Hello users of hexbear the mod team wanted to make this post as the past couple weeks of federation have been quite eventful.

First off, I want to apologize to any hardship, stress, discomfort, alienation, or any negativity users have experienced as a result of federation. I want to especially extend apologies to marginalized comrades and those that have voiced their disapproval, disagreement, or concern about federation.

Second, in every vote based discussion we have had on federation, the votes for federation and votes for federation with large instances have trended to be near-overwhelming majorities. In the spirit of operating the site in accordance with the desires of most users, we have gone with these decisions.

Third, I want to remind everyone that you are able to set your default feed in your user settings. This is an important tool, as setting your feed to Local prevents posts from federated instances from showing on your feed. You may further curate your feed by setting it to Subscribed, and ensuring that you are only subscribed to communities you wish to see posts from. The Subscribed feed allows you to for example unsubscribe from the_dunk_tank while subscribing to all the other hexbear communities, preventing you from seeing federated instance posts as well as the_dunk_tank posts mentioning other federated instances.

We are now federated with two instances with more than 200 daily active users:

lemmy.ml

lemm.ee

Forth, I wish to remind everyone that there is a pinned post in the hexbear community that allows users to nominate a federated instance for defederation, it can be found here: https://hexbear.net/post/277518

In closing, we would like to state that this post is also a space for Hexbear users to comment on how federation has been for them.

As we are in one of those weeks when decades happen on this site, your feedback is crucial to us in deciding the direction of this forum. As such, we ask of you two questions:

  1. What are your thoughts on the Fediverse, and how has your experience changed through federation?

  2. What would you like to be done going forward, in an ideal situation?

Once this feedback is collected, we will sift through the answers to find the most popular measures advocated for, as well as the overtones of the experiences submitted, and plan what is to be done accordingly.

07

Other instance users, if you comment on this thread, you will be banned from hexbear and your comment will be removed.

  • artificialset [she/her, fae/faer]
    ·
    1 year ago

    It's fundamentally made the site a worse place

    There's been comments here and there about pipelines and what are we doing if we're not spreading the word? I have some thoughts on that:

    It's okay to take breaks

    • There are absolutely ways to utilize our knowledge to help libs along the pipeline from wherever they're at to where we want them to be, but we don't always have to be on. We spent three years here working through struggle sessions in our own space, but unintentionally creating a great space for leftists to talk together and engage without always needing to be on the defensive all the time. Things get hostile and shitty sometimes, yeah, but I see long comment threads where people are having a healthy back and forth, walking away from it actually getting something out of it. On this site there's an understanding that the users here are mostly good faith and as trustworthy as internet strangers can be. We can recharge here, shitpost, and talk a bit about our irl work here too (vaguely, at least). It's important to have spaces where we can do this. We can fight it out everywhere else online - hell, we can fight it out on the fediverse in general when we're up for it. The feeling of always needing to be productive or doing shit is capitalist productivity brainworms. It's okay to take breaks.

    This was a space where marginalized comrades felt safe

    • There were wreckers here, but they were dealt with quickly. They really weren't overwhelming. We've introduced so many new bigots to our userbase and it's showed. Trans comrades have been harassed in DMs. We've been constantly told we're not truly queer for what we believe. Looking at the comments in the bigger posts recently about the Biden admin's bullshit and other trans related posts, the uptick in bigotry we've had to deal with is noticeable and queer users have said as much. This of course will carry over to vulnerable spaces like !mentalhealth@hexbear.net and !mutual_aid@hexbear.net as well when so many new eyes are now watching our site and can easily interact. There was the ability to be vulnerable about things like gender identity and personal struggles, that now have to be reconsidered when we see people from the fediverse coming in and talking shit. I guess we could all get over it and toughen up, but this was a space where marginalized comrades felt safe. Why are we abandoning that for dunks?

    To answer question 2:
    It doesn't have to be complete defederation. We have real comrades at lemmygrad. There may be small instances that can have real solidarity with us as well. There's a path here that, imo, would give us the benefits of federation and connecting with more people, while also upholding what we worked hard to establish on this site.

    I hope this gets some thought and consideration.

      • silent_water [she/her]
        ·
        1 year ago

        and the easy response is it's just the internet, go touch grass

        if that were a viable option, I'd do that. but I come to hexbear to get a break from the bullshit outside - I encounter plenty of people who threaten my right to exist when I walk out the door.

        • JohannaChittarra
          ·
          1 year ago

          Exactly this. This is a community I feel safe in and even living in a liberal enclave in the U.S. It’s scary out there. Hope you’re doing well, comrade. cat-trans

      • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Working a food not bombs table (or whatever organization of your choice) for ONE WEEKEND will change the world more than all the posting in the history of r/chapotraphouse, in the history of hexbear, in the history of lemmy... Forever, in perpetuity.

        C'mon. It would take at least 2-3 weekends

        • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          It is tbh I wouldn’t be a communist if not for posting so it’s just another tool in the tool kit

        • Egon
          ·
          3 months ago

          deleted by creator

      • sharedburdens [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Working a food not bombs table (or whatever organization of your choice) for ONE WEEKEND will change the world more than all the posting in the history of r/chapotraphouse, in the history of hexbear, in the history of lemmy... Forever, in perpetuity.

        Unironically it was hanging out in chapo.chat after the subreddit ban that got me motivated to do more organizing in my free time and I've been doing some sort of tabling or support of that almost weekly for years since. I value hexbear as place for comradely discussion it was actually not good for my mental health (but very good for my "engagement") to be having transphobic shit showing up in place where it's normally been a respite from that.

        I respect the work done to get us to this point, and I look forward to whatever solutions that we decide on.

      • Egon
        ·
        3 months ago

        deleted by creator

    • CarbonScored [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is kind of the issue. The site can't be both a safe space and a place to 'spread the word', and users are split between wanting either. The points you make are fair, but I think the two goals are mutually exclusive.