My thoughts on Hexbear. Posting as the megathread was locked.
An album to outline a few comments I have received within the past 3 days:
(content warning: extremely toxic and sour comments, genocide denial) https://imgur.com/a/d63ohQM
(yes, I cherry picked the ones that are either rude or in denial of genocide. I
had to, or else the list would have gotten too long. If you want to see the
entirety of their replies, you should check out my comment history and click on
each link to see their replies.)
TL;DR: Hexbears deny the genocide against Uyghurs in China. They laugh at
and dismiss the idea that China is a dictatorship. Having those opinions is
fine, but they personally insult the people with whom they don't agree using
annoying emojis and terms like troll, shit, shithead, Nazi
apologist, colonial comprador, freak, rabid imperialist westerners,
condescending dickbag, disingenuous idiot, unimaginative impotent weasel,
losers, etc. They say that other people's claims are rooted in dishonest
bullshit. One of them even said, "nothing you say has any value, and you
deserve no regard." I would say about 33% of them are overly pugnacious and feed
on the misery of others. Federating with them brings us more trouble than
benefits. The sheer number of other instances that chose to block them is more
than enough to prove this.
As the recent discussion about Hexbear unfold and with the megathread locked, I
figured I should make a post detailing my experience I've had recently with
Hexbears and why I believe that defederation from them is better for lemm.ee.
Denial of the persecution of Uyghurs in China
Many Hexbears (see the linked album for screenshots of their comments) reject
the idea that there is such an atrocity going on in their ideal country (China).
They describe such a claim as preposterous. They say that me "lying about
the genocide" is the holocaust denial I'm being accused
of. Their excuses are basically always one
of the following:
Andrian Zenz, a Nazi apologist, claimed that there is. He is a nazi apologist
thus his claims must be false. Therefore there is no genocide in Xinjiang.
(More on this later.)
You can't provide any proof so there must be no genocide.
(I can understand not accepting things without proof. I do that often, too.
But they are simply not even open to the idea that there might be such a
thing happening.)
A UN fact finding mission once claimed that there is no such thing happening
in Xinjiang. Therefore the persecution must be fabricated.
I believe that their idea that the UN does not support the claims of the
oppression in Xinjiang is outdated. I strongly recommend Hexbears read this
report (at least the overall assessment on page 43) by The UN human rights
office (OHCHR) addressing the human
rights concerns in Xinjiang from 2022-08-31:
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf.
A quote from its overall assessment, page 43: (emphasis mine)
Serious human rights violations have been committed in XUAR [Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region] in the context of the Government’s application of
counter-terrorism and counter-“extremism” strategies. The implementation of
these strategies, and associated policies in XUAR has led to interlocking
patterns of severe and undue restrictions on a wide range of human rights.
These patterns of restrictions are characterized by a discriminatory
component, as the underlying acts often directly or indirectly affect Uyghur
and other predominantly Muslim communities.
I am looking forward to hearing what explanations Hexbears will come up with to
prove that this report by the UN, the UN that you once cited, is fabricated
and that China is treating its Uyghurs well.
Enough debate about whether the persecution is true. I don't want this post
about Hexbear to devolve into an argument about whether the Uyghurs in China are
being oppressed.
Ignorance of the fact that China is a dictatorship
Several Hexbears have attacked me for calling China a
dictatorship. They label China democratic
and willing to listen to the people's voices. They do lots of PR for China. How
do they even believe that there is any degree of democracy in a country that
regular silences topics on its social network? I have, really, nothing against
communism, but I do have a lot against dictatorships, and China is a prime
example of a dictatorship. They control what their citizens can see on the
Internet, monitor every communication happening through their messaging apps,
and often detains, without trial, dissidents who dare to call out the government
for its wrongdoings. It's literally
1984. (I actually have
read that book, and I am using this phrase in a non-ironic manner.) Yet Hexbears
are completely unwilling to accept this fact solely because China happens to
fit into the socialist ideal that Hexbears covet.
Ad hominem attacks
Another thing people often dislike about Hexbears is that they often resort to
ad hominem attacks when they can't win an argument. Just in the last 3 days, I
have heard the following terms thrown at me: troll, shit, shithead, baby
brain, Nazi apologist, colonial comprador, freak, nerd, rabid
imperialist westerners, condescending dickbag, disingenuous idiot, and
unimaginative impotent weasel. They love calling people names.
In addition, one user repeatedly claim that my comments are made "deliberately
to start shit." Another said that "my opinions does not deserve to be heard" in
response to me saying that my reason for leaving so many comments is just to
voice my opinions. One even said, "Nothing you say has any value, and you
deserve no regard."
