As you probably know, lemmy.world's admin recently put out a post addressing their decision to defederate from Hexbear before Hexbear had even federated to another instance. Their reasoning can be found here, and I wanted to break down and critique their reasoning.
Yesterday, we received information about the planned federation by Hexbear. The announcement thread can be found here: https://hexbear.net/post/280770. After reviewing the thread and the comments, it became evident that allowing Hexbear to federate would violate our rules.
None of lemmy.world's rules would be broken by Hexbear's federation, no rule states against ideological instances federating. If lemmy.world was a strictly non-political instance, this would make sense, but lemmy.world promises to "Provide a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all members; regardless of gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, political affiliation, or other similar characteristic. Human comes first."
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 first paragraph, in shitposty-leftist terms says: Keep the shitposting to Hexbear itself, when interacting with lemmy.world users, be polite and informed. The second paragraph is explaining that Hexbear is anti-NATO (not against lemmy.world's rules), anti-IMF (not against the rules), and anti-World Bank (not against the rules). It is a core part of leftist ideology to oppose these things, and calling it "concerning" is ridiculous. The final paragraph is again, explaining Hexbear's stance on the three imperialist organizations and calling for the dismantling of the organizations. This could be interpreted as concerning, but nowhere does it say "the violent takeover of the world" or "genocide" or whatever the people in the comments are saying about us ("Hexbear is a cesspool for genocidal lunatics").
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.” https://lemmy.world/comment/121850 https://lemmy.world/comment/1487168 https://lemmy.world/comment/1476084 https://lemmy.world/comment/171595 https://hexbear.net/comment/3648500 Overall community comments: https://hexbear.net/comment/3526128 https://hexbear.net/comment/3526086 https://hexbear.net/comment/3652828 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. https://lemmygrad.ml/post/158656 https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/882559 https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/540170 https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/446529
These are comments from people arguing on the internet. Nothing special. Go look at the comments.
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.
Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. We made the decision to preemptively defederate. Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. We made the decision to preemptively defederate. Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. We made the decision to preemptively defederate.
Defederation should only be considered as a LAST RESORT. We made the decision to PREEMPTIVELY DEFEDERATE.
Defederation should only be considered as a LAST RESORT. We made the decision to PREEMPTIVELY DEFEDERATE.
Defederation should only be considered as a last resort. We made the decision to PREEMPTIVELY DEFEDERATE.
WHAT IS IT THEN, LWADMIN? IS IT A LAST RESORT, OR A PREEMPTIVE STRIKE?
Ok, thats just my little rant, if I'm wrong, be sure to dox me and send me death threats and all'at.
Edit: Formatting issues
Look what they have to resort to when exposed to a fraction of our power.
What did you think would happen when leftists actually talk about wanting leftist outcomes?
Wow, just straight-up censorship of a site for being anti-USA? And then they'll complain about 'Authoritarian China' censoring people?
Lmao can't make this stuff up.
Preemptively disagree with any opinion you could share to protect their brainwashing from coming loose. Nice.
We didn't even touch those motherfuckers yet, we didn't even brush past them yet, we didn't even make eye contact with their punk asses yet!
Provide a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all members; regardless of gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, political affiliation, or other similar characteristic. Human comes first
That’s a stance that gets Nazis
From reading some of the thread there were apparently days of hand wringing and polls over defederating from an instance that had out and proud Nazis.
Yeah, they are fucked. If you aren’t overtly against fascism, you let them wiggle in. As a key part of their ideology is being hidden until they can say what they MEAN.
Human comes first
People that talk about the human tend to be down with dehumanizing ideology, or at least are cuddle buddies with enthusiasts for dehumanizing ideology. See "REMEMBER THE HUMAN" on
If theres no aliens around people need to keep the word human out their damn mouths, cause that shit is aways a skip away from some eugenics nonsense
is just a better human that wants all humans to become better humans! 
