Hexbear is far more likely to have users entering and using our comms, being another large socialist instance, albeit dedicated to left unity rather than Marxism like ourselves. I think there is enough of a culture change that we need to have a pinned post for hexbear users coming here explaining what kind of content/attitudes they might see here/what different rules to follow
There should also be a section dedicated to explaining to lemmygrad users to respect hexbear comm rules and what to expect from their users etc.
I think this would help ease any potential cross site struggle sessions
Can’t wait to see libs on Lemmy.ml start freaking out as we have a bunch more socialists come in all of a sudden.
The meltdowns will be juicy
I thought you where the cause of most of their melt downs, don’t tell me that that you are just going to retire now that hexbear is federating.
Nah, if libs think they can just bully me into shutting up they’ve picked on the wrong commie. 😄
A true hero!
When I came over to Lemmy I made an account here and on lemmy.ml. I liked both for different reasons but holy shit has the reddit crap turned lemmy.ml into a liberal shithouse. I kind of hope the libs freak out as well. I liked it over there due to a bit more traffic but now it’s just fucking stale memes and anticomm rhetoric.
Yeah, there’s been a noticeable change after the latest reddit exodus. Still not nearly as bad as reddit was, but a lot of libs are brigading everything now. I do think we should participate there more actively and push back. If done properly it’ll help deprogram at least some people, and I think it would be valuable to have a neutral space that’s friendly to newbie leftists which lemmy.ml has been up to now.
The thing with libs is that they can’t actually make a coherent argument of their own, and they just rely on mob tactics to shut down any discussion. Once the mob tactics stop working they just go away. This was basically the whole reason beehaw was defederating. These people just know how to repeat a script and when that stops working they’re lost.
We really need an automoderator bot that posts at the top of all theads (and which community mods can customize a little) which reminds people (hexbear users and liberals from other instances) that this is an explicitly Marxist (communist) instance (no left unity), anti-communism (good faith questions allowed), bigotry, etc won’t be tolerated.
Many people use mobile apps. On them you don’t see community statements or rules before you enter a place so that’s only going to be more of a problem but I understand admins are bogged down with fixing actually broken things and critical infrastructure. Just something I hope they can get to if that ever lets up (or maybe instance admins could do).
That kind of thing.
I don’t mind them. I even have an account there but sometimes I need a break from that kind of atmosphere, so I hope we retain the culture of this place because they outnumber us and if anyone is going to impose anyone’s culture on anyone it will be them on us via sheer user count and the fact many of them never log off (their joke).
I worry that if we let them they’ll turn part of this place into a shitposting instance devoid of theory or serious discussion and bankrupted of serious Marxism in favor of compatible-leftism that viciously attacks core Marxist principles upheld by all AES nations in favor of idealistic, “compromise” anarchist/western thinking.
They’re anti-imperialism. Have a good line on imperialism and being anti-NATO, US, and against the synthetic-CIA-left but that’s about where it ends. Many of them hold idealistic, vulgar, even occasionally viciously counter-revolutionary opinions/lines. All sugar-coated naturally in getting along and good vibes.
deleted by creator
We really need an automoderator bot that posts at the top of all theads.
You know I was just looking at the auto moderator GitHub page, and thinking, I wonder how hard it would be to convert the API calls to Lemmy from reddit.
I think the OG automod used the wiki for configuration. Not sure how to get around that since Lemmy has no wiki.
Probably would need to be configured as a community bot first and then figure out how to expand it into a instance level bot.
I think the OG automod used the wiki for configuration. Not sure how to get around that since Lemmy has no wiki. Probably would need to be configured as a community bot first and then figure out how to expand it into a instance level bot.
This is the perfect time to shamelessly self-promote the library I made.
This is very cool, I’ll have to play around with this! Thanks comrade!
I do think you’re a little harsh here, but yes an automod feature is sorely needed. I did see some rumblings about making one a few weeks ago on another instance, not sure if they’ve made an progress though
deleted by creator
We won’t. That’s why I want a post pinned, whole reason I made this post. Still, that in particular is not true, vast majority of people on there will dunk on you for shitting on AES
Yeah I’ve been here, and on Hexbear the same amount of time, and they’re both kinda similar. There is def more people who aren’t explicitly ML on Hexbear, but most are. They all seem to love Cuba, and I’ve never seen anyone shit on AES nations. Sure they’re not as hardline, but it’s not as bad as people are making it out here imo. Though I do totally understand the worry! Just don’t entirely agree with the assessment on Hexbear. I’m ML, just to be clear.
