When I first joined the Fediverse, back when Reddit 3rd party apps got nuked, I joined lemmy.world. While I didn’t see Hexbear post, comments, etc., but I did see plenty of comments of people mentioning them and warning about them. So by the time I switched to startrek.website (don’t remember why I decided to leave l.w, must have been due to some defederations) and finally encountered the mythical beast, I was already thoroughly prepared for it. So I would say, in general, newbies shouldn’t be entirely shocked to encounter a tankie, as they are mentioned a lot.
And tbh, I prefer to stay federated with Hexbear, because among all the mindless circlejerk propaganda they will sometimes point out a fair criticism about the western culture/politics that I haven’t considered. In addition, as a half Ukrainian who was living in Kyiv at the time of invasion, I prefer to know what kind of ideas and misinformation is being circulated on the other side.
Hexbear wouldn’t even be that bad if they just stopped pretending that only western empires are evil, and stopped bootlicking the leaders of the pseudo-communist countries. A LOT more people would agree with them if they were only anti-western, instead of also being pro-dictators. But then they wouldn’t be tankies, I suppose.
Btw, Hexbear reminds me a lot of r/GamingCircleJerk. They also have a semi-noble cause, but express it in such a way that rubs EVERYONE the wrong way, not just the “Capital-G Gamers” who they are rightfully mocking. Because of that, r/GCJ has caused several site-wide dramas and inconvenienced people. They both also operate in this constant state of maximum sarcasm, so you can never tell if they are saying is a hyperbole or they are being serious but insane.
Regarding Blahaj.zone, I haven’t interacted much with them, but I one day discovered that I’m banned from their c/196 because “Transphobe”. It wasn’t even due to an interaction with that community directly. In a completely different instance, I think it was lemmy.world, I commented with a question about why a user’s comment was called being transphobic. I then got mocked and eventually banned. So Idk if it was mod of that specific community or whole instance. I seem to be able to interact with Blahaj post from other communities though.
And thank you for these massive posts. You seem to be a proper Lemmy historian, might need to remember your username for future potential inquiries.
I think that - like porn, receiving catcalls as you walk down the street, and spam marketing solicitations - being able to interact with people who ignore consent should be opt-IN, rather than have to be opt-OUT. I see that you have a valid reason for wanting to hear what they have to say… but for myself I almost left the Fediverse upon stumbling into ChapoTrapHouse, and again another similar incident in lemmygrad.ml. Whereas now, I have blocked both of those plus also Lemmy.ml, and I kid you not, >99% of the toxicity is instantly gone from my feed. The latter also blocks some innocent people too, who may try to discourse with me and not realize that I will not receive a “notification” about it, but I have made my peace with that, since on the whole I do not want to make time for that shit in my life.
On Reddit I used to pride myself that I had never blocked anyone - and as a mod it wouldn’t have helped anyway - but now I value my time and sanity more I guess:-). Seriously, it takes a mental toll: it makes you more defensive, more cagey, less likely to speak for fear of being misunderstood and pounced upon, and when you do speak your own answers become more snarky, in closer alignment with even if nowhere near the extreme that theirs does. I felt it was affecting my communication at my irl job, and was ready to leave social media altogether even before Rexodus happened, and I found here. Fortunately Kbin.social showed me a friendlier side of the Fediverse, before it went defunct and I saw the rest. Now, literally every single person that I tell about Lemmy irl gives me dirty looks the next time we talk, citing the high volume of extremist content here, calling for literal and bloody violence. Forcing new users to be exposed to this content as being opt-out rather than opt-in is going to SEVERELY hinder the survivability of Lemmy, much less growth.
Plus, as you’ve seen, it leads to things like those communities being banned outright, even from instances such as this one that haven’t gone the full defederation route. It would be SO MUCH friendlier to simply “label” the content… but that would take extra work effort from the developers, plus who would write up those labels (I think it should be the very communities themselves - but they haven’t taken such an initiative so far, e.g. in their sidebar areas, or even to follow the rules that their very own admins commanded them to do) and anyway here we are, so we work with the tools we have. Which are at least better than they used to be, and improving all the time:-). One down-side is that every instance that gets defederated leads to another one receiving a bunch of new alts so it merely shifts the line. Right now that is lemmy.ml, but with so many people blocking them these days it will soon shift to midwest.social, and then from there… As I guess you know, these are people who refuse to follow the rules - even their own - yet demand to be HEARD, the consent of those who do not want to listen be damned.
