Seems people frequently talk about negative experiences of them then end up banned shortly after
Also seems like people are weirdly quick to jump to their defense for the internet
Most hexbears are stand up chaps and under normal circumstances we get along great. The main issue as far as I’m concerned is that their posting culture does not align with what I want out of my Lemmy experience.
Basically, they are fighters. They run around the fediverse picking ten arguments at a time, getting in people’s faces, escalating moderation decisions to instance admins and generally have zero chill.
Me, I like to hang out with chill people and relax and shoot the shit about video games and stuff. Yes yes I know western imperialism bad, but after the fifth time I’m done with the topic.
I checked Hexbear a couple of times in the last weeks and although they brand themselfs as some lefty/communist/socialist community, I always thought it felt more like some edgelords being against for the sake of being against. Also the tone is pretty rude and made me think of certain Subreddits I usually avoided back when I was on Reddit.
It seems to be very heavy on edge but very light on actual Marxist discussion.
My wife describes that as being a pizza cutter, all edge, no point.
Go check what’s happening on shitjustworks instance currently and say that again. It’s absolutely not just a problem of “posting culture”, that’s downplaying who they are and what they do.
They’re just straight up toxic 99% of the time and they don’t seem to want to do anything about it. It’s a resounding echo of a sentiment on most Lemmy instances that it is how they act and yet, I still see weird and factually wrong takes like this.
I feel like we’re playing a semantics game here.
We are definitely referring to the same behavior.
They run around the fediverse picking ten arguments at a time, getting in people’s faces, escalating moderation decisions to instance admins and generally have zero chill.
This is, for most people including me, toxic behavior. They have a toxic posting culture.
yet, I still see weird and factually wrong takes like this.
It helps if you engage with the “takes” before you label them.
Point being that simply calling it a different “posting cultures” isn’t just semantic, it’s downplaying what they do.
We shouldn’t downplay racists, genocide deniers and trolls.
I am downplaying nothing. I call it “culture” because it’s not about a substantive disagreement about politics or ideology. It’s about the way they engage with each other and the world around them. Their collective pattern of behavior. There is a word for that. It’s called culture. And it’s pretty fucking hard to break out of.
I find your insistence to dig in here frankly a bit baffling.
Calling them just “fighters” is downplaying. Calling that a simple “culture”, instead using the proper call out like I did, is downplaying.
You telling me to engage and then baffled that I “dig” is making you look like them more and more.
It is technically “culture”. It is far from being only that though, and you somehow chose the least incriminating word to describe them.
That is baffling imo.
deleted by creator
They’re a bunch of tankies who dogpile, sealion, and brigade at basically any opportunity.
They literally have a community on their website dedicated to shitting on people they disagree with while having rules that require you to provide a link to them and not having a rule against interacting unless it’s with instance admins. They’ll defend it saying it’s not for brigading but it’s obvious what it’s for. “This isn’t for brigading,” then doesn’t condemn brigading when it happens.
My general experience is that they are obnoxious and combative and is working to make “the libs” have a bad time on Lemmy and when they are mentioned with these kinds of post they fill them saying that they are just some silly spicy boys in the hope that it will fool the people that are yet to meet them in the wild.
They’re just trolls. They say their communist, but I haven’t seen any evidence other than they say they hate capitalism. But who doesn’t nowadays? Really they’re anarchists with nothing more to do.
Imagine the worst right wing trump supporter spouting off crazy shit and trying to get you pissed off. That’s them, but the left side.
They also like to team up and have multiple accounts.
Buuut… they usually hate all the same things I do, so it’s hard to hate them too. 🤷♂️
Don’t feed the bear.
They’re annoying as fuck with a toxic culture, which is why they were running as isolated instance for so long
I mean… this pretty much sums up most lemmy users anyway
The place is awful. Waiting for individual instance banning.
Do you mean individual instance blocking?
There’s a problem with that
As far as I understand it that would mean that they’re votes still federate on posts and comments.
So you may block them but their influence on posts will still be felt.
Honestly switching to an instance that isn’t federated with them or trying to convince your local admins to do so is the better option.
Though being on Lemmy.ml convince the admins will likely be a serious uphill battle.
Personally I specifically looked for an instance that defederates only illegal content, I can do the blocking of content I don’t care for myself. The most important thing is that I get as close to no preselected bias in my feed as possible.
From there I can block or hide whatever, I just want it to be my choice. Which is why I find all the defederation calls concerning. Use the blocking feature, defederation excludes discourse as well, and I would rather not sit in an echo chamber.
I fully agree. I’m here so that I can avoid the political echo chambers like Reddit and Facebook. It’s been bizarre seeing the calls to turn Lemmy into Facebook.
Exactly
I mean having thw insrance not show in your feed. I know Connect has that but I want something that is proper FOSS.
