Hello users of Hexbear, we wanted to do a federation check-in.

So far these are the instances in question but please use this post as a suggestion for other instances to either federate with or defederate from or to comment your thoughts on federation in general.

aussie.zone

lemm.ee

programming.dev

lemmy.blahaj.zone

kbin.social / fedia.io

Please comment to vote:

dean-smile indicates you want to federate with all the instances listed above

dean-frown indicates you want to defederate with all the instances listed above

walter-shock indicates you would like to defederate with some and federate with others (please include what instances you want for each)

Here are some relevant posts/comments:

https://hexbear.net/comment/4515862

https://hexbear.net/comment/4510892

(Nath is an aussie.zone admin)

https://hexbear.net/post/1592684

https://hexbear.net/post/369410

(we would selectively not federate with their /c/196 community)

kbin.social and fedia.io are kbin and mbin respectively which is very similar but also distinct from lemmy. These are the two largest instances but we may look to add more in the future. There is an issue with those two as they deanonymize the modlog and allow users to inspect the upvotes for a post/comment. If users vote to federate with kbin/mbin instances and we experience moderator harassment they will be defederated from immediately.

My personal opinion follows:

I think that lemm.ee primary worth is the 1.7k daily active users.

programming.dev has active programming communities

aussie.zone has a lot of australia specific communities

lemmy.blahaj.zone has specific queer communities

kbin.social and fedia.io value is from userbase

https://the-federation.info/platform/184

https://the-federation.info/platform/290

https://the-federation.info/platform/73

hexbear is 1.75k users per month compared to .ee 3.6k and kbin.social 4.6k

Removed kbin and mbin due to moderation / user self-deletion federation problems

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    1 year ago

    walter-shock Drama has pretty much died as federation has normalised. The only thing that happens now is that we get a gentle amount of chuds with dogshit opinions, and expose our views to some quiet lurkers that have later on months down the line talked about how influential we've been on them.

    The dogshit opinions are good additions to the hex because they're not overpowering and they inspire useful actual answers to their dogshit takes. These answers are useful to onlooking lurkers still learning.

    The influence is good and valid.

    Sources of new users are thin on the ground and should not be limited.

    There will be an initial wave of shit until the worst users are banned. But that will taper off into something good overall.

    We should not re-federate with blahaj (or any server) unless they have corrected the things that caused our defed. Doing so will significantly agitate users here that wanted it and cause lasting bad blood that harms Hexbear. It's not an option at all until something drastic is taken from their side to address the original issues that caused it.

    • Infamousblt [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think this is what all the DEFED EVERYONE folks are missing. Hexbear will die without new users. We need to get new users somehow. Federation is that somehow. Voting against any and all federation is voting against the future of Hexbear.

      • oregoncom [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        hexbear seemed to do fine for years without any federation.

        • Awoo [she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I wouldn't say fine. Hexbear managed to tread water and it was a tonne of manual work to do drives offsite that put Hexbear in spaces where it might grab a few users at a time. What Hex needs is systemic growth caused by the organisational structure of the site, this then provides growth without labourers actively working on generating the growth. The site has in fact grown a little bit since federation, compared to pre-federation where it was just breaking even with frequent drives, often performed by individuals taking it into their own hands to do too.

        • Egon
          ·
          5 months ago

          deleted by creator

      • MiraculousMM [he/him, any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        We need to get new users somehow. Federation is that somehow.

        I disagree, we were getting plenty of new users before federation from outreach on reddit and other places, and just plain old word of mouth. And frankly I don't think bringing in new users should be our primary goal, at least not above fostering a safe and welcoming space.

        • Awoo [she/her]
          ·
          1 year ago

          This was a tonne of manual labour though, often performed by people taking it into their own hands out of personal concern/anxieties for hexbear. If the organisational structure of the site provides growth we're much better off. We have actually grown a bit compared to pre-federation too, which shows it works.

          And frankly I don't think bringing in new users should be our primary goal, at least not above fostering a safe and welcoming space.

          I don't think new users means discarding the latter. There's no suggestion on my part that we weaken hexbear's rules. New users that fit in will provide the growth, new users that do not will get themselves banned.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      We should not re-federate with blahaj (or any server) unless they have corrected the things that caused our defed. Doing so will significantly agitate users here that wanted it and cause lasting bad blood that harms Hexbear. It's not an option at all until something drastic is taken from their side to address the original issues that caused it.

      100% agree. Ultimately, we defed from Blahaj because one of their power mods is a bigoted shithead and the admin is a two-faced backstabbing dipshit. "uwu im just a smoll bean admin i can't help it when the mod of 196 keeps on shitting CARCOSA including airing out CARCOSA's dms to 196 uwu" Fuck off with that duplicitous bullshit.