This is an admin post, intended for blahaj lemmy users. Top level posts from members of other instances will be removed.
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After recent events, it feels to me that sentiment has shifted and more people are asking for defederation of hexbear than previously.
I've been doing my best to try and mend bridges and keep us connected, as it's my hope that we can maintain trans solidarity and work with them, despite the friction, however, ultimately, I feel that this is an issue for the blahaj lemmy community to decide, not the admins alone.
So here's what we're going to do.
We're going to leave things as they are for a week. That will give time for things to calm down whilst we see if we can work together. After a week, I'll put up a vote and get a feel for where the community is at in regards to our continued federation with hexbear. That poll will run for a week. If there is a strong will to defederate (a clear majority), then that's what we will do.
Personally I don't agree with the decision to stay federated with them given the kind of community they foster. A great example is that the top post on the thread where they announced the rules change that was enough to remain federated a little longer is straight up abuser language.
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I'd recommend checking out the thread and sorting by top to see what the most popular sentiments among the users over there is in regards to other instances.
Don't participate, but it's fairly eye opening.
I do hope that when you run the poll you have a way of ensuring that only people in our community can vote on it because given that they have a community on their instance dedicated to dogpiling and brigading I don't trust them to not interfere with it.
I was fairly neutral after my first post and the admin response until I read that post. There are hexbear folks in that post explicitly saying “the whole point of federation is to dunk on people on other instances”. Also saying things like “you can’t have civil discussion with libs, you have to dunk on them”. Like they’re saying “we’re federated to be assholes to people who disagree with us”, which is a hard pass from me.
To be clear, it has nothing to to with being leftist. It has nothing to do with being trans. It has everything to do with them wanting to be assholes.
Hopefully their mods can reign stuff in to prevent that kind of behavior.
Tbf, this is pretty consistent with my experience engaging with liberals on the fediverse. They almost invariably treat leftists like we're naively ignorant of how political systems work while never entertaining the possibility they might be wrong.
You were hardly neutral when you made the request in the first place.
Correct, I was not. Ada’s response moved me to neutral because it brought understanding to why we federated in the first place, and I was ok just blocking their communities and moving on with my life.
And then their users started in on the thread.
As could very easily be expected. As has happened before and likely will again. Judging anything based on people upset when you bring up an inflammatory topic about them is no basis for a sound judgement.
We’ve had two other threads that they can easily see and they have not touched (except voting, presumably). That seems like the particular problem was solved.
As I said previously, if they wanted to defend themselves they were free to do so. But they instead attacked our admins and the instance as a whole.
Plus if they bothered to read, they'd have seen Ada saying defederation wouldn't happen
That post doesn’t bother me at all. Someone talked some shit on their instance in the midst of some drama yesterday, seems like something they should be able to do on their own instance. I do not support defederating over that.
It's just more about the whole attitude not inspiring much hope for me. I don't really expect them to operate on good faith when they act like that.
They were acting like that in response to a thread where someone asked to defederate with them for petty reasons and their impression that our admin was upset that they’re anti-NATO (a mischaracterization). I’d probably be mad too. I disagree with a knee jerk reaction to a clash of cultures.
While, sure, saying we were "whining and crying" and stuff like that is just really off-putting to me.
It's one thing to be upset and respond to it, it's another to pretty much go straight into insulting. Like, yeah, sure, give them a chance, but I really don't want that kinda stuff around.
If they keep it to just their instance but otherwise don't change their behaviour, I will probably just end up blocking their stuff, as it just makes me mad, and call it a day. For now though I'm still reading their posts.. even if they do make me mad, to judge for myself.
Most people didn’t go straight to insulting, they’re a pretty big instance and we would definitely know if they did. One of the reasons we have defederated people before is lack of moderator action, but their mods seem to be pretty on the ball. I’m more offended that Gormandt has posted the same picture several times all over the place as some kind of evidence of a mass issue, than some people being rude on an instance with 25,000.
It very much seemed like acceptable culture/behavior to me
Yeah, we have a way of making sure the results are representative