Greetings dear lemm.ee folks,
I have noticed an increasing number of lemm.ee users dissatisfied with Hexbearians. Reading through the modlogs on hexbear.net, I have observed truckloads of lemm.ee users being banned on hexbear.net, meaning that they won’t see any Hexbearian’s reply to them since Hexbearians aren’t able to see their comments. Despite this, I have yet to see the complaints from lemm.ee die down. May I politely ask, what is it that makes so many lemm.ee users hate us? And, how can we improve? Thanks!
I humbly request that all parties involved in the comments refrain from using slurs or name-calling to reduce the workload on mods and admins.
This type of thread does not work. There are too many misunderstandings and wrong assumptions between users, people treat each other as enemies and the thread just devolves into a flame war. I expect this thread will need to be locked very soon.
I am 100% convinced that the negative image many Lemmy users have of Hexbear is completely wrong. These “hexbear discussion” posts are just a constant escalation, where more and more users mutually attack each other, and these attacks pull in further “neutral” users into the conflict, forcing them to “choose sides”. It’s completely unnecessary and in fact counterproductive - I am sure that in fact most of us want the same things, such as good living conditions for all humans globally, sustainable use of the planet’s resources, etc.
I really hate seeing users get harassed on Lemmy, regardless of what instance they are registered on. I don’t really know how to solve this constant drama and internet fighting (other than simply isolating users through defederation, which I’m not interested in doing), so if anybody has any ideas, please let me know.
Side-note: over the past few weeks, I have received several DMs from users directly attacking me for not defederating Hexbear. This instance is provided through volunteer effort, I am not planning to respond to feedback in the form of demands or attacks, so I am not responding to these DMs directly, but I will write a generic response here:
- Lemmy allows you to block users and communities
- Lemmy will soon also allow you to block instances
- You always have the option to switch to another instance with a different approach to federation, or start your own
yeah as much as I comment on stuff like this, it really doesn’t go anywhere. I fundamentally do not understand where the intensity is coming from or why people are so upset
the only thing I know to recommend is that if a user is not having an enjoyable time online, or if they’re still thinking about forum arguments for days/weeks, they should take a leave of absence from the internet entirely. Maybe it would be difficult but I think perhaps moderation should look for people who seem to be using these websites in an unhealthy way and send them a DM asking if they’re ok. Ask them how their experience with the site is going and ask if they’re becoming obsessive or find themselves often feeling angry or tense. If that’s the case then the best thing is to recommend taking a break from being online for a while
Sunaurus, I respect your opinions deeply- hexbear is a problem. They are engaging in outright brigading and vote manipulation to push their desired political content to the top of our instance, overwhelming users here.
That being said I don’t want to defederate from them either
What am I supposed to do when I see political content I agree with? Am I supposed to avoid interacting with it? If I see something I find disagreeable, am I also supposed to ignore it? How am I supposed to interact with political content? We’re not doing any kind of malicious manipulation. You make it sound like we’re hackers unfairly using the website and that’s not happening. We upvote things we see that we like. We can’t downvote, since our admins disabled downvoting. We comment on political stuff we don’t like.
Am I just not supposed to be here at all?
I like y’all. When I see @hexbear I know what I am about to read isn’t going to be thinly veiled racism or capitalist bootlicking, while both less common on Lemmy than Reddit still do make their appearance. I like your bantz and images. Also special shoutout to the Disco poster.
Is there any reason to think it isn’t rooted in the difference in political alignment? The very existence of such deep left thought is going to cause a lot of political stress on people not used to having their ideology challenged, be them centrist or even moderately left.
Personally I think it’s healthy to be exposed to it but I think I’m in a minority here.
The war in Ukraine is also likely exasperating things.
Why does such a large portion of lemm.ee want to block hexbear.net?
Because they are cowards blinded by liberal ideology.
And, how can Hexberians improve?
We can improve by becoming even more hardline communist.
I kindly ask you to edit out the word coward in your comment. I hope that this thread stays unlocked for as long as possible. I also believe that words like these we often use do contribute partly to their hate.
I try to engage everyone in good faith, but I’m also out of step with the majority of time zones on lemmy.
I’m not that scrappy. We don’t have downvotes (which don’t have notifications), so generally people reply instead (which do have notifications). The sincerity of any response is going to vary wildly. If I personally am going to respond to a post about Tiananmen Square or whatever, the initial poster is going to have to wade through a bunch of answers I will charitably call “tedious”.