I mean I take personal offense as a woman at saying women should be able to be rented, sex for profit, commodification of the feminine form and calling that comradely and calling upholding the contrary Marxist view bigotry but go off.
Smattering of electoralists there too, much gnashing over who or if they should voooote this next election.
deleted by creator
Iirc, hexbear is largely pro sex industry, and decries the typical line here as “SWERF”.
deleted by creator
Are sex workers not workers?
And I think everyone would agree that a developed socialist society would support everyone to the point where no one feels economically compelled to engage in sex work. Hexbear recognizes that unde capitalism sex work is usually exploitative, similar to how most other work is exploitative.
deleted by creator
I’ve seen someone (male) mentioning they were a virgin and lonely and several posters encouraged them to rent a woman with one mentioning having done so themselves in the past.
You got any receipts for that?
deleted by creator
I just said I think it’s a little harsh, there’s no need to pop off at me comrade. I prefer lemmygrad for a reason
Not popping off at you. Sorry if I gave that impression. Simply giving my take and justification including expanding on it.
but go off
it’s ok, just fyi it was this part that made me think you were popping off
This is great news.
I hope everyone sees the potential benefits of a united front of left shitposters in the lemmyverse, exposing people to ideas they’d never see on reddit.
Struggle sessions over our differences will be inevitable, but I encourage people to be cool and nice to the hexbears, especially over the contentious topics we hold with them.
Glad to see it’s admin approved :)
Looking forward to Hexbear federation. I don’t know much about Hexbear, but they seem decent, and I hope it will provide a counter-balance against the lib infestation that came over from
.How much is Hexbear different from Lemmygrad?
More joking around, high use of custom emotes, more arguments over frivolous things, and a commitment to left unity. It is dominated by Marxist-Leninists, but you’re not supposed to attack anarchists basically. Everyone also has a pronoun flair, and there are content warnings on meat for vegans.
The biggest part is probably site culture. Lemmygrad is a mixture of people who fled here from genzedong, the original people who started this place, and the newest influx of r*dditors. Hexbear came from when r/chapotraphouse banned, and I believe had several other of its own off site influxes). This obviously has led to different memes, posting cultures etc. I think an example of the site culture differences is that because Hexbear came from r/chapotraphouse, it’s far more shiposty than lemmygrad. Not to say that we don’t shitpost, or they don’t effortpost, but our shitposts are mostly confined to comms like [email protected] etc. Their shitposts are also far more unhinged sometimes, I have seen some insane shit in hexbear even having only been there a month.
Another big part is the site rules (which also contributes to some of the site culutre differences). For instance, you can’t shit on anarchists as hard or in the same way on hexbear as here, it will get you banned. There are no downvotes on hexbear, so as well as having more users than us they also have more struggle sessions in that the only way to express any disagreement is to leave a comment, here if you dislike a comment you can just downvote and move on (This is just my opinion and only part of it, there are other reasons they have more active comment threads).
The downvotes thing is funny because that’s a UI change if I’m not mistaken. So if I’m browsing from a mobile app I’m fairly certain I can downvote. There’s nothing about their back end to my understanding (which is limited) that prevents downvotes from being federated or being calculated in their algorithm rank.I wonder if they’re even aware that could be a possibility. Would they really want to federate if it meant that other instances could come in and download their threads and comments when they can’t?Unless I’m wildly off base here this would extend to federated communities. Meaning they wouldn’t be able to vote down content that is appearing in federated communities from other federated instances via their UI?I am incorrect, the server will reject downvotes with this setting enabled! Carry on!
I don’t think that’s how it works actually, they should have it turned off entirely, even if they get downvotes their backend will discard them.
Ah ok, interesting! Did a little more digging and that does appear to be the case. Disregard!
I think I’ve seen dessalines somewhere writing that it is a part of the setting on that instance, so it isn’t just UI change.
