Hey hexbears just want to update everyone.
We took the weekend to properly consider and are removing: programming.dev , aussie.zone , and lemm.ee from our allow-list.
We will look at refederation with lemm.ee after local-only communities are developed. When that feature is available we would really like to consider changing every hexbear community to local-only except for chapotraphouse, askchapo, news, and the_dunk_tank. The final say on if a community is local only or not is 100% up to the mod team on that community.
The reason for this is that lemm.ee despite having twice our monthly active users has a 700k annual comment rate to hexbear's 1 million, in addition lemm.ee has very little active communities that do not exist on hexbear.
Resulting in lemm.ee benefit of federation being votes and views, with a secondary benefit of comments.
However, as expressed by users belonging to marginalized groups, comments from .ee users are often lib-shit and in some cases outright hostile. While many on hexbear love dunking on these lost libs the duty to protect marginalized users is much more important.
The end vote for programming.dev and aussie.zone was a tie, so we decided to break the tie in favor of defederation. The decision on lemm.ee was much harder as the average user did express desire to remain federated however the admin team decided that a temporary removal from our allow-list was the best option.
As an admin team we have never wanted to prioritize growth, and we wanted to give federation with liberal instances a try, however we consider providing a safer browsing experience for marginalized users more important than the opportunity to dunk.
While user side instance blocking and local sort are options, neither address the issue of federated instance users coming into posts in hexbear communities to make reactionary comments.
Thank you everyone who gave input and please provide any feedback, comments, concerns, etc in comments.
final vote count:
federation
all 32
aussie.zone 27
lemm.ee 41
programming.dev 27
lemmy.blahaj.zone 5
defederation
all 40
aussie.zone 19
lemm.ee 4
programming.dev 19
lemmy.blahaj.zone 43
There was an anti-ableist anti-bodyshaming push that seems to have been abandoned or stalled since federation. "lesser" ableist terms I mean. I love and respect them, but blame lemmygrad's slightly more abrasive culture mixing with our own. No, I can't point to any particular data beyond my own anecdote.
*note, i said "Push" indicating *movement *not saying that hexbear ever had a particular issue with either from the start aside from the occasional reactionary breakdown by a user. 1 month pre-fed if you called someone an ableist term you would have had your comment removed, even if it was directed at a chud.
This resulted in a higher signal/noise and a more chill atmosphere generally.
None of this is a totalizing statement and makes no assertions beyond the scope of site culture pre and post fed. See bio for more info.
Hmm, also nothing to back it up but vibes-wise you might be right, though I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out. I'd be 100% fine with a return to that level of moderation, I don't think we really benefit from people getting made fun of for their looks or anything. I don't have super strong feelings about it but it might be a good push to start back up. I think if anything the difference is probably coming from changes in reporting behavior, I don't think the mod team's changed a lot since federation