At least 20% of Hexbears are immediately hostile and
condescending toward people of different opinions. This behavior is
unacceptable, and I'm pretty sure that it breaks almost every Lemmy instance
rules ever, as well as Hexbear's Code of
Conduct: (emphasis mine)
We will ban you if you insult, demean or harass anyone. That is not welcome
behavior.
(I am also certain that this is a violation of twolemm.ee's rules: no
abusive language and no bigotry. Just in case you didn't know (because I
didn't know either), the definition of "bigot" is "one who is strongly partial
to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those
who differ." (emphasis mine))
Nevertheless, I have yet to see mods removing those insults, much less banning
anyone. I have reported some of the provocative comments, yet none of them seems
to have been removed. It seems like the mods does not really care whether anyone
outside Hexbear or those whose ideologies they don't agree with is insulted. I
guess that anyone only includes Hexbears. I also invite people to view my
comment history to judge whether what I said deserved mistreatment like this. I
would say no, but don't take my word for it. Please, do check it out yourself.
Just as we remove bigoted content from lemm.ee, I have also witnessed bigoted
content being removed from hexbear.
I don't think that the bigoted content on Hexbear are being removed quickly
enough, if at all.
False Nazi apologist labeling
In my recent exchanges with Hexbears, I have also been called a Nazi apologist
numerous times. This is a really serious allegation, so serious that I felt the
need to give it a section of itself in this post. For what I have been called a
Nazi apologist? A quote from one of my
comments (note that it was not edited):
I just clicked that link and, wow, that tweet was quite stupid. He should not
have said that. What the Nazis did was unexcusable. However, please keep this
in mind - that being a Nazi sympathizer does not automatically invalidate
one's opinions on other topics.
Basically, what happened was that the post I linked
to
for the purpose of backing up my claim that there were genocide happening in
Xinjiang, happened to heavily cite Andrian Zenz. At the time of writing that
comment, I did not know that Zenz was a Nazi
sympathizer. After a
few hours, some Hexbears pointed it out, and I sent the comment quoted above as
my reply. I think I have made it pretty clear that while I condemn Zenz fatuous
remarks on Nazis, I still believe that his observations about Xinjiang are not
necessarily incorrect. However, numerous Hexbears gripped on to this point and
repeatedly attacked and slandered me for defending Nazi apologia or outright
claiming that I am a Nazi apologist.
I did not defend Nazi apologia or Nazi apologists. All I did was
defend the claim that there is genocide going on in Xinjiang. Yet Hexbears
seemed to very much swallowed the disinformation that their fellow comrades were
spreading.
"Nazi apologist" is a really serious accusation and should not have been used so
rashily by those Hexbears. The fact that they even had the audacity to claim
such a thing before reading my original comment is another sign that Hexbears
are generally too eager to argue. I strongly condemn their behavior and
facetious remarks.
If this doesn't sufficiently prove that a sizable portion of Hexbear is
aggressively toxic, I don't know what will. Therefore, I am in full support of
defederation from Hexbears. (I was once actually against
this (just 10 days ago), but guess what
changed my mind?) The admins of Hexbear have shown little to no interest in
removing hate speech on their platform. (I believe that they removed the hate
speech targeting our admin mostly for show.) Sure, there are some thoughtful
users there, but I am afraid that they will have to ask their admins to solve
the problem at hand—toxicity toward others. When the admins one day succeed in
putting a stop to the burning hate speech there or when Lemmy devs add the
feature for blocking entire instances a feature to users (whichever comes
first), maybe we can then consider refederation.
If anyone actually read through the entirety of my long ass post, thank you.
Response to the Hexbear Federation Megathread
To our dear admin Sunaurus,
First, I want to thank you for your dedication and effort you have spent on this
instance. I appreciate how much you have contributed to the community without
expecting much in return.
I have read through the entire post titled Hexbear Federation Megathread (not
including the comments obviously). I understand that you want to keep a freer
federation policy and do not want to defederate from anyone easily. However, I
still believe that the benefits of federating with them does not outweigh the
hate speech they bring.
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.
I would argue that the percentage of bigoted posts on Hexbear is significantly
larger than any Lemmy instance, including lemmygrad.ml. Take these two
instances as a comparison. They share pretty much the same ideology, but people
on lemmygrad.ml are generally more kind to other people. Let's look at an
example. @johndoe@lemm.ee leaves a comment "oh no they are increasing the tax
rate? what are they even using my money for?" on some post. The typical
lemmygrad.ml response would detail why they are increasing tax rates. The
typical hexbear.net response, though, would sharply criticize @johndoe@lemm.ee's
comment and use needless, rude questions to point out that of course the
government needs more tax.
This is also why defederation from Hexbear would not "result in the flattening
of opinions" on news communities, as some have suggested. We still have
lemmygrad.ml.