I was around for the original r/ChapoTrapHouse from which Hexbear eventually spawned. I posted regularly and spent a lot of time there. After they got banned from reddit, they were on discord for a while, where I became a regular poster in the trans channels, and there’s some old bitterness between the entire trans community of that era and Hexbear, with 90% of us (the trans community) being banned for complaining about a moderator who was grooming in the subcommunity. On top of that, this moderator was put in place to moderate this community under the widespread assumption that he was trans, when he was actually cis. That mod was left in place (he was popular mod outside of the trans community) and I don’t know if he’s still there, but almost all of the trans community that wasn’t banned left to join a splinter server. It was clear the moderation didn’t give a shit about us (other than planting a spy in the our server and giving sudden bans to people who supported new administation in an upcoming leadership vote).
It’s an ancient beef by now, but I deeply distrust them. If they want to come by with genuine apologies, sure, I’m in favor.
But I’m not holding my breath. It’s no for me(See below). And I hate to say it because I loved the shitposting and the good times we haddeleted by creator
Nah, publicly is fine. I posted publicly, after all. Hearing that guy is gone is encouraging, and that most of the mod team is trans is as well. You actually can undo some of the damage directed at me personally by checking your discord logs and reviewing my ban. Violated rules once, punished twice for it, many months apart. FWIW, the other lemmy members who are hexbear refugees that I’ve spoken to barely remember the details, so maybe it’s all water under the bridge. I’ll clear my no vote, because it sounds like leadership has changed hands and being cordial and soliciting criticism is the most I’ve gotten from any mod there in the past
deleted by creator
Just to say I’m one of the others who was around for that ‘lifeboat’ server and left at the same time. I don’t recall if they banned me, or if I just left in disgust at how they were treating us, along with you know… having a gods damned groomer for a mod and trying to spin it as us being anti-furry bigots.
In any case, assuming those people are in fact gone then I’m whatever. Trying not to care about online drama so much now.
deleted by creator
Wow holy shit hadn’t heard about this in particular, sorry you had to deal with that comrade. Explains why there was so much struggle about trans people early on in hexbear, especially when it was named chapo.chat from what I can tell (wasn’t there for any of this, but I’ve seen several posts about it pop up when I’ve searched for other things)
for what it’s worth the strict moderation, pronoun tag and lack of downvotes seems to have mostly fixed it, although I’m not trans so I can’t say for certain
Yeah, this was the chapo.chat -> earliest HexBear days
Yeah I think this is a good idea. In a similar vein, it would be good to have a list of leftist fediverse instances with a brief explanation to make it easier to find like-minded instances, avoid anticommunist ones, and reduce pointless arguments.
To be honest, I don’t think it will be an issue. Although the culture of posts on hexbear is different, I think it is pretty compatible. Maybe just mention things like that you should add CW even for meat/non-vegan products. But that is the only significant difference I can think of. Looking forward to having more comrades here.
I disagree a little, you cannot post the same things about anarchists in hexbear that you can here for instance, they are far more shitposty, etc.
I agree on shitposting etc. that is what I meant by culture of post being different. But sure you cannot post anti-anarchist stuff on hexbear, but I doubt anyone here is going to post specifically on hexbear with anti-anarchist content, or at least I hope.
Not go there specifically to do that, but if someone from lemmygrad doesnt quite understand the differences between the two sites it could lead them starting arguments around it in hexbear comms etc. i don’t think this is super critical, it wouldn’t be a huge issue or anything, I just want the transition to be as smooth as possible, a lot of hexbear users are skeptical about federation and I think it would be nice for them
deleted by creator
Most instances block us? Then what’s with the spate of traffic and dislikes? Some admins must’ve forgotten to do it I guess
? I didnt mention that kinda offtopicskipped over the hexbear admin saying that because of the liberal in my head sorryregardless we’re still federated with lemmy.world, the biggest instance, and several other smaller instance, but we are indeed one of the most blocked instances
Haha, it happens. I wonder how long we’re going to stay federated with them if their users take this much issue with us
eh I think we’ll be fine, a lot of their users who are saying they don’t want to federate wouldn’t really have problems with us, I personally think they’re just being boomers afraid of change lol
deleted by creator
Oh, skipped over that when reading mb
I am annoyed by those instances that block lemmygrad.ml but link to lemmygrad.com. I feel that those instances’ mods are engaging in deception
Never heard of that other instance but it looks like they’re the common brand of anticommunist leftist. It’s very petty but I doubt that linking to a mimic site is really doing much. Besides making the lemmygrad name a little more popular, I guess?
deleted by creator
Is there a specific date of when they will federate with us that I’m not aware of? Because I don’t see anything other than “soon™”.