I just double checked, and Sync lets you filter instances so they don’t show on your feed. You’ll still see their comments, but at least they won’t leak into your feed.
Also specific pages can be filtered so it’s not the whole instance, or users, so they don’t show up when scrolling. Still not sure if it blocks the user though, because I don’t always remember who I filtered.
deleted by creator
They’re annoying, like over-caffeinated teenagers, and they like to use what I presume are something like Twitch emotes that don’t work outside of hexbear, which looks really stupid.
I don’t think they’re evil or anything, but they’re just so universally awful to deal with that I can fully support immediate no-questions-asked defederation. They’re the fediverse equivalent of a decent enough guy who just fucking reeks because they refuse to ever shower or wear deodorant.
Unfortunately they are very in your face unless you fully submit to their view. They belittle your efforts if it is anything but outright revolution, cheer on horrible regimes and deny genocides. Very US centric point of view.
Of course it is not all of them, but that’s what you will experience very soon if you interact with them, because it is a radicalized echo chamber let loose.
Our instance actually managed to get defederated from them though. Although it wasn’t handled well from either side they seriously only dish out, but can’t take a hit. I won’t say that nothing of value was lost, because there were a few moderate users and of course some interesting content might be lost, but overall my lemmy experience got better without them.
Lemmy is mostly leftists and communists and it seems that patience is running thin on how some very active reactionary HB’s behave against the ideologies. There are also cool & funny leftists there but they get lost in noise.
Lemmy isn’t mostly leftists and commies, it’s that the leftist and commie instances defederated with the right wing instances
And good riddance to that
I enjoy a place where I don’t argue with right-wing people all the time
And during my instances time federated with Hexbear it was a shitty time for sure as arguing with those people was just as terrible
No, now I just get to argue with random idiots that cherry pick my comments apart on meme posts to manufacture a reason to be angry 😒
It’s tiring, otherwise I am also happy that there is a lot less right wing ideology on these instances.
I, too, enjoy my safe echo chambers. Just like Facebook!
You must have some well curated Facebook. Mine has been mingling extreme left acquaintances with extreme right old country ass family members for over a decade.
That’s only a problem if you’re using it as a primary way to interact with the world or inform yourself. If it’s just entertainment, you don’t actually need to see anti-sjw and cool america facts memes along with your cat pictures to be a balanced person.
It’s both true that Lemmy is mostly leftists and communists, and which have defederated from right wingers
I think a lot of the backlash is because people are used to being inside their comfortable echo chambers where dissenting voices are totally marginalised and they felt like their opinions were universally shared among sensible people.
With federation, those echo chambers are interacting with each-other a lot more than they usually would, on relatively equal footing, and being confronted by the idea that other people think that your opinions are shit and that you tacitly support some evil practice is an uncomfortable feeling! The natural inclination is to reject that sort of experience as a jerk who is intentionally trolling you, personally, because they’re wrong or brainwashed or whatever.
The reality is that we’re all just flawed people who aren’t very good at dealing with our emotions and it’s a lot easier to blame and banish someone who disagrees with us than to talk to them and come to a consensus. But the latter is how we actually solve our conflicts.
We have a lot more in common with each-other than separates us.
Except from Nazis, fuck Nazis.
Nazis bad but communists fine?
This is the hardest YES I have ever typed.
Yes
I would be happy to answer your question, but these things can be quite complex - would you help me by letting me know what you understand fascism to mean, and what you understand communism to mean? It’s important that we establish mutual agreement on the meaning of those terms before we can really discuss further!
glad you’re figuring it out!
Locking this thread down due to breaking instance rule #2.
Personally I enjoy their antics, I prefer their brand to the one of the right wing circle jerk and if they manage to impede theirs I am more than fine about them.
I jump to the defense of hexbear because, well … I like them.
They’re spicy.
I’ve seen some truly heinous, ignorant, repugnant shit on here but it’s never actually been from hexbear users.
(it’s been from lemmygrad users)
hexbear users have been outspoken and unapologetically staunch in defending their positions, but never outright bloodthirsty or antagonistic.
or at least, maybe my sarcasm detection is being more generous than it’s supposed to be, and registering false positives…? because to my view I’ve seen hexbears JOKE about some dark shit, but it never came across as unironically hostile to me.
but anyway, my opinion alone won’t sway the outcome. if the consensus forms firmly against hexbear, i’ll just have to roll with that outcome. But i’d miss 'em, I would.
Yeah I think your sarcasm detector is being too generous to them.
Here’s a link to a thread (specifically a comment about why they federated) where they are talking about a recent rule change in regards to their rules of conduct.
One of the admins response to the comment is pretty telling.
Basically being, “keep doing what you’re doing just don’t do so in instance meta threads.”
Honestly sorting the thread by “top” is also pretty telling on their opions.
I’m with you
