanitarian grounds should be considered propaganda for either side.

      I’d argue MSM is not balanced either in the opposite direction and shits on Russia enough that bexbears don’t need to join in. Countering the current narrative on anti war grounds or being anti US/NATO can be easily misunderstood as being pro Russia.

      Obviously I’m not saying pro Russia accounts don’t exist on hexbear but I don’t think its as big a thing as you think.

      On the trans thing, yeah it would be nice if they could exist everywhere without issues but I’ve seen plenty of transphobia coming from different instances including our own. Having a mod team that understands their struggle and protects them is worth a lot.

    • s0ykaf [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      As I mentioned above, it’s not balanced at all. You don’t see the same (if any at all) anger towards Russia as you do the US, Ukraine etc.

      of course you don’t see it

      in my country alone america has 1) supported a military coup in the 60s, 2) fucked us over their loans in the 70s, causing hyperinflation that lasted into the 90s, 3) fucked us over through the IMF from the 90s to early 00s and 4) supported (as we now know) a soft coup in 2016 that ended up resulting in lula’s arrest and bolsonaro winning the election

      meanwhile russia has… existed in eurasia and helped us create BRICS??

      why would i hate russia more than america and its satellite states? even if putin is an asshole, an anticommunist piece of shit who was part of the group that destroyed the USSR, he just hasn’t done to us what american presidents have.

      and hexbear users in general, since they really are leftists (as in, anticapitalists of various flavors) are very much aware of what america and their puppets do to us in the 3rd world, while russia doesn’t really screw us over much at all and in fact tends to play an opposite geopolitical role. so why is it so surprising that the animosity towards the US is way more noticeable?

    • AreaSIX @lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      First you say “they’ll never directly come out and say they support Russia, but their criticisms against either countries are one sided against Ukraine, and it’s extremely rare they’ll say anything about Russia”

      But then you also write: “I’ve not seen any “pro war news”. I see news on the war, but I doubt there’s many people who want the war.”

      In this not pro-war news, but “news on the war” that you see, is their criticisms towards Russia maybe one-sided? Would it be fair to say that they’ll extremely rarely portray the US and Nato negatively in this war? Why is it that you do not view one-sided reporting from your side of the fence as being pro-war, characterizing it as just “news on the war” as if it’s just naturally reporting the facts? Do you not see how that’s hypocritical?