Also there are a lot of people in that thread who don’t seem to understand what lemmy/federation even is or how it works. Despite how worrisome some of their users and rules can be (CW on meat and milk products? That has to be ironic, right?) I’ll still welcome all Hexbears if they follow the rules. I look forward to the day where our communities can finally interact with each other
deleted by creator
Good, thank you for doing that.
It’s not ironic, the admins invited a vegan circlejerk subreddit and started enforcing the party line that “animal liberation is a crucial component of revolutionary praxis” or something like that.
It still causes struggle sessions.
I think animal liberation should be something that every respectable communist party should support. I’m not a vegan, but I do have vegan sympathies. I’m hopeful that in a future socialist society, there would be enough financing and technological development to have made farming animals seem barbaric and cruel by comparison, and where synthetic/lab-grown meat can become the main option for a majority of the population.
I think its a matter of when, not if. Or at the very least, I think slaughterhouses and farming can be made much more humane for the animals, since profit won’t be a motivation, and only feeding people will be. No reason not to treat your food to be the equivalent of a luxury resort before you eventually peacefully harvest them.
I would agree wholeheartedly that current practices are industrialized torture.
I would also agree that in a better future it can be done humanely.
I even used to be vegan, so I’m not unsympathetic. They just weren’t sending their best to hexbear. literally a circlejerk subreddit 🤷
What would you consider humane treatment to be in this hypothetical future?
deleted by creator
Shouln’t we also stop eating plants then? Even if they are fundamentally different beings and have a compleately different understanding of the world
Please don’t parrot the tired talking point of equating sentient animals with plants. If you are pathologically predisposed to not being able to plant based food, just keep it to yourself instead of regurgitating bad faith arguments.
I’m hopeful that in a future socialist society, there would be enough financing and technological development to have made farming animals seem barbaric and cruel by comparison
Well, we’re already there but the majority of people still don’t see it as barbaric. Some people have been vegan their whole lives, in perfect health, and reached peak athletic condition.
I believe it’s more of a cultural problem, and a practice that’s kept alive by our current superstructure. In France for example, eating cheese, saucisson, and foie gras is seen as an essential part of being French. Because of that, many people see “being vegan” as an attack on their identity, they don’t think/care about the harm they are causing.
We have all the information available about animal suffering, environmental damage, livestock-related zoonoses, slaughter house workers PTSD incidence… but it’s pretty complicated for people to change habits when they already made them a part of who they are, and have an emotional attachement to them.
No reason not to treat your food to be the equivalent of a luxury resort before you eventually peacefully harvest them.
they had to make a transphobic joke in there didnt they 🙃
Yeah, the show has a lot of problematic bits.
animal liberation should be something that every respectable communist party should support
I agree animal liberation should be supported, the same way charity should be supported. But not all good things are socialism, and socialism does not encompass all good things.
The bottom line for me is that animals cannot be my comrades the same way people can. They cannot organize and take action the same way people can. Animal liberation can only be accomplished after capitalism is defeated, and it’s people, not animals, who will accomplish that. So how can I say animal liberation and worker liberation are equal priorities for socialists?
The important thing is that we as communists must protect those who are opressed.
deleted by creator
CW on meat and milk products? That has to be ironic, right?
Not only is it not ironic: it’s based as fuck.
Yeah, we should all try to have a consistent set of moral principles. CW on products of animal exploitation shouldn’t be opposed, but rather cause people to stop and think about the reasoning behind it, and the conclusion, I think, should be obvious.
Agreed. I think animal liberation should be a stated goal of any socialist revolution.
Nice I’ll be able to use Hexbear again. Since they changed things a couple weeks ago I haven’t been able to log back in. The threads and sign in page both buffer endlessly. Can reload page to fix threads but obviously doesn’t work for logging in. Excited to be able to shit post in both lemmygrad and hexbear again.
This is either a cache or cookie issue I think? Can you delete cookies and do ctrl+refresh to fix it?
