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Should we attempt federation with hexbear? Discussion thread

All are welcome in this discussion but this is really more focused on local users of literature.cafe, I'll leave this post up and pin it for a few days just to get some feedback. Insight from others on other instances are welcome, but please realize that this is a discussion focused on users who use literature.cafe

Our community may be small, but I do want to know peoples thoughts before anything.

For those who do not already know, hexbear is on our defederation list.

With that being said there's another thing that some might not already know. I am a practicing reform Jew. I am by no means a perfectly observant Jewish man but I am quite a lot more religious than most I think. I wear a kippah, try my best to keep kosher, and participate in the religious rites of Judaism as well as participate in prayers and community events. It is primarily why I started this instance as reading and books are a core cultural aspect in being Jewish. Knowledge is power, and we aren't called the people of the book for nothing. As well, I am extremely involved in the Jewish community and know many Jewish leaders across the country and the world due to my stints of working as a "Jewish professional."

Being a practicing Jew in a culture with rapidly rising antisemitism is extremely exhausting both in real life and online, and unfortunately that exhaustion was maximized on Reddit at times in regards to interacting with specific communities. One such community that I had pretty bad experiences with the specific subreddit that hexbear spawned from. Right now I'm pretty reserved about talking about Judaism and my faith as there isn't a Jewish focused community on here, but when (not if) one comes I will very much be active there.

And this leads into the elephant in the room that always is brought whenever I bring my Jewishness up: I am not Israeli, nor have I ever been to Israel but I have worked with Israelis and am friends with quite a few Israeli Jews. I rarely if ever discuss the topic of Israel & Palestine even within my own community because of how charged it tends to be, but especially online it is a topic I actively avoid due to the stress and antisemitism I have faced over it. My ideals and opinions in regards to that can pretty much summed up "fuck fascists" and "I pray for peace."

I have more opinions on the matter, specifically on my very direct hatred of Netanyahu as well as more detailed knowledge of just how completely fucked the Knesset is and how bad things really are there. I speak a bit of a Hebrew, and know some of the political stuff that goes on there. Things are bad, and are likely only going to get worse there not just for Palestinians but for that entire region as a whole due to the war mongering nature of the new government there.

Criticizing Israel and it's current fucked up fascist government is not antisemitic, but holding all Jews accountable for the crimes of the Israeli state absolutely is. Immediately asking a random Jewish person about their feelings on Israel isn't inherently antisemitic but it feels extremely hostile and often contributes to an environment of generally feeling unsafe as a Jewish person especially in left leaning spaces. It feels as if you're trying to pin down whether or not we're a "good jew" or a "bad jew."

When the community hexbear spawned from existed on reddit, the antisemitism I witnessed during brigades were some of the most egregious on the site outside of r/conspiracy. That is why I blocked that instance per-emptively, as I felt the antisemitism I directly experienced in that community would follow here if federation was enabled.

I had a pretty productive discussion with an admin from hexbear in a matrix chat, and to be quite honest it made me realize my bias towards the entire community wasn't probably the most fair. The team is different there than the subreddit, and the admin made it clear antisemitism is not tolerated.

I know the community is controversial across the lemmyverse, but I am willing to attempt federation. The admin offered to add our instance to their allowlist and refederate, and if there's issues that arise we can just reblock.

I'm curious of peoples thoughts on the matter. Overall this instance isn't politically focused, but books in large part do have a political nature to them. It's hard to deny that authoritarianism and the free consumption of literature is fundamentally incompatible.

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21 comments

  • Absolutely do NOT federate with Hexbear, but for reasons that have little to do with Hexbear's politics.

    I've spent a lot of time thinking about the Threadiverse (Lemmy + Kbin centered Fediverse), and I've come up with some observations that are true in August 2023 I think every new Lemmy instance should consider. I've split it into five parts to avoid Lemmy's 10k character post limit.

    1/5 -- The Threadiverse is shrinking

    There was a huge boom in Lemmy activity during the Reddit mod protest, but Lemmy and Kbin are not as mature as Reddit was when Digg dramatically enshittified. There wasn't enough organic growth to capture the rain squall, and now the flood of users is flowing back to the ocean. It's visible in the active user data, as well the pages of undermoderated single poster communities littering the wider Threadiverse where the last activity is two months old. New Lemmy instances continue to appear, but the total number of active users available for them to share continues to steadily decline. There's a couple of obvious culprits for this:

    • Lemmy instances frequently become unavailable for unscheduled maintenance, due to operator inexperience and the rough edges of the software
    • Third party apps are still in beta stages or unreleased, and the interface leaves a lot to be desired, leaving many disappointed with the user experience.
    • Moderation tools are still in their infancy. Poorly moderated communities and inactive mods create the potential for very toxic experiences.

    This does not mean the Threadiverse is failing; Reddit will continue to decline in quality, and if Threadiverse software and community continues to improve, we will reach an inflection point. Another major Spez event after that milestone will kill Reddit like Reddit killed Digg. To reach this goal, each new instance needs to bring something more to the table than extra space for fewer people to spread out in.

