Based on recent events

they help in keeping the crypto-fash in check

Unless your users at large are crypto fascists I don't think you need crypto authoritarians to keep crypto fascists in check.

Do we really need their help keeping fascists in check? Problem is hexbears consider everyone who's not on ml or hexbear to be an ipso facto fascist, and act accordingly. There's zero room in their ideology for anyone with more moderate political views. I'd say the majority of our users are probably left leaning, but unless they happen to want the violent destruction of the western liberal democracies, then they just aren't left enough for hexbears to accept.

Having said all that, I feel like we've managed to successfully remove most of the overt political trolling from hexbear on our instance lately, so our own communities aren't too affected. But they really hate the fact we've been clamping down on them.

I'll also acknowledge the majority of hexbear's users don't go trolling. They seem to have a bunch of well meaning people who are focussed on community building, a bunch of political history/theory enthusiasts, and a bunch of awful trolls who are just there for the lulz. You can see in their own modlogs that there's tensions within their instance between those groups.

So, it's a complicated situation to deal with, and depending which groups you interact with, you might have a very different experience. From my own experience I'd say the bad far outweighs the good though.

Those of us in the DB absolutely love you guys. You’ve got our support. Normally I’m against defederation as much as possible, but I know you guys will make the right choice and do what is best for our instance.

Give ‘em hell.

even if these posts were "grilling the admins" it's literally your instance, you don't have to listen to anybody lol.

this instance is by far one of my favored instances though. So i'll continue to use it regardless, and if it does go to shit, i'll just jump ship lol. Freedom to surf is part of federation after all.

Not from what I've seen, it's just not tolerant of liberalism.

I use adblock :/

Eh, within a day or two is normal to respond imo, not everyone sees the post immediately.

I've never had a positive interaction with anyone on that instance.

I thought users could individually block comms now. For example i tried blocking lemmy.world and while that was in place i didn't see comments from there. Is this not the case for you?

I'm literally getting pinged from inside hexbear after being banned, from people cackling that I can't respond.

I had to clean up a bunch of obvious bot spam from FoodPorn yesterday when I noticed it all after accidentally clicking into the community and leaving my all feed. I am now not sure if the report feature works; all the posts had tons of down votes but my report inbox has never had anything in it.

If other mods are relying on the report feature and it's broken, it would explain why even the active mods are slow to react to things.

Shit. That’s a great point. Hadn’t looked at it that way.

Prefacing with the TL;DR since I went much longer than I meant to and don't feel like deleting lol. But I thank you for seeing that most HB users (that voted) value keeping federation with dbzer0. The rest of my reply might be pointless nonsense, so fell free to stop here.

I also have a HB account in addition to my lemmy.ml I am obviously replying to you now with. I also voted that we should stay federated along with many others (which as you saw was a large majority). While there are real moments of hard trolling that I see, the shit happens with lots of other instances that aren't .ml, lemmygrad, or HB. It is something that happens no matter old internet, new internet, federated, mega social media sites. One person's troll is another's friend depending on so many factors. Some of which is even misunderstandings turning into people just all jumping in all due to said misunderstandings. While others are intentional, but might not be malicious and just taken the wrong way (completely text-based communications are constantly taken wrong).

For example (in my case) I might take a post or comment differently depending on which account I am using. But not notice right away that the source is from an instance that I don't have an account on. So I might comment with a take thinking of the instance I am on (and therefore a different understanding of the regular vibes) and be taken much much differently than I mean. Sometimes I delete a reply right after posting when I see it is not from the instance I am using.

I personally get taken wrong by people IRL when I am fucking around due to strong sarcasm and sometimes lack of expression on my face. My main point is that a lot of people on HB, Lemmygrad, and .ml actually like lots of the boards on dbzer0. I personally make sure to subscribe to the same boards from dbzer0 on my different accounts just to make sure I see the information, guides, and news no matter which I am signed into.

And like many (if not most) of the comments in the vote on HB to stay federated or not (and some folks from dbzer0 in this thread), people do find the exposure to other instances to be of value. We can learn lots of things that we might never have if not faced with such exposures and interactions. There will always be people that make problems that really aren't helpful. But it really doesn't help to make sure everything is reduced to pure echo chambers and just "other" everyone else. It guaranties that hate grows as the "others" are just spoken badly of and enforces not bothering to try to interact. It allows lies about the "others" to not be questioned.

HB doesn't want to defederate because they lose more of their power as trolls and propagandists if they do.

Blocking certain instances improves the experience by a huge amount, but it really isn't sufficient. I don't really need to encounter edgy teens saying that they hope America collapses and everyone inside gets murdered.

It is a reasonable sentiment, but unfortunately it has to be dealt with if hb is gonna keep triggering said drama, because it's a common recurring theme across multiple instances.

Yes, definitely not hexbear users gaslighting the crap out of you.

Wait what do you you mean "keeps posting"? This is the only thing I've posted about hexbear for months!

We're confused? Why do you talk for other people like that's somehow authorative ngl. Not a great thing to insult the intelligence of a whole group with the 'I think' line.

Nah, life is all about meeting people with different opinions

then defederate?
hexbear and lemmygrad should burn in hell, they're one of the worst places on the internet

Are you going via lemmy.dbzer0.com or via hexbear.net?

Then they have elected…the way of pain.

Eh, They were gunning for an excuse to ban me for months now. Their mod admitted as much. Eventually I lost my cool from all their harassment facilitation and rampart hypocrisy and and gave them one.

Hexbear sends their commissar clown car around to threads they disagree with, especially in political/news communities, and brigade them with their tankie bullshit ideology.

They definitely aren't china/russo spies or the funnier ideas ive seen folks have. They skew about the same age range and nationality as the rest of Lemmy. Lotsa yanks yaknow? They aren't afraid to show you your own ass if you drop trou around them, and they have the mental acuity to expose every pimple, so you better have a thick skin if you want to speak on something you aren't as informed on as you think you are. I do have one (id like to think) and i got my clock cleaned over there once, had to touch grass for a few days. But i didn't get banned or harassed for it. (Probably because i didn't double down on my opinion) in fact i am still friendly with those same people, even the ones who hurted my feefees.

I think maybe the shock many commenters feel going over there is actually whiplash from the perspective change. From arguing politics from a position of "the left" towards people on "the right" political spectrum.

When you're talking communists as a liberal, you are the right wing. This whiplash is dizzying and difficult, and not at all pleasant. Unless you plan to learn, and go there with the idea that you are going to learn something, it's not going to be a fun expedition. Proselytizing types get mocked and banned.

Reason i say one must learn isnt to say one must convert, there are simply a lot of things we have been told about what communism/capitalism actually are that are simply untrue. In addition, there's a lot of additional historical context those who don't dedicate themselves to the subject just won't know that kinda changes the way one views how we came to be where we are today.

And one doesnt have to believe or agree with the conclusions drawn to gain this insight and perspective, but i feel knowing more is always better than Knowing less. At the very least you may find yourself understanding where they come from, and agree with many points they make.

Ive just read my ramble and i don't know if it is descriptive or helpful at all haha. Lemme just say in closing i think those folks have good heads on their shoulders and I'm quite glad i found them. taking the time to try to understand what they're about was a lesson for me in both political theory and history and i am better for it

Not who you asked, but it really is just a group of rowdy leftists that do not tolerate liberalism of any manner. Defederation has resulted in an inflated mythology surrounding them, as though they are a pack of rabid animals, but if you go on their site it's pretty normal for a leftist space.