Did Hexbear update their API version?
they are now on a modern variant of lemmy, but still pretty customized. There is a small compatibility issue with mobile apps being worked on but otherwise yes. I believe they are workign on porting their changes to v0.18.1 of lemmy now.
Not sure what you mean. Like for apps?
Yeah
like the other user said, I think they’re pretty close to the rest of lemmy now which includes their API. It’s kind of janky tho
Last time I checked Hexbear it was a drama factory
I was really involved in it a couple years ago because I ran a West Marches DnD server that primarily recruited from Hexbear (I’m not really involved anymore but it’s still going, DM or reply and I’ll shoot you an invite). So I know a lot of the posters relatively well personally (though none of the administrators ever joined). Drama is an understatement and I think it ultimately derives from the administrators feeling like they need to personally intervene in every little issue, inevitably blowing it up into massive proportions.
The one moment that has stuck with me is when a user (who was a common player in our DnD server, we’ll call her Tammy) made a post mildly criticizing another poster who was making overly saccharine “You are all so valid ❤” posts literally every single day. Basically saying “Hey I get you mean to be nice but this is just annoying”. The other user made a big, long “THIS IS WHY I’M LEAVING HEXBEAR!!!” post and Tammy ends up being not only banned (with a snarky ban message) but accused of being a TERF. TAMMY WAS A TRANS WOMAN. She was eventually unbanned and the conversation got turned into “Making allowances for our Neurodivergent members” which is basically saying “You were in the wrong but it’s okay because you’re a r*tard.”
Half of the people in our DnD server who were active in Hexbear would eventually be banned; most (myself included) just stopped using it at some point.
For what it’s worth, as long as we get to keep our downvotes and I don’t have to NSFW-tag my meatposting, I don’t really mind, if anything it’ll be fun to laugh at them when they come in here and complain.
deleted by creator
Thanks for the reply and sorry if I came off a little too strong. For what it’s worth I’m completely in favor with federation and if the administrative team has gotten better, I’m glad to hear about it (though from what I understand the problem was far from just one or two rogue mods; but at this point I’m dealing with 1-2+ year old memory of ancient struggle sessions).
I know Hellscyth, one of our moderators, was banned for complaining about the admins during the early “If you complain about the staff at all you’re a ‘wrecker’” days (though she’s kind of fallen off in activity and I would feel weird bringing this up to her now; and for what it’s worth she seemed pretty done with Hexbear anyways by that point). I don’t honestly think I’ve heard a single person in the A&S mention Hexbear for the last year and a half, so we’re all talking ancient history at this point. Out of our current staff and regular playership, I think she’s the only one still around with a Hexbear ban.
Between the “Wrecker” fiasco, the three or four separate trans issues struggle sessions, the downvote removals, (EDIT: The Vegans!), and the constant browbeating from certain members of staff over users who are “Posting online and not going out and doing real Praxis, like me”, there’s a reason I stopped interacting (except to shill my DnD Server, sorry lol) well over a year ago.
But I also recognize that I’m obviously not the target audience for Hexbear, and I probably never would have felt completely at home with the direction it was taking. I like arguing with chuds and libs. It’s what keeps my blood churning. Safe spaces are boring (to me). The only times I really interacted with the Hexbear were, ironically, during the struggle sessions, because it gave me something to actually engage with. Lemmygrad with federation brings back some of that original Chapo feel, with the “home” where you can be affirmed and the “hinterlands” where you go off to fight the posting wars.
Lemmygrad with federation brings back some of that original Chapo feel, with the “home” where you can be affirmed and the “hinterlands” where you go off to fight the posting wars.
As a Hexbear user this is what I’m most excited for. Back the the posting trenches
I feel like people who complain about the vegans are sus. As evidenced by the “plant-based beer”, reactionaries want to oppress them. So we as communists should protect them, I’d say.
I don’t have anything against Vegans who don’t expect me to change my behavior to accommodate them, but Veganism is a political ideology, not an unchangeable personal identity.
I don’t like it when people put subcultures (esp. Veganism or Furrydom) on par with actual marginalized groups (whether by ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality, etc.). Hating furries makes you rude. Hating trans people makes you a bigot. How reactionaries care about either group doesn’t enter into the equation at all; I don’t like someone just because bigots hate them. Even the bigot clock is right twice a day.