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    • 2/5 -- Hexbear is a successful Lemmy instance

      I support your account of Hexbear's predecessor. I don't share your background and naturally had a different experience. I think its useful to explain the history here for the benefit of other readers to better understand Hexbear's current contrarian character, even if it is filtered through my limited experience.

      Hexbear has its origins in the subreddit ChapoTrapHouse (CTH), a community that began its existence when Reddit was an open platform for fascist propaganda. Several subreddits were dedicated to mocking black people, spreading jewish conspiracies, bullying fat people, othering queer people, and sexually harassing women. My interaction with CTH was limited as a Redditor, but their participation as an antifascist group who were fighting back against those trends was a welcome presence. When the mainstream media started making a story about the racism, homophobia, antisemitism, misogyny, and the bad press threatened advertising revenue, Reddit banned the most overtly embarrasing subreddits. In an act of 'enlightened' centrism, Reddit banned CTH along with them. Perhaps Reddit blamed them for drawing the press' attention, perhaps they didn't want to be accused of being left-wing by going after fascists exclusively. But in any case, CTH needed a new address. That's how Hexbear became one of the earliest Lemmy instances.

      With several years to grow from a Reddit refuge to a full-blown social platform Hexbear has found its audience. They have site-wide movie nights where films are free-streamed and co-watched in chat. They've developed an internal stalinist-emoji based language (incidentally famous for causing problems because federated sites display the images at full resolution.) They have very active moderation, responding swiftly to non-party users stepping out of line with permabans. Dying communities like !anarchism are kept on life support with activity like mods creating regular general megathreads there where the community topic is irrelevant. If you're transgender or non-binary and are looking to connect with others over North Korea apologia, there's not a better place on the web to be.

      While Hexbear is more eager to federate with others than others are with Hexbear, its size and activity proves an often overlooked point: Hexbear has become extremely successful Lemmy instance in spite of (or perhaps due to) having extremely limited federation.

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      • 3/5 -- Moderation, not Federation, is the Threadiverse's killer feature

        Lemmy is not Reddit, and calling Lemmy a Federated or Open-Source version of its inspiration is doing it a disservice. Since Lemmy instances are not venture capital funded, continual growth is not the criteria for success. On Reddit, people who read, post, comment, and vote are the product, advertisers are the customers, and investors set the policy. Return on investment trumps all other concerns, and Reddit must continue to grow to be successful. Lemmy allows for a much more diverse set of definitions of success.

        So the 0th step in becoming a successful Lemmy instance is deciding what that success looks like. That's obviously up to the admin(s), but it can't be achieved without skilled and dedicated moderators. Moderators do obvious tasks like remove spam and ban hate-speech, but they also encourage community activities, model conflict resolution, and produce content. A healthy community is a well-kept garden, and a successful Lemmy instance must include a collection of healthy communities. Moderators are the gardeners that help a community grow.

        Moderation is a difficult and emotionally taxing job. I've alluded earlier that Reddit made an unforced error, degrading the moderator experience by killing 3rd party apps, and that Lemmy is missing those same essential tools due to its current stage of development. But Lemmy has an advantage over Reddit in there are plenty of instances where admins will listen to and respect their moderators. Lemmy's codebase and 3rd party software is improving, and while Reddit may be able to improve their internal moderator support mechanisms, moderators will never be more than exploited rubes for them.

        Since moderation is so difficult to do well, and is so essential to the Threadiverse project, the effect on moderators should be the primary concern in making any decision that changes the policy, culture, or performance of a Lemmy instance.

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  • Man, this is a hard call. In a former life, I was one of the last journalists trained to unquestioningly respect free speech within the necessary limits to keep it from causing societal breakdown (clear and present danger doctrine and imminent lawless action test). I was also trained that "balanced" doesn't mean every viewpoint gets an equal number of words on the page or number of minutes of airtime. I rather firmly believe that Justice Holmes had it right: “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

    That said, I also don't care to drown in a sea of hate and obnoxiousness. I honestly don't know what to expect from Hexbear. From the fragments that I've personally seen, their admin seem to be trying to fit in and participate civilly in the fediverse. Whether their users will behave is yet to be seen. I might personally choose to give benefit of the doubt and take an "innocent until proven guilty" approach, but I'm not sure that it would be the right choice.

    And @gabe, at the end of the day, while all of us appreciate your asking our opinions and being open about your own thoughts, it has to be your decision. You're the one keeping the lights on, and you shouldn't allow bad actors to disrupt the community you're building here. I hope I speak for more than myself in saying that we'll support whatever you decide. If you want to give them a chance and defederate again if things go sideways, that seems like a good idea. If you don't want to take the chance, that's also reasonable given their genesis.

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    • I very much don't know what to expect either with them. Their community seems fundamentally different in comparison to their subreddit, and that makes it super unpredictable to consider how things will go. I do foresee as this community grows, more questions of this nature will present itself and even though I am the server owner, this is just as much yalls instance as it is mine. I appreciate the insight overall.

