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Can we defederate with Hexbear? (lemmy.nz)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/newzealand@lemmy.nz
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The last few posts made here, they've shown up, made the most inane, idiotic, and pointless comments, upvoted each other in a frenzy of circle jerking, and generally made a pest of themselves.

They're a nuisance, and add nothing of value to the Lemmy experience.

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[–] 35 points 3 years ago (3 children)

Currently less than 1/4 of the votes on this post (the post itself) are from users subscribed to this community. Hexbear users far outnumber us, it's not even remotely close. With 5 out of the 8 instances with over 1000 monthly active users having defederated them, we are showing up much higher in their All feed. Lemmy.world defederated them, and they have more users than all the other 7/8 put together. Over 2/3rds of lemmy content is no longer available to them, so they see our posts about random NZ stuff, and decide to comment on them. Because there are so many of them, it floods the posts.

Basically, it takes us from being a community of NZ and NZ-adjacent people, to being a community of international hexbear users talking about NZ. It completely changes the tone of the instance.

It's not something they have done (other than whatever made the others want to defederate), but the point of the fediverse is to curate who you federate with in order to build the community you want, then people join the instances that curate the way they want. I'm not so keen on a community of hexbear users talking about NZ. The occasional one was fine, but to have our threads swamped is just not what I'm here for.

Also, hexbear users are filling all the posts from different instances trying to decide if people want to defederate or not. It's bad taste.

I try not to be a "my way or the highway" kind of guy, but I haven't yet seen a good counter-argument to my other post.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago

    Thanks Dave. I had not noticed it at all until this post.

    But I get your point, this should be an instance of mainly NZ people. If hexbear seems to take over it's probably a good idea to defederate.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I can’t see from the two threads I read through anything particular bad or offensive. Are you able to give some examples of where you feel their dialogue is impeding lemmy.nz in some way?

    I stopped using my lemmy.world account nearly as much after they started blocking a bunch that I was interested in, and I’d hate to see that going on here, but if there are valid examples I’d like to see them.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    So the last few days we have had explosions of comments on some posts, and some of my experience is from posts and communities on other instances, but having come to this post not long after it was posted, and seeing comments like "sounds like the crackers should go back to europe if they dont like it. “too long” fuck off street names over 15-letters are the norm where i live".

    They popped into a post about a name in NZ on an NZ instance to call people racist names.

    You and I may have different ideas about what is ok, or possibly the comment has been drowned out by the attention the post got so it's not so obvious anymore, but to me that is not a thoughtful comment in a friendly community.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, had to scroll way down to see the comments, but although I think they are a bit dumb, there were other hexbear comments in that thread I agreed with. I’m generally in favour of keeping the community open, supposing you have the ability to ban the trolls if you think it needs it (no idea if you can do that in Lemmy). Defederating just seems like a big step, and your right I find those comments mildly offensive at best but of course it’s your server so up to you the standard you want to keep.

    On the votes front, I believe as the admin you can see the vote counts? Are the really outweighing the local voices? Or is the proportion of lemmy.nz vs other instances consistent over time? I previously used my lemmy.world account to access lemmy.nz, and I imagine there are loads of people with accounts on different instances.

    Given the low numbers currently I think finding ways to be more open is good, but I can also appreciate not wanting to deal with shitty behaviour.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yeah, had to scroll way down to see the comments, but although I think they are a bit dumb, there were other hexbear comments in that thread I agreed with.

    This is one thing I struggle with. Some posts by hexbear users are so thoughtful, while others are so flippant.

    I’m generally in favour of keeping the community open, supposing you have the ability to ban the trolls if you think it needs it (no idea if you can do that in Lemmy). Defederating just seems like a big step, and your right I find those comments mildly offensive at best but of course it’s your server so up to you the standard you want to keep.

    What I want for a community isn't "not offensive", but actively friendly.

    On the votes front, I believe as the admin you can see the vote counts? Are the really outweighing the local voices? Or is the proportion of lemmy.nz vs other instances consistent over time? I previously used my lemmy.world account to access lemmy.nz, and I imagine there are loads of people with accounts on different instances.