Vegans believe that animals have many of the same rights as people. I like some animals (I have a pet cat I love like family), but I fundamentally believe that animals are property and should not have rights beyond that except where their mistreatment negatively impacts humans. These are irreconcilable differences in opinion and while I’ve never gone out of my way to vegan-hate, I want to be able to use Lemmygrad without their interference.
Bans on Hexbear are basically a brush back pitch. Many banned users simply create a new account and move on. Mods do not try to sus out if a new user is a formerly-banned user; it’s a clean slate.
All things considered I think this is a good approach. It has the added benefit of reducing the number of “power users” (hate that term) and encouraging people to be less terminally online.
Like at a certain point they auto-banned anyone who ever downvoted a trans user
Good, transphobes get the pit
How does this constitute transphobia? A shit comment should get a downvote no matter of the poster was trans or cis.
I assume that the comment above mine was made in bad faith
“They banned everyone who ever downvoted a trans person, without considering the context”
I don’t believe this
What actually happened is that certain posts on the trans community were getting downvotes (thought to be caused by brigadiers), so admins started going through the downvotes on certain posts and banning anyone who downvotes them.
I don’t believe it was ever automatic, but downvoting a post in the trans community (or, sometimes, announcement posts on other communities regarding trans matters) could always earn that person a ban. Which is kind of bad if, say, they’re downvoting an announcement post about how downvoting posts on the trans community can get you banned because they disagree with it, and basically being told “you wouldn’t disagree with this obviously shitty idea unless you were a transphobe, BANNED”.
Since they had open account creation, permanent account banning was seen more as a “slap on the wrist” by the admins, who banned people for basically any infraction. In reality the trolls would just make a new account and the only people it would really affect are the good-faith users who made one post that ran afoul of an overzealous moderator.
admins started going through the downvotes on certain posts and banning anyone who downvotes them
It was even more selective than this. They banned people with a pattern of downvoting trans-related posts/comments.
How can I access a server? For example I’ve been using “community-name@server” but idk what their server is.
They’re not federated yet, you won’t be able to access their comms till next week (fyi, it was will be [email protected], not [email protected])
Thank you!
The amount of people in the thread calling it a Black-List and White-List is to damn high. It’s 2023 people, I would hope we could recognize segregationist language and use the alternatives (Block List/Allow List) by now. The industry has been moved on for a while. We don’t use Master and Slave anymore, so let’s get with the program.
I’m all for more leftists federating, but I can’t help but observe this transition and wince somewhat. Lemmygrad seems to have faired well enough without having to step out of the pool because of the deluge of libs and right wing nutters flooding the pond like stock trout. Even lemmy.ml leans more left still then one might have expected.
Either the community culture is unified enough to withstand federating, or it’s not. I think it you have to ask, then it’s probably not, and you might need to have the foundation inspected.
Gulag-list and comrade-list
Blacklist is not an American word. It’s a British word originating from the term “Blackbook” in the 15th century during the reign of King Henry the 8th, during which he carried with him a literal black book in which he wrote the names of everyone who opposed his rule or conspired to kill him. Hence everyone on the “blacklist” were marked for execution.
This is the first recorded usage of “Blacklist” which was in 1639 in an English play.
https://archive.org/details/dramaticworksofp02massiala/page/194/mode/1up
Referring to a person as “black” is also a modern invention that arose in the 60’s in America.
Why should the world bend to the Western purview of race and retroactively change their language to accommodate Americans? Nearly 1 billion people speak English worldwide. Why should one nationality get to dictate the rules and what’s “appropriate” using their own social understandings?
You don’t understand. Everything is about America.
I had an issue come up at work once where we were asked to switch to an allow/deny list. Obviously did it because its America and I’m not trying to rock the boat, but I got a good chuckle reading your post thinking back on that.
I think the people worrying about site culture are just kinda boomers afraid of change, reddit blowing up hasn’t really changed lemmygrad culture in the slightest
That is the point I’m making. You can’t build a better society if you can’t handle change and can’t handle having your ideologies challenged by hegemonic thinkers. They’re worried about opening the hen house doors but the fox is already inside.
to be fair to them it’s more that they just want it to be a little comfy posting space, which I really don’t think federation will change if they just stay in local or suscribed
People should be using “allowlist” and “blocklist”, that’s even the official lemmy terms for them.