That said, if a certain sort of poster who trips some wire responds, or we get called something that implies you won’t take us seriously (e.g. genocide denier is a more common one among others we’d consider on the left), why bother with civility or politeness? Even if you started to hear a doorknocker out, how quickly will your patience dry up when they start calling you a liar and a paid shill for inscrutable foreign agents?
we get called something that implies you won’t take us seriously (e.g. genocide denier is a more common one among others we’d consider on the left), why bother with civility or politeness?
Interesting you’re commonly being called genocide deniers. I haven’t seen a specific case yet, but I’ve seen the accusation frequently.
You seem to imply the accusation is not justified. But assuming this is case, you do note it is brought up frequently. You may also be aware that most other communities don’t have that issue.
So if you are right and you are not genocide deniers, where is communication going wrong that others still frequently think you are? Maybe you can present your ideas in a way which is less misleading, to make yourself better understood. To help others to understand you better.
A common practice is to distance yourself from a bad thing for which you don’t want to be mistaken. Inversely, the lack of such distancing can sometimes be seen as evidence for alignment with bad things.
If you’re still with me, let’s switch perspectives for a second. Assuming you realize you’re talking with a genocide denier, which you despise very much. Would you care wether they deny genocide politely and with civility (if that last bit even makes sense)? I’d say you probably already lost the conversation if the other side thinks you’re a genocide denier, and how much effort you put into being polite and ‘civil’ is meaningless at this point.
From my understanding, the term “genocide denier” correlates strongly with arguing in bad faith, and not taking things seriously. It seemed important to you that you are the opposite; arguing in good faith and you want to be taken seriously. Which highlights the importance of the first section of this comment. Help others understand easier and clearer who you are, or who you are not. If you are commonly misunderstood, it’s probably worth questioning where things go wrong and how you can change how you are being perceived.
I personally avoid argument threads for the most part unless I have a dire social need, but not every conversation is necessarily about the Holodomor and Xinjiang (the two points of contention it seems).
I’d hope that everyone I talk to and take seriously is a denier of “White Genocide”, the theory that white people are under threat of being bred out and marginalised in their own lands by the deliberate machinations of refugees and immigrants. In this rather gross example, we wouldn’t refer to each other as genocide deniers.
After which point it becomes a discussion about what actually happened, what constitutes a genocide, whether that fits this legal definition or that etc. But the conversation never gets that far.
Personally I’m not super interested in relitigating this conversation every time a Chinese cop does something or a member of Azov sneezes. But if other people get something out of it, idk. Whatever. But it is a point of friction between our communities.
Ok first I’m gonna point out that I don’t wanna re-litigate any of this and I’m not interested in conversation about the content, but rather how the conversations normally go. I’m honestly not an expert on this stuff and it’s really tiring constantly talking about them. The main things that end up being fierce discussions right now are issues with China (namely Xinjiang and the 1989 Tienanmen square incident), and sometimes issues with the USSR (namely the 1930s Ukranian famines).
it seems like that no matter how much discussion is had on this stuff, nothing budges, no one comes away with different ideas and none of it matters. It always devolves down into shit-flinging, because the conversations themselves are proxies for current unresolved political contests. I don’t think the historical content of the stuff even matters anymore. Furthermore even scholars on these subjects are divided. There isn’t a consensus among historians on if the Soviet Union is responsible for genocide, there are nuanced stances on Tienanmen square, and there’s a vast gulf of stances on how Xinjiang is talked about. And that’s because it’s all still part of the same proxy for political competition. These historical incidents are not yet resolved as unanimous because there is still an ongoing worldwide conflict between powers that could broadly be described as capitalist/western/wealthy and another set broadly described as socialist/unaffiliated/poor.
so even in civil spheres like international diplomacy and academics, talking about genocide or the nature of historical events can be highly politicized. There’s also a lot to be said about admitting certain deaths occurred without ascribing certain political motivations to them. That seems to be a massive point of contention specifically. For instance, I might say that the events of Tienanmen square did occur, but the way they’re talked about is misinformed or that the conflict is presented in an incorrect framework, which is the standard kind of Marxist view of the event. Liberal frameworks might say it was a conflict between value systems, between freedom and tyranny, whereas a Marxist might say something more like it was an event caused by social dissatisfaction with the Chinese market reforms started in the 70s, and this dissatisfaction came from both a working class socialist perspective and a more wealthy liberal perspective.
To some people this is unthinkable, to present it in a different framework is to deny accepted events entirely, and I don’t think that’s true. Scholars are constantly redrawing the frameworks for why events occurred, and all history is going to be seen differently by people of different class perspectives.