    I can see the votes in the database. I've only checked specifically this post (and not any comments under it), but last I checked there were 23 voters subscribed to !newzealand out of 169 votes. That's regardless of which server their account is on.

    I haven't checked this for previous posts. That could be an interesting thing to check, to see if it's unusual (the volume of votes is certainly unusual).

    Given the low numbers currently I think finding ways to be more open is good, but I can also appreciate not wanting to deal with shitty behaviour.

    I posted a reply here, that's a little different than my attitude up to now, but I think it's still a reasonable path forward - though again anything is only a proposal at this point.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    That’s a really interesting read. Also blown away by how low user numbers are still. I haven’t been back on Reddit since the 3rd party app shutdown, and I know plenty of others have left. Makes it seem more important to me to build community but it’s a tricky balance to strike.

    Thanks for your thoughtful responses. I am enjoying having the kiwi community to interact with so your obviously doing something right.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Hi Dave. You make some very good points and you seem like a reasonable guy. I'd like to weigh in with some additional context from another server that is currently wrestling with this question.

    Of the top 8 servers, lemmy.ml, lemm.ee, and sh.itjust.works are the three that have not defederated hexbear. Ironically, hexbear chose not to federate with sh.itjust.works when they connected to the rest of Lemmy, so although we never defederated them, they don't see our content. I see all of their comments on other instances, but they never see me/us, and thus never harass our users directly. I take a strange pride in the fact that the current boogeyman of Lemmy was actually scared to federate with SJW 😅

    Unfortunately for you, it also means that hexbears are only seeing content from 2 of the 8 largest instances. They have 1.6k MAUs. You guys only have 140. Lemm.ee has 3.7k, lemmy.ml has 2.9k, and SJW has 2.3k.

    In my view, the hexbear community is actually a positive force on this platform. They are frequently abrasive, but they ultimately have the potential to contribute to what we are building here. They are extremely active and some of them are quite intelligent. But they've also become accustomed to a privileged position on their own walled-in platform, and they need to be reminded that their views are considered very extreme by the average person.

    It seems to me that the actual content posted by hexbears is not necessarily the problem, but rather it's the volume of comments and upvotes that disrupts the natural flow of the community, causing people such as yourselves to feel as if you're being brigaded. I think with the support of hexbear admins and some time to adjust, hexbear users could learn to be less overbearing in terms of their engagement with content on other instances.

    My general position is that this would best be resolved by speaking directly to the hexbear admins and requesting for them to control the behavior of their users. That being said, the specific transgressions referenced in this post are quite mild, imho.

    You obviously need to do what is right for your own users, but I tend to view events from a strategic perspective, and my assessment is that hexbear users can be a benefit for Lemmy, and it's not too much of a burden to work through these minor conflicts and try to bring them under the same roof with the rest of Lemmy. It's contingent on them being cooperative and reasonable, but surely they deserve a chance to prove that they can be?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    I've had a lot of conversations over the past day or so. I feel my view changing from one of the volume being a problem, to more that past actions are a problem.

    Hexbear has done something to get defederated from 5 of the largest servers. Largely Lemmy is politically left (as was reddit), and I would argue a larger portion of Lemmy users are leftist (compared to reddit). My understanding is that Hexbear, as a whole, are not fascist-left, and I don't think anti-capitalist views are hard to find on Lemmy. My point being: I don't think their political viewpoint is the reason 5 of the 8 largest servers defederated them.

    It’s contingent on them being cooperative and reasonable, but surely they deserve a chance to prove that they can be?

    If this is the case, and they are willing to work towards a world where they can coexist on Lemmy, I feel they should be working with the large instances to prove this. This is much more beneficial to the wider Lemmy ecosystem, and seems to me to be a solution to our problem. If they work with large instances to get federated, it proves they are serious about being responsible members of the Lemmy federation. And if they build the trust of larger instances to the point of being federated with them again, it helps our issue of being too visible.

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