Blaze knows like 1000x more than me - e.g. they introduced me to that !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca community, and afterwards we both keep telling anyone who will listen about it:-). Speaking of, they will tell you the same: check out lemm.ee as a server that basically does not defederate from anyone. I checked their modlog and don’t see any communities removed from hexbear.net, and both https://lemm.ee/c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net and https://lemm.ee/c/the_dunk_tank@hexbear.net work. If you want something that sits solidly on neutral ground to survey all around you, that one is the hot pick right now. Though it is far from the only one - e.g. another is https://reddthat.com, still another is lemmy.zip, and there’s others too. All of those have even remained federated with lemmygrad.ml, as well as hexbear.net. Ofc you can always go visit hexbear.net itself too - either with an alt or if you don’t want to vote or talk, without an account. There are many paths available to you:-). Ironically lemmy.ml itself would not be ideal, b/c it has defederated from lemmygrad.ml (I don’t know why:-).
196 sounds like a simple misunderstanding, though exactly what we are talking about here: they had a golden opportunity to listen patiently, assess where you were coming from with your question, and if you were “wrong” then to educate you about the situation - to all of which you (as I would in your place) extremely likely would have said THANK YOU, whether they managed to cause you to change your mind or not, for e.g. spending the time and engaging in that proper, civil conversation. Fwiw, I’ve never heard Ada (the admin) fly off the handle like that, and conversely have talked about being the way I described above instead. So I’m sure it was just a power-tripping mod of that single community - yes we have those here too, that was not merely a thing of our shared Reddit past:-P. I too get weird vibes from it and it is the only - and first - community that I always banned whenever I made a new account somewhere on the Fediverse. I hope that did not sour your experience with the rest of that instance… but if so, it is their loss. Though like my own bad experiences with ChapoTrapHouse and lemmygrad.ml, it is good that both of us did not simply abandon the entire concept of the Fediverse, b/c there really are good people here, even though there’s also a lot of noise and children’s chatter about as well.
Anyway I am glad that you managed to solve this mystery - of hexbear.net not being defederated, but those certain communities residing on it having been removed - that was indeed seemed quite strange to me!:-)
When I first joined the Fediverse, back when Reddit 3rd party apps got nuked, I joined lemmy.world. While I didn’t see Hexbear post, comments, etc., but I did see plenty of comments of people mentioning them and warning about them. So by the time I switched to startrek.website (don’t remember why I decided to leave l.w, must have been due to some defederations) and finally encountered the mythical beast, I was already thoroughly prepared for it. So I would say, in general, newbies shouldn’t be entirely shocked to encounter a tankie, as they are mentioned a lot.
And tbh, I prefer to stay federated with Hexbear, because among all the mindless circlejerk propaganda they will sometimes point out a fair criticism about the western culture/politics that I haven’t considered. In addition, as a half Ukrainian who was living in Kyiv at the time of invasion, I prefer to know what kind of ideas and misinformation is being circulated on the other side.
Hexbear wouldn’t even be that bad if they just stopped pretending that only western empires are evil, and stopped bootlicking the leaders of the pseudo-communist countries. A LOT more people would agree with them if they were only anti-western, instead of also being pro-dictators. But then they wouldn’t be tankies, I suppose.
Btw, Hexbear reminds me a lot of r/GamingCircleJerk. They also have a semi-noble cause, but express it in such a way that rubs EVERYONE the wrong way, not just the “Capital-G Gamers” who they are rightfully mocking. Because of that, r/GCJ has caused several site-wide dramas and inconvenienced people. They both also operate in this constant state of maximum sarcasm, so you can never tell if they are saying is a hyperbole or they are being serious but insane.
Regarding Blahaj.zone, I haven’t interacted much with them, but I one day discovered that I’m banned from their c/196 because “Transphobe”. It wasn’t even due to an interaction with that community directly. In a completely different instance, I think it was lemmy.world, I commented with a question about why a user’s comment was called being transphobic. I then got mocked and eventually banned. So Idk if it was mod of that specific community or whole instance. I seem to be able to interact with Blahaj post from other communities though.
And thank you for these massive posts. You seem to be a proper Lemmy historian, might need to remember your username for future potential inquiries.
