Context
As you probably now, Hexbear is a fairly large leftist instance, whose users are notorious for being very loud in the communities of every instance they federate with. For a long time they blocked all instances, preferring to remain isolated. Recently, however, they have started allowing some large instances into their allow list.
Yesterday they expanded said list by including the popular sh.itjust.works (SJW) instance.
Some Hexbear users immediately jumped on the train by creating posts in [email protected] making sure everyone was aware of their presence and calling out what they thought was bigotry on SJW's side:
- Example 1
- Example 2, the post included in the meme, now removed
Currently, there's people on both sides calling for mutual defederation, as one Hexbear sees the other party as "bigoted" and "politically illiterate infants" while many people on SJW are just tired of the political spam.
Where do we stand in this mess? Comfortably on the sidelines, enjoying the popcorn while it lasts.
Hexbear kinda just seem like trolls? Like no normal person seriously thinks making fun of a single dictator is equivalent to racism, it reads more like they're genocide apologists who don't want China's government questioned.
This tracks with what I found when looking into defederation. Calling them leftists is kinda falling for their deception.
They are authoritarians and use the cloak of leftism to defend authoritarian governments. They do not argue honestly and they brigade, coordinating on hexbear in plain sight. I defederated my two instances a while back for these reasons.
Being left and auth aren't mutually exclusive. Look at Stalin for example.
Fair! These folks do not actually believe in any of the leftist policies they claim to like, however.
If you claim the PRC is anything but an authoritarian capitalist hellscape, you have nothing of value to contribute. The world is filled with authoritarians who use the popularity of leftist policies to get into power, then put those people in camps.
If they're going to do nothing but troll and be toxic, then unfortunately it's necessary. I also feel strongly that excessively defederating or banning visitors from the entire instance harms the fediverse. Instance bans and defederation should be used when instances have shown that they can't be relied on to communicate meaningfully outside their instance.
That's what I was thinking, though you can't rely on assumptions like that. It feels like they're intentionally making stuff up for leverage.