As you too have seen, there were 1906 comments on that megathread before you
locked it and deleted some (36) comments. By viewing the same thread on another
instance that has defederated from Hexbear, we can know that there are
approximately 1400 of those being from Hexbear. Don't you think that this is a
bit ridiculous? That a post on lemm.ee has more comments from another instance?
You probably locked the thread for the same reason.
As to the Kremlin propaganda, I agree with your concerns about it. In a way,
this is just like me worrying about the Chinese propaganda that China is very
democratic, so I can fully understand your feelings. They just keep insisting
that those countries are fine because they are socialist. If this isn't bigotry,
what is?
However you decide to approach this sticky problem with Hexbears, I want you to
know that I am very appreciative of your work.
Edit 1: at time of writing a user also posted the following remarks:
Edit 2: some people don't seem to know what "megathread" I was referring to. Here is a link: https://lemm.ee/post/4543536
Edit 4: some Hexbears noticed my proof. And now they are attacking the fact that I am calling it "genocide" but the report did not. You are talking as if you always knew that there were persecution against them in the first place but you chose to turn a blind eye to it.
Edit 5: In reply to Edit 4, I just realized that the group of people who acknowledged the proof I provided did not refute my claims of the persecution in Xinjiang in the first place. Sorry.
Edit 6: At 2023-08-28 14:20 (UTC) an admin decided to lock this post due to the increasing number of reports. In general I am glad about this because this spares me from the hundreds of replies that I probably will get in my inbox tomorrow morning if it were not locked.
Edit 7: As @impiri@lemm.eepointed out, there was an unpaired parenthesis in my post. I just fixed it. Looking back at that sentence reminds me of Lisp code.
Edit 8: To anyone who didn't know what Hexbear: if you judge them to be not that toxic after reading the comments on this post, please keep in mind that the admins of lemm.ee have removed some of them.
I really don't understand lemm.ee policy here. Hexbear is clearly a SPAM instance, but because they spam under the guise of leftist principles we're just gonna let it slide. If explodingheads was this active and this toxic they would be de-federated 100%. Hexbear users brigade and spam every thread including this one. Being actively hostile, launching bad faith arguments. Don't engage with these turds, just block and move on. We NEED instance blocking or lemmy is fucking toast.
This is why instance blocking as a native client feature is needed. I am aware some apps such as Memmy, which I use, implement it in a 3rd party way. However it’s clearly not easily done for everyone in all situations. Defederation is going too much toward an echo chamber; inability to have enough control over the content you see is also an issue.
Personally I see value in having access to misinformation via lemm.ee; it is useful to know all perspectives when that is helpful. However, I don’t wanna see that shit everyday.
Long story short: I think for now, block accounts and communities or use an app with instance blocking. Wait for instance blocking to be native. That’s my 2 cents.
The previous Hexbear thread was locked after an initial productive discussion, because the thread turned into nearly constant insults and attacks (and this from users of all instances, including lemm.ee). It was creating massive moderation workload, and I think locking the post was preferable to asking admins to spend huge amounts of free time on handling reports.
This post seems even more likely to devolve into the same kind of attacks, and if it does, then it will also be locked. Let me be clear that arguments over which government/media/researchers should be trusted are totally fine on lemm.ee, as long as these arguments don't turn into name calling, abuse, and harassment.
OP: Please always report comments that harass you. If you find that community mods are not dealing with those comments, please stop participating in that community (for future reference, if such a community is on lemm.ee, please definitely also report the community to lemm.ee admins).
I know that walking away from an argument is extremely difficult, but in the threads you linked, there is an irreconcilable disagreement about which sources can be trusted, and most participants seem convinced that they have the full picture and know all the facts. I have a hard time remembering any time when such a discussion has lead to anything valuable. In fact, I think such discussions inevitably lead to the worst kind of low quality insults and trolling from some of the most aggressive posters in any community.
While I know there isn't a consensus on this topic among lemm.ee users, I personally don't think defederation is the correct approach, especially after reading through a lot of lemm.ee user comments about the topic recently. I think user-level instance blocking will solve the problem for most users who are not happy with this.
Just a side-note: the way some people casually throw around the insult "nazi" is completely ridiculous (and I don't just mean hexbear users here - I've seen it from users of many instances - but it seems to almost always come up in any thread about hexbear). In my opinion, this only serves to weaken the memory of crimes against humanity that nazis committed. If anybody reading this finds that they often call others on Lemmy nazis, maybe have a deep think about whether you haven't been participating in softening the meaning of "nazi".
Thank you, dear admin, for your timely and thoughtful reply.
This post seems even more likely to devolve into the same kind of attacks.
Yes, I completely agree. In fact, it seems like there are already signs of that happening.
