I feel a little sorry for the Lemm.ee users here that came to make measured, personal posts specific to the annoucement. There's a fair amount of long off-topic arguements happening in bits of the thread now and that probably makes it harder to read and manage.

This is something that's often been pointed to as a pure result of Hexbear users or federation with Hexbear and given rise to accusations of 'brigading here and in the past'. While I don't think every segue into debate has been useful here, and have also told comrades that I didn't think this was the place for specific comments (which they removed) I also think there's some important context to point out - and I hope it helps lemm.ee users wondering about all this traffic not to fall into the trap of assuming the worst based on a couple of comments:

• Hexbear is a very big and very active instance. A very small proportion of users posting in a thread (especially one explicitly about them) can seem like a lot to a lot of instances.
• Hexbear doesn't have downvotes and Hexbear users do not have the ability to downvote posts or comments on other instances. This creates a culture where if people disagree, they tend to reply, not downvote instead. Another reason we're very active.
• This thread has constantly been at the top of people's feeds on Hexbear. if they're not only set to 'local'.
• Finally - and I say this fully acknowledging and appriciating the many ordinary, good faith, pleasant lemm.ee commenters that I've enjoyed reading and talking too even when I totally disagreed with them - a lot of these off-topic arguements and more heated comments do not come from nowhere. While not at all the majority, I do see a pretty shocking amount of actively hostile, hateful, and insulting behaviour here. Sadly, quite a bit of it would be banned under Hexbear's moderation policy against things like slurs and hate speech too.

So try to keep in mind if you see salty Hexbear users replying to people that, just in reading through this thread myself, I've the following instances of abuse or smears against my comrades (and they continue popping up). So I absolutely support them defending themselves (as long as they stay within the rules here):

• Dimissal as the pejorative "tankie" - 4 times (although we actually think this one is pretty funny usually)
• Users stating that Hexbear users are propagandists - 8 times
• Stating that people from Hexbear are specifically paid Russian/Chinese bots/propagandists - 10 times
• Direct equivalences of Hexbear posters to Nazis or just straight up calling us Nazis/fascists - 7 times
• Insults regarding mental health or IQ that would be classed as ablism on Hexbear - 8 times
• Dismissing users as children - 2 times
• Claiming Hexbear users are using vote-manipulation (impossible, as explained above) - 4 times
• Accusations of deliberate brigading rather than just commenting, being active - 11 times

I've tried not to count repeated instances from the same users. But sadly that's not all. Just a handful of the following are comments that have been made against Hexbear users in this thread, without any kind of equal hostility. As far as I can tell they all still remain:

• "You guys are like cancer"
• "Braindead fucking tankies"
• "Get fucked"
• "Asshole" (multiple)
• That our beliefs are "moralistic bullshut"
• That some of our beliefs are "a criminal ideology"
• A comment that simply states "No Russians"
• That we're "evil" (multiple times)
• An elaborate comparison to us "vandalising a Jewish graveyard" and other Nazi equivalences
• And of course a comment that explictly minimised the Nazi death toll with glee, seeming to imply they should have killed more. On the subject of disagreeing with equating the hammer and sickle to the swastika (hidden with spoiler tag, for those who don't want to see it repeated)...
  
  spoiler

  "you are right, it is nor really fair to nazis, who killed measly 17 million people, compared to impressive 100 million killed by communists."

There's also been numerious instances of users misgendering Hexbear users. I'm not going to put all of these down to malice, but at Hexbear we display our pronouns for a reason - we love our trans comrades! You don't have to, but could you please at least respect them and not misgender them?

Again, this isn't the majority, but it's honestly disappointing and worth keeping in mind amongst some of the louder, minority yells of 'brigading' etc.

Actually had my first conversation with hexbear the other day. Accidentally came from /all and didn’t realize what kind of sub I was in. While I don’t really have their same beliefs, it was interesting to see things from another point of view. Had a swing of upvotes and downvotes as to be expected.

For anyone keeping count, I've switched to my lemmy.world account (which has defederated from Hexbear) and the comments on this thread are at 209. When I logged out of my Lemm.ee account there were over 800, so that means roughly 600 of the comments on a meta thread for the lemme.ee instance are from Hexbear users, or in threads started by them.

Edited to remove some slightly frustrated and possibly less than civil comments.

Banning state propaganda is great, but why limit that ban to Kremlin propaganda? US propaganda is just as, if not more, prevelent and toxic. The narrative surrounding the destruction of the Nord Stream is a good example:

American corporate media and government officials were calling for its destruction and outright threatening to blow it up for months prior to the actual attack. Immediately after its destruction, the corporate news outlets and government officials that had been calling for that very action acted as though they had never done so and presented a unified front that blamed Russia for the attack. Doing some critical thinking and realizing that Russia had neither the opportunity nor the motive to blow up their own pipeline is not Kremlin propaganda. Continuing that critical thinking and realizing that the US had both motive and opportunity, and was a likely culprit because they had repeatedly threatened to blow up the pipeline is not Kremlin propaganda. Shutting down all discussion critical of the US by dismissing it as Russian bots is US propaganda.

Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman

Oh, that's includes a now deleted comment of mine. Yes, i admit i got a bit overboard here. I wanted only to highlight a certain political tendency in the region. rather than make a blanket statement about any nationalities and ethnicities. It really came out wrong. And while i don't really care whatever this instance defederates or not, here i must apologize since i was clearly in the wrong. I should only dunk on people for what they do, not what they are.

Yeah, I generally agree with your stance on it, which is a little bit of a change from previously, but more so understanding better what was already there.

My main problem with their instance is the sub-group of more antagonistic and condescending users, which have an overlap with the ones posting what you've described as "Kremlin propaganda".

Although said propaganda isn't quite exclusive to Russia, there's also Chinese propaganda stuff there too from what I can understand, which again has that same sort of overlap in users, if not the same users as the Russian propaganda sources.

Also, some of the culture of the instance is a bit off-putting, namely the allusions of sorts to pigs, but that could just be my Autism causing me to feel more offended by that than normal.

As it is, politically speaking, I'm not fond of Capitalism, I'm aware of the general historical problems of authoritarianism that have taken over what attempts at communism have been tried, and so I can agree with a decent amount of the views taken there.

But the pro-Russian stuff that shows up there is absolutely wild to me; a country so actively hostile to LGBTQIA+, and yet it's getting support from people in an instance that is inclusive to that same persecuted group? The same country that doesn't even appeal to their ideals of leftism and/or communism in modern day? And the same country that blatantly commits to violations of human rights? It doesn't make any logical sense.

So to your point, it's a moderation issue mainly, and an issue that actually is being addressed, so nicely done to the admins/moderators there for that, and well done to you for bringing that to attention here as well.

And hopefully as you've said, once people start getting used to the rules and connection to other instances, said antagonism, condescension, and trolling will reduce with time.

And apologies for the absolutely flowing sentences that go on for way longer than normal, I blame the Autism/ADHD, as it's closer to how I actually speak vocally. I try to space it out so it's more readable, and less of a wall of connected language that blurs together, especially for those who might have dyslexia.

As a Hexbear user and one of the people your mod and OP interacted with in that thread, I find a good chunk of this post concerning and often spurious.

First, personally, I am one of the people who accused him of engaging in behaviour that was tantamount to Holocaust denial. I did so after his repeated, blunt, assertions of false equivalency between the undisputed horrors of Nazi Germany and those - some true, many disputed, some outright refuted - of the Soviet Union. I explained that this practice is known as the 'Double Genocide Theory' and even linked to articles by Jewish historians and Holocaust academics that explained the issues with the theory and the history of its official use to whitewash far-right movements, particularly in post-Soviet states. Instead of receiving a modicum of serious engagement he instead deliberately and grossly misrepresented and dismissed not only my point but the work of the Jewish academics I linked before leaving with an insult.

Secondly, what exactly constitutes Kremlin propaganda? This is a usually completely baseless claim that is thrown constantly at Hexbear uses, but also almost any marginally left or anti-war figure on the internet. A small but vocal group of cynical users that cannot and will not tolerate opposing viewpoints use it to shut down debate and to smear people. As your mod/OP stated, Hexbear does both refute and ban clear instances of actual Russian (or other) state propaganda when it's demonstrably untrue or breaks our very strict rules on bigotry of any kind. But much of what was smeared as Kremlin propaganda was not, because it was not.

Your very own mod/OP engaged in a version of that in the thread on Hexbear and when pushed on what it meant variably either ignored the question or cast the net as wide as anything Russia (state, politicians, or media) have ever said. Several people made the point that a Russian source can say can say something that's factual, or identify something true and use that as part of a political narrative. Does that objective truth suddenly because false as soon as it's spoken by Russian lips? These questions were ignored.

Personally, I'd prefer that there isn't defederation, that the bad feeling that's undoubtedly been created by members from both instances, is moved on from, and to explore and engage with more of lemm.ee afresh. I also recognise and respect that decision as being lemm.ee's to make, but felt that users deserve to hear some of the other perspective. Especially when I do not believe your mod/OP is either willing or able to be clear eyed or act in good faith around contentious issues like those highlighted in this thread. Which of course is also to be considered, and decided by, users of Lemm.ee.

My view is that this federation of theirs is just sketchy. Their announcement post reads as some barely veiled call to propagandize the Fediverse, and the instance itself seems almost proud in a way to have developed their particular methods in their isolation. Though from what I've seen, those methods are mostly just whataboutism and "just asking questions", not anything particularly novel.

If there was much content or interaction from them that was just neutral, it'd be much easier to swallow, but everything they post or comment always seems be a dog whistle at minimum. And maybe I'm just not noticing all the users not doing that, but the ones I do notice are all over.

All in all, I'd be more in favor of defederation. I've seen enough of this from the right already to have an idea of where this is going, and barring a larger effort from the instance to change, would rather it just got nipped in the bud.

I'm firmly against defederating anyone. It's sad that so many just want to remove voices they don't like from a public forum. I believe that we should avoid defederating at all costs, it should be the absolute last measure contemplated after everything else fails. I didn't like their posts for a couple of weeks doesn't even come close to being a good reason IMO.