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Hexbear federation megathread - lemm.ee
lemm.ee# Hey folks I have been receiving a lot of messages every single day about
federation with hexbear. Some of our users are vehemently against it, others are
in full support. The conversation does not seem to be dying down, rather, the
volume of messages I receive about it seems to be increasing, so I am opening
this public space where we can openly discuss the topic. I am going to write a
wall of text about my own thoughts on the situation, I’m sorry, but no tl;dr
this time, and I ask anybody participating in this thread to first read through
this post before commenting. Before I go any further, I want to be clear that
for anybody who participates here, it is required to focus on the quality of
your posts. That means: * Be kind to each other, even if you disagree * Use
arguments rather than calling people names * Realize that this is a divisive
topic, so your comments should be even more thoughtful than usual With that out
of the way, there are a few things I want to cover. ### On defederation in
general First of all, I am a firm believer that defederation must be reserved
only for cases where all other methods have failed. If defederation is used
liberally, then a small group of malicious users can effectively completely shut
down the federated network, by simply creating the type of drama between
instances which would inevitably result in defederation. In my view, federation
is the biggest strength of Lemmy compared to any centralized discussion forum,
so naturally I think maintaining federation by default is an important goal in
general. I am also a believer in the value of deplatforming hateful content, but
I think defederation is not the best way to do this. Banning individual users,
banning communities and establishing a culture of mutual support between mods
and admins of different instances should be the first line of defense against
such content. There are some further steps that can be taken before defederation
as well, but these are not really documented anywhere (in order to prevent
circumvention). The point is: for myself, defederation is the absolute last
resort, only to be used when it is completely clear that other methods are
ineffective. Finally, I am wary of creating a false expectation among lemm.ee
[http://lemm.ee] users that lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] admins endorse all users
and communities and content on instances we are federated with. Here at lemm.ee
[http://lemm.ee], we use a blocklist for federation, which means our default
apporach is to federate with all new instances. We do not have the resources
(manpower, skills and knowledge) necessary to pass judgement on all instances
which exist out there, as a result, users on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] are
expected to curate their own content to quite a high degree. In addition to
downvoting and/or reporting as necessary, individual lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee]
users are also able to block specific users and communities, and the ability to
block entire instances is coming very soon as well. Having said all that, in a
situation where all other methods do indeed fail, defederation is not out of the
question. Making such a call is up to the discretion of lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee]
admins, and doing it as a last resort is completely in line with our federation
policy. ### Regarding hexbear Hexbear is an established Lemmy instance, focused
on many flavors of leftism. They have quite a large userbase who are very active
on Lemmy (often so active that they leave the impression brigading all popular
Lemmy posts). One important thing to note is that while some forms of bigotry
seem to be quite accepted by many hexbear users (but seemingly not by mods -
more on that below), they at least are very protective of LGBT rights (and yes,
I am quite certain that they are not just pretending to do this, as many users
seem to believe). Additionally, while I have noticed quite high quality posts
from hexbear users, there are also several users there who seem to really enjoy
trolling and baiting (very reminiscent of 4chan-type “for the lulz” posting),
and it’s important to note that this kind of posting is in general allowed on
hexbear itself. The reason this whole topic is important to so many people right
now (despite hexbear being a relatively old instance), is that hexbear only
recently enabled federation. A combination of their volume of posts, their
strong convictions, the excitement about federation, and the aforementioned
trolling has made them very visible to almost all Lemmy users, and this has
sparked discussions about the value of federation with hexbear on a lot of Lemmy
instances. #### My own experience with hexbear I want to write down my own
experience with interacting with hexbear users, mods, and admins over the past
few days. I believe this experience will highlight why I am hesitant to advocate
for immediate full defederation from hexbear at this point in time, and am for
now still more in favor of taking action on a more individual user basis. Please
read and see how you feel about the situation afterwards. ##### Background My
first real contact with hexbear users was in the comments section of a post in
this meta community requesting defederation from hexbear
[https://lemm.ee/post/4287105] by @glimpythegoblin@lemm.ee. That post is now
locked, because several hexbear users very quickly started doing the
aforementioned “for the lulz” type spamming of meme images in the comments
(these are actually just emojis, but they are rendered as full-size images on
all instances other than the source instance, due to a current Lemmy bug). I did
not want to take further actions in that thread in general (for archival
purposes), but I did take one action, which in retrospect was a mistake: I
removed a comment which contained the hammer and sickle symbol. I ignorantly
associated this symbolism with Kremlin propaganda, and the atrocities my own
people suffered at the hands of the soviet union during the previous century.
Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me
in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the
USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at
all. I am grateful for users who pointed this out to me without resorting to
personal attacks. Let me be clear here: while I do not have anything against
leftism or communist ideas in general (in fact in today’s world, I think
discussion of such ideas is quite necessary), Kremlin propaganda has no place on
lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee]. Any dehumanizing talking points of the Kremlin on
lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] are treated as any other bigotry, and if communist
symbolism is used in context of Kremlin propaganda (that is the context in which
I have been exposed to it throughout my whole life), then it will still be
removed. But there is no blanket ban on communist symbolism in general on
lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee], and discussing and advocating for leftist and
communist topics (as distinct from the imperialist and dehumanizing policies of
the Kremlin) is certainly allowed on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee]. ##### Hexbear
user response Coming back to the events of the past few days: soon after my
removal of the comment containing the symbol from the meta thread, two posts
popped up on hexbear. One was focused on insulting and spreading lies about me
personally. Another was focused on diminishing the horrors of the soviet
occupation in my country. In the comments under both of these posts (and in a
few other threads on hexbear), I noticed some seriously disturbing bigotry
against my people. There were comments which reflected the anti-Estonian
propaganda of the current Russian state, things like: * Suggesting that my
people has no right to exist * Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations)
are subhuman * Claiming that anybody critical of both nazi and soviet
occupations is themselves a nazi and a holocaust denier I expect to hear such
statements from the Russian state - here in Estonia, we are subjected to this
and other kinds of bigotry constantly from Russian media - but to see it spread
openly in non-Russian channels is extremely disturbing. Such bigotry is
completely against lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] rules in general. Additionally, my
identity is public information, because I feel it’s important for the integrity
of lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] that I don’t hide behind anonymity. Considering
this, I’m sure you can understand why I am very worried about my own safety when
people leave comments in many unrelated threads (where my original posts are not
even visible), baselessly calling me a nazi and a holocaust denier. Note that
the goal of this post is not to start a new debate in the comments about the the
repressions of the soviet union in Estonia or other occupied territories, but if
the topic interests any users, I can recommend the 2006 documentary The Singing
Revolution (imdb [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0954008]). The trailer is a bit
cheesy, but the actual film contains lots of historical footage from the soviet
occupation, and also many interviews with people who experienced it, who share
stories which are deeply familiar to all Estonians. If anybody is interested in
further discussion, then I suggest making a post about it in the Estonian
community here: !eesti@lemm.ee [/c/eesti@lemm.ee]. ##### Hexbear admin response
After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for
clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was
actually very happy with their response: 1. They immediately removed the
personal attacks and dehumanizing comments containing Kremlin propaganda from
Hexbear, and assured me that such content is always handled by mods 2. They told
me that while there are all kinds of leftists on hexbear, Russian disinformation
is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods 3. They implemented
some additional rules on hexbear to try and reduce the trolling experienced by
many other instances, including ours: https://hexbear.net/post/352119
[https://hexbear.net/post/352119] ##### My personal take-aways Let me play the
devil’s advocate here and employ some “self-whataboutism”: among all users that
have been banned on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] for bigotry, the majority were
actually not users from other instances, and in fact people with lemm.ee
[http://lemm.ee] accounts. If we judge any larger instance only by bigoted posts
that some of its users make, then we might as well declare all instances as
cesspools and close down Lemmy completely. I believe it’s far more useful to
judge instances based on moderation in response to such content. Just as we
remove bigoted content from lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee], I have also witnessed
bigoted content being removed from hexbear. At the same time, I am aware of some
internal conflict between hexbear users over the more strict moderation they are
now starting to employ, and I am definitely keeping an eye on that situation and
how admins handle it. I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct
users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don’t have reason
to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that
they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian
television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if
moderators can truly keep up with such content. ### Where thing stand right now
I am not convinced that we are currently at a point where the “last resort” of
defederation is necessary. This is based on the presumption that our moderation
workload at lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee] will not get out of hand just due to users
from that particular instance. My current expectation is that as the excitement
of federation calms down (and as new rules on hexbear go into effect), the
currently relatively high volume of low effort trolling will be replaced by more
thoughtful posts. If this is not the case then we will certainly need to
re-evaluate things. Additionally, nothing is changing about our own rules
regarding bigotry. Especially relevant in the context of Kremlin propaganda, I
want to say that dehumanizing anybody is not allowed on lemm.ee [http://lemm.ee]
(hopefully I do not have to spell it out, but this of course includes
Ukrainians, LGBT folks, and others that the Kremlin despises), and action will
be taken against any users who do this, regardless of what instance they are
posting from. Finally, I am very interested to hear thoughts and responses from
our own users. I am super grateful to anybody who actually took the time to read
through this massive dump of my own thoughts, and I am very interested to get a
proper understanding of how our users feel about what I’ve written here. Please
share any thoughts in the comments.
Dam