I have been watching my love tie herself in knots over the last several days, having to deal with the drama that has been brought on, trying her best to bring everyone back together.

There’s been bad behaviour from both sides, and I’m really disappointed to see that some of the worst of it came from our users, who didn’t keep to the moral high ground, disregarded our instance rules and stoopped to levels of behaviour worse than that leveled against them.

There have been accusations against us (or Ada specifically) that we are a safe harbour for bad behaviour and cause harm to trans people through our inaction.

This is perhaps the cruelest accusation they could have leveled at Ada, as she works tirelessly to maintain a safe space for our community, and while I was hoping, for all the effort that she was investing into this issue, that she could make it work despite my own reservations, this last attack on her impeccable morality has made me very angry.

I’m sorry for those that wanted to remain federated, sorry that it came to this, but I am glad it’s over now, purely for the mental health of my precious beloved.

I think not much value would be lost by defederating.

They are denying genocides, they are supporting regimes which are not compatible with LGBT+, they don’t discuss in good faith, there is a lot of whataboutism. They want to dunk people and be right and not have their view challenged.

Unfortunately they have so radical ideas about it all (mostly US centric whataboutism as far as I can tell). They fall into fascist/authoritarian traps where they can’t even recognize they are fighting against people like me or us. They dehumanize people.

I don’t think their views are compatible with LGBT+ spaces and values even though they claim to be one while cheering for the people who would remove them from existence the first chance they would get.

Some people are moderate over there and that were the only pleasant interactions I had with them. I can’t tell if the radicals are a loud minority or the majority. They poison the well though.

Even after all that said I don’t know if defederation is the right choice. I mean they provide some good content and in the end they are a big community. On the other hand I have already blocked the instance using the Connect app and my experience improved a lot.

I think in summary they create a hostile space for all people. Even left leaning people are not safe due to their radicalized views and it is exhausting to have every thread derailed with some unrelated rant by them.

When I moved from Reddit to Lemmy, I made an account on blahaj.zone because I wanted to be on an instance that’s run by progressive trans people. Being able to trust that the admins will run an instance that’s actually protective of its members is such a relief, especially coming from Reddit.

Experiencing Lemmy for the first time was an adjustment. I was using “all” when I normally don’t, and that brought a lot of new things, good and bad, into my feed. There were some posts and comments that I found gross, but the things were dealt with or not so bad.

I started noticing a lot of NSFW posts from lemmynsfw with women that looked very young, and I found myself thinking about whether or not to report the content and how the moderators were verifying content. As young looking as possible while being legal and without getting banned was obviously the purpose. I was relieved when defederation happened. All of a sudden my feed was still diverse content, just minus jailbait-simulator. I missed the A+ posts by some of the guys, an Adonis or three, but I survived.

Things were great, then I started noticing the “fuck Ukraine, NATO is evil” posts along with “Tianamen square deaths are CIA propaganda”. That’s when hexbear federated. Lemmy.ml brought different perspectives, and they were valuable regardless of me agreeing or not. Hexbear is different.

Touting LGBT rights in Cuba, that’s great, and I didn’t know about the the changes in 2022. TIL. That’s my entire list of positive hexbear posts I’ve seen so far. I’m sure there’s more, but the community doesn’t seem to prioritize showing that. “Dunking” and snark are not valuable contributions, and the simping for Putin is straight up evil.

Ada and other admins/mods, thank you so much for your thoughtful consideration, your work, and everything you give to make this community run. I’m just a lurker, but I appreciate you all so much.

Personally I don’t agree with the decision to stay federated with them given the kind of community they foster. A great example is that the top post on the thread where they announced the rules change that was enough to remain federated a little longer is straight up abuser language.

I’d recommend checking out the thread and sorting by top to see what the most popular sentiments among the users over there is in regards to other instances.

Don’t participate, but it’s fairly eye opening.

I do hope that when you run the poll you have a way of ensuring that only people in our community can vote on it because given that they have a community on their instance dedicated to dogpiling and brigading I don’t trust them to not interfere with it.

I’m happy to remain federated; I think the communities, mods and the instance admins (thanks!) do a good job of curating the community, and by and large hexbear users interacting with us on this instance seem to do so in good faith.

That being said, I would make the observation that, from my perspective at least, there seem to be more than a few hexbear users that are apologists for authoritarian regimes. I want to preface this by saying that I am of an anarchist bent, so am not exactly enamoured with ‘Western’ political systems either, but this should not preclude criticism of (bringing up the most often contested examples) the USSR or China.

That being said, discussion of these things are important and differing views should be seen, as I have often found enlightening articles or overlooked areas of history through reading these kinds of discussion.

Bottom line: I would remain federated, but ensure we maintain the character of our instance.

It was inevitable after their atrocious behavior. It sounds horrible to be caught in such a crossfire as an instance admin. Especially because they used their queerness as a weapon to paint us as the bad ones for splitting the community. A painful reminder that not all queer people are necessarily good people.

Thank you for dealing with this situation and making this instance a safer place.

Hexbear is a bare-knuckle community that encourages group think and hair trigger mockery (“LIB!” and variations). In general, they bring that mentality wherever they go. It reminds me of the Goons from SomethingAwful in that way: you could spot a group of Goons regardless of the game, site, whatever.

Those communities can be fun (a supporters section at a football match, for example), but you have to go in ready to take a stray punch or two.

