Based on recent events
Based on recent events
~500 comments about our instance and admins in the past week. Talk about needing to touch some grass...
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What do you expect? There's a reason everyone who has a desire to maintain their sanity has defederated from them.
There's some good peeps there and they help in keeping the crypto-fash in check. But their clannishness is unchecked.
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.
Well their criticism of the current system is on-point, and they can help counter pro-capitalism ideologues. It's just that their praxis tends to be shite when they try to be all "vanguard of the proletariat" or overuse their "bullying" as a tactic.
they can help counter pro-capitalism ideologues
Only with authoritarian ideals, and while supporting places like China and N. Korea, giving capitalists every reason to mock what the tankies falsely present as communism.
Like, you do you, but personally simply having anti-capitalism in common isn't enough to overlook the oppressive ideas they preach and support (even if indirectly, by using that instance specifically, they actively endorse and condone those ideals), just like having anti-stateism in common isn't enough to overlook the oppressive ideas "an"caps preach and support.
They're telling you who they are, the best thing you can do is listen (and if any of these users really are that chill and not at all tankies like you give them credit for, they should understand why being affiliated with authoritarians is a red flag to most users, and have no problem creating an account on another instance that isn't bringing mass defederation on to itself by brigading and harassing anyone who doesn't agree with their oppressive views)
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.
I think it's because you and me face the brunt of their ire for trying to defend our instance inside their toxic comms, and that colors our perspective. But I try to step out of this and see things less personally when it affects more than just me. Just my take. I generally appreciate having the chance to be challenged from the left on occasion. None of us is perfect at the end of the day.
but unless they happen to want the violent destruction of the western liberal democracies
Btw, I think we also need to be cognizant when they exaggerate, but then again, a lot of their users will be the first to say "Lol, they think we exaggerate" so it's not always clear since they're too many levels deep in irony, which has it's own impact on their userbase's mentality. Similar statements generally require discussion and deconstruction before one can decide if that person deserves some sort of sanction.
I think we just need to take what they say at face value, because it's all to easy for problematic users to pivot to "just joking" when they get called out.
Yeah I couldn't agree more, they've caused enough issues to prove that it really isn't and hasn't been a joke for a long time.
Hexbear and lemmygrad are the only instances I blocked in-client, and it was a drastic instant improvement.