Might be a bad idea for me to go into this while having ptsd issues, especially when I'm probably about to do a long ass sleep, but yolo.
Basic synopsis on my feelings here:
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tl;dr: I used to believe we should be federated, but after 3ish years of interacting with lemmygrad on various accounts, I have noticed that lemmygrad is not a place that is safe for transgender people at large. The reason for this is principally their debatelord culture and refusing to comprehend that debating a point against a minority's lived experience, then demanding civility when that minority gets angry, is the same shit liberals do.
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I noticed instances of reactionary content, such as here and/or comments are not removed or users banned. Lemmygrad seems to prefer to debate reactionaries, and obviously subjecting minority groups to reactionary content for personal fun is callous at best, and reactionary at worst. Its important to make it so that there are designated areas for dunking on reactionary content, as well as nsfw and content tags to avoid it. Otherwise, reactionary comments should be removed and visible in a mod log.
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I discussed in this post why it is important to remove downvotes to protect trans people. After I noticed people were creating evasive comments to debate me, I pretty much told them to fuck off. This resulted in a ban from their admins and they continued to defend their policy. This reminds me a lot of the struggle sessions we used to have about adding pronouns to the site or removing downvotes. People would be evasive in this same way to give the benefit of the doubt then demand civility when people get angry. Those people are not allies and should be purged.
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The admins seem to have a principle misunderstanding of why minorities don't want to see any form of harassment or discrimination directed at them and how that is perpetuated across social media sites. They seem to legitimately believe that keeping downvotes means that they will be able to stave off reactionary content or is somehow a valuable tool in responding to reactionary content, when in reality they should be removing and banning reactionary content.
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Certain users were very keen on civility bullshit, particularly @simply_surprise@lemmygrad.ml, @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml (an admin), @davel@lemmygrad.ml. This is honestly the most disgusting behavior I've seen on lemmygrad, and the fact that the admins doubled down on it is fucked.
I can see staying federated to a bunch of very small instances, especially queer focused and hobby instances, but I'm pretty soured on the fediverse at this point.
I'm extremely disappointed in what I've seen of the lemmygrad mod team. Why are they making me into a splitter over such a basic issue of avoiding the harassment of trans people at a systemic level, bastards 
I am willing to retract this if the admins of lemmygrad self crit and apologize for temp bans or otherwise of my accounts on civility reasons and make it clear that debating the lived experience of anyone of a minority group is unacceptable going forward. There are positive and proactive ways of discussing someone's lived experience without going into debate territory and trying to find a technicality in lived experiences to support an opinion you already hold. I maintain that removing downvotes is a boon to trans users, if you can come up with something better than that and implement it, I am all ears.
We need to get to solving the root cause of the problems.
First, OP is correct and we should defederate. The excuses given by the mods over there simply don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Second, even defederation doesn’t solve the problem. The core issue beneath this entire debacle is how do we moderate reactionary contents especially those that are hurtful to minorities on our sites.
Over there, someone proposed removing the downvote button because they suspected users from fash instances were mass downvoting their contents.
Over here, we have long eliminated the downvote button, but this is merely kicking the can down the road: just the other day, someone complained about why anti-semitic comments were allowed to stay up (i.e. not deleted, nobody reported to the mod team) and why were there users upvoting those comments?
Worse, it unnecessarily burdens the mod team and especially during high traffic period, with thousands of comments per day during the Israel-Gaza conflict, it is inevitable that some comments will be missed.
The real solution to the core issue (as I have also pointed out to them at the Lemmygrad thread), is to enable the feature that displays the users who did the upvotes and the downvotes. This solves both issues at once: who downvoted trans/LGBT content? Who upvoted anti-semitic comments? Everything is on full display and transparent, and everyone is fully accountable for their voting records. If you’re too ashamed to have your opinions on record, good, maybe you should think twice about why you’re feeling ashamed about pressing that up/downvote button in the first place.
It also shifts the burden of moderation away from the mod team to the community itself. We know this feature exists because the admin has banned someone before based on their mass downvote history of trans posts before. What needs to be done is to democratize this tool so the community has access to it as well.
Personally, I also like to see who upvote my comments (I will call you my comrades!) and who downvote them (look, a lib/chud) and I’m sure other users will benefit from it as well.
I just want you to stop and consider the absolutely wild amount of drama that public upvotes and downvotes would enable. Holy shit it would be actually be amazing and we should do it
I for one, welcome this incredible April Fool's day prank
How so? If we can instantly tell who are the reactionaries that downvote trans contents, or that users from fash instances are the ones that upvote anti-semitic comments, that would absolutely solve the problem of moderating reactionary content on this site.
We literally have a 200+ comment struggle session just the other day about why there are people anti-semitic comments are allowed to stay up and even have people upvoting them. A public record of up/downvotes instantly solves that problem.
And once again, I will say this: if you are too ashamed to have your up/downvotes be known as a matter of public record, then you should think twice about why you feel so uncomfortable showing your support/opposition of certain opinions publicly in the first place.
Remember our goals here are to make Hexbear a safe space for minorities who cannot find the same welcoming vibe elsewhere on the internet.
I'm not at all ashamed. I'll stand by anything I've upvoted. But it opens up a lot of oh this person downvotes/failed to upvote me complaining. Just a reminder people beef with each other all the time around here.
Also the admins can already see our voting record. It's not like it's secret. if we need to root out fash with them we can.
Just to clarify, I wasn’t talking about “you” in particular, but in general about some people who are too afraid to let people know about what sort of contents they up/downvoted. I apologize if I didn’t make that clear in my comment.
My problem is that the current arrangement unnecessarily burdens the mods. As I have mentioned in my previous comment, just the other day we had a struggle session with some people complaining about anti-semitic comments. It simply reflects that the deluge of comments in light of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had exceeded the capacity of the mods to perform their duty, and the result is that some reactionary contents escaped moderation. Again, as I have said, removing downvotes simply kicks the can down the road. It is undoubtedly a better way to run the site but it doesn’t get to the root of the problem. Democratizing the moderation process to involve the community is the only way we can truly purge reactionary sentiment on this site.
No worries comrade
excuse me if I interject please?
spoiler
I feel the removal of downvotes allows users to quickly discern who are the reactionaries. If you disagree, you have to do it with your name attached (public record), and you risk being reported. I feel it may actually assist moderation, but I have no Idea.
The issue is the downvotes are still a thing, people can still feel harassed by that. I can get behind public upvotes, though.
Likes are public on twitter and facebook. Hasn't helped them at all.
Twitter and Facebook aren’t built to be a discussion board where people discuss matters like we do here. Hexbear and Lemmy in general are more like reddit where the upvotes/downvotes reflect the consensus.