I have an account on another instance for when I want to be out in the world and suffer the slings and arrows and look at shitposts on !chapotraphouse. Sometimes I’m in the mood.

But I think part of the intended vibe of blahaj.zone is that it’s somewhere that as highly marginalized people we can come and not expect to have slurs thrown around, 0-100 name calling criticism, etc.

The culture of hexbear is the opposite of that; it’s not about not subscribing to !chapotraphouse, it’s about how the instance approaches the whole idea of online interaction.

I’d like to thank you (@Ada) for keeping everyone in the loop and dealing with the (sole) legitimate issue that a hexbear user raised as promptly as was possible for you, given that everyone has to sleep and have a life.

Defedding is an unfortunate step, but in this case it felt inevitable. Yes they were very good on issues surrounding representation for all kinds of ‘minority’ groups and there seemed to be a few good apples amongst them but the majority of that instance see absolutely everything through the lens of totalitarianism so its possibly not a surprise that that totalitarianism ethos spilled over into their interactions in the wider fediverse. Totalitarianism forbids dissenting or different opinions, no matter how innocent or minor the opinion and that seemed to me to be the essence of hexbear. The fact that their shade of totalitarianism included respecting trans/queer/non-white/differently abled people is both a good thing and still not enough to justify the rest of their rigidity. I intrinsicly mistrust anyone who is so absolutely certain about every part of their mindset that they cannot brook any kind of differing view, no matter how minor the difference being expressed is. Online, that results in dog-piling, brigading and flooding other instances and all that happens then is users on the recipient instance get bored with dealing with it and stay away.

I’m super disappointed in the reaction of a lot of blahaj users to hexbear. Sure they were out of line in the initial post in Blahaj Lemmy Meta but they have breathed new life into to fediverse left (if you don’t like the left, what the heck are you doing on a queer instance). They are also significantly queer in numbers and have done a lot of work in terms of their rules and Lemmy customization (like forcing pronouns on all display names) to make their instance as LGBT friendly as possible. The rest of the fediverse could stand to learn a thing or two from that.

They have the potential to be our good friends as we all face the same oppression and share in the same struggles. How about we take a step towards queer unity and left unity in the Lemmy fediverse and not be so trigger-happy with the defederation.

Thanks for this! I personally find most of Hexbear annoying on a personal level, but that’s a problem I can personally solve with community blocking (and I mostly surf my subbed communities anyway). The way the original metathread devolved put them on thin fucking ice as far as federation is concerned. They seem to have a large proportion of people who are assholes for assholes sakes and haven’t learned that just because you believe you’re right about something doesn’t mean you have a pre-ordained right to be a fucking asshole. Or at least I’ve seen a lot of those folks, which has left a bad taste in my mouth.

If we stay federated, I will being leaving Blåhaj. I suspect that atleast a handful of users feel the same. Just being pro-LGBT doesn’t give you a pass to be a terrible person to other people. Like denying literal genocides. It feels like a “I have a black friend so I can’t be racist” argument. Its just as convincing. I’ll deal with the bullshit for a week because that concession was already made. But I’m not dealing with it longer.

I’m pretty new to this instance, having moved from .world recently. I haven’t interacted with anyone from hexbear yet but I’ve seen some of their members behaviour on other instances and followed threads back to that instance.

They seem to have a self fulfilling persecution complex centred around their political opinions. I see them on their own instance saying things like ‘any instance that doesn’t believe the exact, very narrowly defined ideology that we do are stupid and they hate what we stand for’, then they go onto the other instances and make even the most innocent posts that have nothing to do with politics into commentary on their ideology. It’s like they can’t see the world in any other way, or respect that others might. Then, when they get banned, they head back to their instance and say ‘see? they’re just intolerant boot lickers’. It often feels like they’re trying to get banned, or their instance defederated simply so they can happily confirm to each other their belief that everyone is out to get them.

It can get pretty mentally exhausting seeing people say something utterly innocuous like ‘I like chips’ and then a bunch of hexbear users launch into a long winded political sub-thread on what a dick you are for liking NATO-loving, liberal, colonialist chips.

They are trans and lgbtq+ allies and that’s a good thing. I’m just not sure that that one aspect of their makeup drowns out all the baggage that comes with it. I always feel it comes with conditions attached - we’ll be your allies as long as we can flood your instance. I have no doubt that if this instance were to defed with them, their allyship would no longer extend to blahaj members.

Just purge it already… There may be some decent people there, but it’s pretty clear that the instance as a whole glorifies reprehensible rhetoric and behavior. If they feel such a need to be a part of spaces here, then they can make an account here. Don’t poison the water hole to save a few drops.

Just want to throw some admin appreciation in here. Sudden drama like this taking off like a wildfire can be pretty difficult to handle (particularly in the face of brigading) and I appreciate y’all staying level headed and legitimately trying to foster broader trans community outside of our instance. It’s an important niche and I’m glad to be a part of it.

EDIT: I think this is especially important to mention as the discourse has kind of soured from both sides. Sure it’s understandable that tensions are running high but it’s important to remember that there’s real people on the other end of it, in some cases doing free labor for a community that they love.

I’ve seen a few people from there on here and my experiences have been nothing but pleasant.

On the other hand, the communities I’ve seen there seem almost troll like. Like the dumbest worst right-wing circlejerk except some insane left ideas and they hate on “liberals”? It’s so confusing to me.

Definitely some very cool people are from there though, from what I see here. I am conflicted. I don’t want the shitshow some of their communities starting over here.