OP: Please always report comments that harass you
Thank you. I will.
I know that walking away from an argument is extremely difficult, but in the threads you linked, there is an irreconcilable disagreement about which sources can be trusted
Irreconcilable indeed. I have learned my lesson from several fruitless arguments with them.
While I know there isn’t a consensus on this topic among lemm.ee users, I personally don’t think defederation is the correct approach
I see. I respect your decision.
the way some people casually throw around the insult “nazi” is completely ridiculous (and I don’t just mean hexbear users here)
Yeah! They are the ones diminishing the word nazi.
Yeah, that's a good feature. I just wish I could have it on account base and not in an app (also I am not a fan of apps because they don't fit my usual workflow).
Me too. Until then there are other instances out there that do block the three main problematic authoritarian instances for those that prefer to. When checking out instances for anyone interested, scroll to the bottom of the lemmy page, click instances, and way at the bottom of that page you can find the block list. You can see then if the block list sounds reasonable to you. There's enough instances out there right now that hopefully anyone should be able to find one matching their preferences until we get control of a user side instance blocking feature. There's also some scripts and apps to make changing to a new instance less painful by carrying over your subscriptions. Both instance blocking and subscription migration are also built into the sync app, but would be nice to have those features implemented by lemmy too eventually.
Thanks for the reply. Actually I got in some arguments about politics but then Hexbears degraded it into a personal argument. This has happened several times.
Edit: I just read your edit. Will definitely stay away from cth. Thanks.
okay but here's the thing - you commented on cth. what did you expect
this is like going on to 4chan /r9k/ or /pol/, being offended, then writing a letter to your isp saying "can you block access to 4chan for your customers"
don't ask lemm.ee to defederate, just block the community
also the megathread is probably locked for a reason
Well yeah I guess I should have expected this coming lol. But to be fair I don’t think me commenting on cth justifies their personal insults.
no, it doesn't. but it also doesn't justify you demanding that l.ee blocks them entirely. personally, i haven't had any bad experiences w/ hexbear, and i'm subscribed to at least one of their lemmyspheres.
yeah, that i can't (and have no plans to) defend. but my i did skim the thread i believe you're talking about, and whilst some of your ripostes are quite good; my advice would just be to block AntiOutsideAktion@hexbear.net and just not engage. just walk away from the computer and make a cup of tea. i know that's what i do
if you feel like being courteous you can tell the person that, or you can just block them and not respond
Hexbear is literally just nazis who discovered how to be facetious. Nothing genuine comes from that shithole. They don't even discuss anything, just push blame for their hardships on "white western liberals". They have to stick together and bully their way out of disagreements because their "points" lack reasoning.
I like the idea of defederating with instances like this. People gripe about creating rifts between users but like, are we really labeling the trolls calling everyone else trolls as “honest users”? lmao
They can have their own pissing contests in their own living rooms. It shouldn’t be our responsibility to field their fucken CCP sponsored bullshit in any random comment section because “it should be the user’s choice what content they see”. This is a cop out.
Defederate now, you can always refederate later when user filters are a little bit more fleshed out. As it stands you’re just encouraging their behavior by giving them a ticket to act with impunity, and they’re really loving the high horse.
From what I'm reading it seems you just don't know how to block people and move on. Don't let words get to you my guy. At the end of the day that's all it is. Words. They cause 0 physical harm. Just block and move on.
So you stumbled into radically left wing instance, badly prepared and as soon as you encountered some sourced pushback ignored it and engaged in extremely hostile behaviour, yet it's the hexbearians who were rude and should be defedded from?
Just look at your comment history, how much of it was actually defending your position and how much of it whining?
The problem is not the politics. It’s that I find myself having the same three arguments in ALL THREADS. If you want to complain about western imperialism in threads about geopolitics, knock yourself out. In a thread about cookies, maybe let this one go, just for once.
There are instances that have a posting culture that just doesn’t mesh well with others. Other instances are under no obligation to go and fetch their posts.
@randint. Lemm.ee admins are now dealing with multiple reports from this thread. In reviewing the conversations they are heading off topic and some have become arguments and abusive. As such I will be locking this post now before there is either further escalation of more significant levels of reporting.
Just ignore them or go to an instance that has them blocked. Yea, most of the one's I've interacted with have been annoying but they probably felt the same way about me. The beauty of the internet is you can just go outside if you start getting too worked up about something.
Why don’t you just move to an instance that blocks anything that hurts your fee-fees? Why do we all have to be dragged into your petty drama?
I choose lemm.ee specifically because of the conservative defed policy.
Left vs right, commie vs capitalism, West vs Rest, Nazi vs Zionist: these are not things I want someone else filtering for me. The only things I want defederated is spam and illegal content.