As the title says, should we defederate from them? They are generally very spammy and most of Lemmy agrees that they don’t contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way. At the same time they don’t break any of the rules that would cause me to defederate from them, so I thought I’d ask you, the instance users, what do you want.

Please comment what you think, this post will stay pinned for two days and afterwards we will either defederate or not.

P.S. If you ever feel like some instance would be better defederated from, do let me know! I’ll either defederate straight away if they break any of the rules, or create a post like this to let our users vote.

  • whiskers@lemmings.world
    9·
    1 year ago

    My personal belief is to not defederate unless they are breaking rules/harassing people. It’s fine to express one’s opinion respectfully even if it’s a different one. Otherwise, soon Fediverse will be divided into silos (kind of similar to what the recommendation algos on social media that drive people into echo chamber of followers/posts).

    I read somewhere that they don’t have downvotes on their instance, so they have a habit of leaving comments.

  • Xamrica@lemmings.world
    92·
    1 year ago

    At the moment I don’t see a compelling reason.

    And I switched from lemmy.world to this instance because they did just that. -> Defederation (from hexbear) for no compelling reason.

    A very helpful discussion, in my opinion, about defederation from hexbear can be found on lemm.ee. see https://lemmings.world/post/525254

  • MBM@lemmings.world
    4·
    1 year ago

    I’d be fine with either outcome. Threads filled with hexbears get obnoxious but I can (and should) also just avoid anything that mentions China/tankies and has 400+ comments. Ideally those posts/comms should not get federated with hexbear, because that kind of toxicity is not good for anyone, but that’s something for other instances to worry about.

  • Dee@lemmings.world
    4·
    1 year ago

    Yes, mainly because I already requested it and they add nothing to discussions but brigading and insults. There’s a rare occurrence where a Hexbear member adds something to the conversation but it’s so infrequently that I can’t recommend defederation from them enough.

  • Elderos@lemmings.world
    3·
    1 year ago

    I moderated an online community in the past (not on Lemmy), and my experience is that every now and then a bunch of insufferable assholes will start sticking together and form a self-righteous technically-not-breaking-the-rules clique. It always gets worst and they will increasingly play the victims and push the boundaries of what is acceptable on the platform. The game they’re playing is to never give you a single good-enough reason to boot them. But at some point people get tired, and when the straw breaks the camel’s back they will be sure to make a mockery of the reason. “Oh we just posted a meme and they banned us lololol”.

    Anyway, just my 2 cents. I don’t care either way as I will probably try to not participate whenever they swarm a thread so it is the same to me. I don’t think we owe insufferable users our time and attention. I don’t even care about their politics or whatever, I would not mind discussing communism actually but most of the interactions are in bad faith.

    • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldOPMEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      If they actually start slinging slurs & gross stuff, that’s another thing. I just haven’t seen it (yet?).

      They do that for sure, though unlike the other instances I have defederated from, it’s not actively encouraged by the instance admins.