      Overall I am curious about how things might go. Curious, but very cautious. Another factor is that I plan on starting an art focused instance next week, and I don't know if it would be smart to test the waters with that if I am building that as well. I can dedicate the time to both here and an art instance, but if I have to clean active disruptions it doesn't seem reasonable to make my life harder for seemingly no known benefit outside of more potential engagement. I've came to realize very much with the fediverse, more engagement does not always equal quality engagement. It is far better to have a smaller tight knit community with a chill vibe over a giant community that is extremely disjointed and unpredictable.

      A lot to consider and think about.

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  • I'm not on my author account, as I'm using a device I don't normally, so forgive input from a different account instance. Assuming I get back to where I can freely log in before I have to hit the bed, I'll delete this and remake the comment on that account from literature.cafe

    But, before I started filtering hexbear in apps, they had been trolling hard. In the post * hexbear* where they announced federation, users were actively planning disruption of other instances. I'm of the mind that defederation is a last resort, but until the admins there crack down on that (they have claimed they're going to), I would suggest not federating with them. Or, at least do it at a time when you'll be able to spend time actively watching for reports if they haven't sorted out their disruptive users yet.

    What I can't tell, though, is how much the trolling is indicative of the broader hexbear user base. It could be bad apples spoiling the barrel. But there are enough actively disruptive users that when I see that instance in a user name, I tend to not engage with it.

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  • That's a hard call, and I'm glad it's not mine to make.

    On the plus side, engagement is a fundamental good, diverse viewpoints are beneficial and literature can play a role both ways in a relationship with hexbear users - both the things that they read and share and the things that others might share with them.

    On the minus side, some significant number of hexbear users have demonstrated, and repeatedly, that... well... not to put too fine a point on it, they're obnoxious assholes who flatly refuse to act civilly. And as unwelcome as that might be in other communities, it would be doubly so here, since an awful lot of the appeal here is that it's relatively quiet and sedate.

    The problem though is that that's not all of their users - it's just the most visible ones. If they were all assholes, the decision would be obvious and easy. But they're not.

    So...

    I don't think we can have any reasonable expectation that the asshole users will behave like decent humans. In fact, if you read through their discussions on their own instance, many of them are actually determined to be disruptive and abusive, and explicitly to the degree that someone might insist that they not be. Given the chance, they will do it. So the only way to be sure of stopping them is to not allow them to participate in the first place.

    But then it becomes relevant that that's not all of their users, and that this is a relatively non-political instance. It's possible that those users won't even bother with this instance, and while they're off trolling whoever somewhere else, those among the hexbear users who actually can and will be civil will be the only ones who actually participate here anyway. Which would of course be fine, and even good.

    So the way I see it, there's no means of stopping the disruptive, abusive and bigoted hexbear users from being disruptive, abusive and bigoted other than defederation, but there is a chance, and potentially even a fairly strong one, that that particular subset of hexbear users won't bother with this instance anyway, and the more thoughtful and reasonable ones will be the only ones who do. Which would absolutely be to our benefit.

    I guess I would lean toward federating, but with a zero tolerance policy for disruptive and abusive behavior (and with the intent to follow that policy clearly communicated to the hexbear admin). At the worst, we could have a brief period in which the hexbear users prove that they can't be trusted to not be assholes, and then they go back to being defederated.

    But mostly I'm glad it's not my decision to make.

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  • I plan to block them whenever domain blocking support gets added. My other instances I'm on, lemm.ee, made a stance not to block them. So I'd prefer to block, but I absolutely agree it should be user choice, just unfortunately the tools are there yet like they are on Mastodon.

    I'd hope this defederation discussion gets revisited once the ability to block instances from our accounts gets added.

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    • Absolutely. Waiting may potentially be the right call overall as they get used the idea of federation as well, maybe they'll chill out as their community admins get their rules more established about inter-federation interactions.

      I really want more granular federation options. Not even want, it's a need. I plan on re-federating with the NSFW instances when expanded federation options and account based instance blocking is implemented. I really don't like restricting people's access to that kind of content if they desire it. The minute I can restrict NSFW stuff from federating into all by default and image caching from NSFW instances are able to be turned off without having to disable NSFW instance wide, I plan on re-federating with those instances.

      Lemmy is improving gradually, and I am excited for some of the next updates features but there's just so much work to be done.

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  • Rule number 1 reads loud an clear. Keep it Cozy, no biggitry.

    I say federate, and anyone violating that rule can have their comment delete with a warning. If it persists, ban the user. If this becomes an overwhelming issue, defederate.

    (I'm biased as I think defederation breaks lemmy into smaller, weaker, and more boring communities).

    I think a number of people like to troll just a little at least, but I don't think most people make it their whole persona. I suspect we may get some trolls who would genuinely like a community about books.

    Maybe I'm an optimist, but I think it's at least worth a try.

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    • The thing about federation, is that it's actually an important piece of the fediverse. Breaking things down is kind of the point of the fediverse, but I am unsure how best that mentality can exist with a platform like lemmy. Defederation is a great tool when used well.

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