N“Some humans are better” LW“Uh okay?” N“So they can come first?” LW“What, sure, yeah - people who do murders are are worse” N“What about people who think certain ways?” LW“Maybe? Like Nazis” N“Anyhow - Jews are subhuman” LW“What! No!” N“DEBATE ME!”
Users ignore the Nazis, but they didn’t break the site rules fully so they can stay, and keep making it worse.
If you don’t say there is no room for fascists - and there is a way to post, they WILL show up.
"All men are brothers!" cries the new League of the Just, as they hold the door for the landlords, the fascists, the pedophiles, and all the other "siblings" they proudly claim common cause with.
lol they finally locked their announcement because they're getting dogpiled by their own users for being massive hypocrites. even the liberals over there are like "wtf i wanted to get mad at the commies here"
It’s just like the problem Twitter is having now. these fucking piggies lllooooovvee arguing online whether they want to admit it or not. And the fighting isn’t nearly as fun when you have an echo chamber of libs who are as ideologically hardened and clear as apple sauce.
they certainly have a lot of valuable discussion with white supremacists on the way, discussions they will find much common ground on.
Trust us bro, the hexbears are totally gonna brigade us bro, they're talking about doing posting warfare, they're digging the posting trenches, we gotta do a preemptive strike bro, they've crossed the posting rubicon, this is our last resort bro
This all reminds me of how r/chapotraphouse was constantly accused of brigading by other subreddits for the serious internet crime of, uh, having users that also post in other subreddits?
It was so funny how you could be arguing with a lib on r/politics or some shit when suddenly the lib brings up that you've previously posted in r/chapotraphouse and starts screaming to the mods about how you are, as just one guy having an argument, part of some kind of organized brigade
The hexbears are going to hold posting drills right on the lemmy.world border every year to lull lemmy.world libs into complacency before posting invading for real one year.
Why should we bother to reply to lemmy.world? They would reply to us and we would have to reply to their reply. There's no end to that. It would be quite enough for us to announce that lemmy.world is a traitor to the working class, and everyone will understand everything.
Congrats to all the users who were cited in their post. lmao. The comments over there are wild.
The comments & replies have way more back and fourth than most post here, all the more reason they shouldn't be de-federating
They at least should add "we are an explicitly pro-NATO, pro-IMF, pro World Bank, pro western, and pro capitalist instance". But liberals will never be honest.
tbh, i was joyed to hear that hexbear will be a part of the fediverse, but i also wasn't thrilled to hear they would federate with other instances (apart from my home instance) but tbh i like hexbear to stay pure, if that costs it to be wholly defederated from the rest of the crowd.
It was nice of them to demonstrate that they're unwilling to engage in good faith.
😦
spoiler
I'm not him and never could be, so I won't use the same emoji
The statement is such a joke it's not worth responding to seriously. There's no reasoning there to critique.
Challenging the status quo is like playing Minesweeper. To most people it's whatever, but occasionally you run into someone who will come down on you with full force, with no regard to fairness or their self-imposed rules - whatever that means in their position. Tbh we should just be glad it's low-stakes internet drama and not something more serious.
. . . There’s nothing wrong with defending your beliefs, or advocating for them in the right context. Especially if they have sound arguments to back them up. (Also, I don’t see any indication why that wouldn’t be allowed based on this post, or the rules of conduct)
But pushing your beliefs is different. It’s about foregoing actually convincing people and instead using underhanded tactics such as propaganda, brigading, or botting to make an opinion seem more sound than it really is.
Libs like to do
about Chinese lacking a word for "propaganda" that is distinct from "promotion" (as in "promoting an idea") but then they turn around and demonstrate why it's not that useful a word.Also there is zero evidence of us using bits for things other than jokes, which is more minimal than most instances ("Amber"). Certainly not vote manipulation or anything of the sort. Some libs just love to dehumanize opposition without evidence.
Also there is zero evidence of us using bits for things other than jokes
What are you talking about? Hexbears use bits all the time.
spoiler
I know meant bots, but this is funnier.
Fuck them. The few times I pressed "all" on lemmygrad I got shitty techbro humor and liberalism. Won't be missed.