I think that - like porn, receiving catcalls as you walk down the street, and
spammarketing solicitations - being able to interact with people who ignore consent should be opt-IN, rather than have to be opt-OUT. I see that you have a valid reason for wanting to hear what they have to say… but for myself I almost left the Fediverse upon stumbling into ChapoTrapHouse, and again another similar incident in lemmygrad.ml. Whereas now, I have blocked both of those plus also Lemmy.ml, and I kid you not, >99% of the toxicity is instantly gone from my feed. The latter also blocks some innocent people too, who may try to discourse with me and not realize that I will not receive a “notification” about it, but I have made my peace with that, since on the whole I do not want to make time for that shit in my life.On Reddit I used to pride myself that I had never blocked anyone - and as a mod it wouldn’t have helped anyway - but now I value my time and sanity more I guess:-). Seriously, it takes a mental toll: it makes you more defensive, more cagey, less likely to speak for fear of being misunderstood and pounced upon, and when you do speak your own answers become more snarky, in closer alignment with even if nowhere near the extreme that theirs does. I felt it was affecting my communication at my irl job, and was ready to leave social media altogether even before Rexodus happened, and I found here. Fortunately Kbin.social showed me a friendlier side of the Fediverse, before it went defunct and I saw the rest. Now, literally every single person that I tell about Lemmy irl gives me dirty looks the next time we talk, citing the high volume of extremist content here, calling for literal and bloody violence. Forcing new users to be exposed to this content as being opt-out rather than opt-in is going to SEVERELY hinder the survivability of Lemmy, much less growth.
Plus, as you’ve seen, it leads to things like those communities being banned outright, even from instances such as this one that haven’t gone the full defederation route. It would be SO MUCH friendlier to simply “label” the content… but that would take extra work effort from the developers, plus who would write up those labels (I think it should be the very communities themselves - but they haven’t taken such an initiative so far, e.g. in their sidebar areas, or even to follow the rules that their very own admins commanded them to do) and anyway here we are, so we work with the tools we have. Which are at least better than they used to be, and improving all the time:-). One down-side is that every instance that gets defederated leads to another one receiving a bunch of new alts so it merely shifts the line. Right now that is lemmy.ml, but with so many people blocking them these days it will soon shift to midwest.social, and then from there… As I guess you know, these are people who refuse to follow the rules - even their own - yet demand to be HEARD, the consent of those who do not want to listen be damned.
Blaze knows like 1000x more than me - e.g. they introduced me to that !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca community, and afterwards we both keep telling anyone who will listen about it:-). Speaking of, they will tell you the same: check out lemm.ee as a server that basically does not defederate from anyone. I checked their modlog and don’t see any communities removed from hexbear.net, and both https://lemm.ee/c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net and https://lemm.ee/c/the_dunk_tank@hexbear.net work. If you want something that sits solidly on neutral ground to survey all around you, that one is the hot pick right now. Though it is far from the only one - e.g. another is https://reddthat.com, still another is lemmy.zip, and there’s others too. All of those have even remained federated with lemmygrad.ml, as well as hexbear.net. Ofc you can always go visit hexbear.net itself too - either with an alt or if you don’t want to vote or talk, without an account. There are many paths available to you:-). Ironically lemmy.ml itself would not be ideal, b/c it has defederated from lemmygrad.ml (I don’t know why:-).
196 sounds like a simple misunderstanding, though exactly what we are talking about here: they had a golden opportunity to listen patiently, assess where you were coming from with your question, and if you were “wrong” then to educate you about the situation - to all of which you (as I would in your place) extremely likely would have said THANK YOU, whether they managed to cause you to change your mind or not, for e.g. spending the time and engaging in that proper, civil conversation. Fwiw, I’ve never heard Ada (the admin) fly off the handle like that, and conversely have talked about being the way I described above instead. So I’m sure it was just a power-tripping mod of that single community - yes we have those here too, that was not merely a thing of our shared Reddit past:-P. I too get weird vibes from it and it is the only - and first - community that I always banned whenever I made a new account somewhere on the Fediverse. I hope that did not sour your experience with the rest of that instance… but if so, it is their loss. Though like my own bad experiences with ChapoTrapHouse and lemmygrad.ml, it is good that both of us did not simply abandon the entire concept of the Fediverse, b/c there really are good people here, even though there’s also a lot of noise and children’s chatter about as well.
Anyway I am glad that you managed to solve this mystery - of hexbear.net not being defederated, but those certain communities residing on it having been removed - that was indeed seemed quite strange to me!:-)