This is an admin post, intended for blahaj lemmy users. Top level posts from members of other instances will be removed.
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After recent events, it feels to me that sentiment has shifted and more people are asking for defederation of hexbear than previously.
I've been doing my best to try and mend bridges and keep us connected, as it's my hope that we can maintain trans solidarity and work with them, despite the friction, however, ultimately, I feel that this is an issue for the blahaj lemmy community to decide, not the admins alone.
So here's what we're going to do.
We're going to leave things as they are for a week. That will give time for things to calm down whilst we see if we can work together. After a week, I'll put up a vote and get a feel for where the community is at in regards to our continued federation with hexbear. That poll will run for a week. If there is a strong will to defederate (a clear majority), then that's what we will do.
I really really really dislike how fast so many people here are to discount their members and clamor for defederation. Queer solidarity, Trans solidarity, and Left solidarity is important. The people from hexbear aren't an "other" we're all in the same boat, it just happens that people from hexbear tend to be more jaded with the systems that a lot of us are slaves to in the west and in first world countries. Every single one of us is one little disillusionment away from holding the same or similar views as any person from hexbear, (I was already moving in that direction and have already made my own account there, though I started my lemmy usage here on Blahaj.)
Can they be a little overwhelming? Sure. But again, their users trend towards individuals fed up with the systems in place and are past the point of engaging in ways that look "respectable" or in their words, "liberal."
Edit: It's also kinda insane how they're being treated by certain mods even when they argue in good faith. image
Queer solidarity, Trans solidarity, and Left solidarity is important.
Solidarity is not a one-way street though. You cannot expect one group to always tolerate all behavior of another, without the other group acting in the same way. Both groups have to agree that the members of the other one deserve respect and should stand up for one another. If solidarity is demanded, but not returned, then it's just empty words.
In the same vein "Being fed up with the system" is no excuse for taking out one's anger on anybody who is also suffering under the same system. That's just abuse.
To bring it back to the current discussion: Members of Hexbear have to make an honest effort and demonstrate that they willing to treat members of Blahaj.Zone with the same kind of respect that they are expecting to be met with. Constantly dunking on people and being obnixious and rude isn't that.
I've tried pretty hard to just talk with people, but probably 80% of the time I am put in a position where nothing I say is right, including multiple users coopting therapeutic language around abusive relationships to personally accuse me of using such tactics (with no substantiation), along with endless "red fash" type remarks. None of that is your fault, but remember that some people on our side also get attacks we did nothing to deserve.
I don't think federation can work because one of your larger communities is obsessed with hating people like us, to the point of the mod just using private attempts at diplomacy for more drama fuel, but I still support it because I think it is worth it for all of us to see how it goes.
I completely agree with your comment. I followed CTH back when it was on reddit, because it was a refreshingly queer space. Whilst I didn’t always agree completely with the politics, I wanted to learn more about the way they see the world.
They only just federated, after being isolated for three years. I think they’re still figuring out how to be part of a wider community again and they deserve patience while they do.
Queer solidarity, Trans solidarity, and Left solidarity is important.
I hope Hexbear users realise this as well after everything that’s happened in the past few days. I want to be federated with them a lot. But I was really disappointed when I saw people from Hexbear attacking our admin. They just paid a huge amount of money out of their own pockets when traffic increased sharply, because they care about us users a lot. Then spent a bunch of labour hours migrating to new providers to keep things sustainable. I hope this is a wake up call that we’re their comrades too.
Some of us experienced the harassment personally and are not eager to allow those people free reign over our spaces.
Every single one of us is one little disillusionment away from holding the same or similar views as any person from hexbear
Uh, no. What a strange general statement.
Ah yes, anyone who does not agree with you must never have suffered or experienced real life. Get back on your hex bear alt.
I don't agree on defederating on principle (I think it should be more a user level decision to mute communities/servers) but I also think identity politics like this is harmful; especially with how much disagreement on OTHER political issues we have with them, solidarity means you are okay with some of the more insane stances they have over other equally important human rights issues
Speak for yourself, queer spaces tend to run socialist, communist and anarchist
There is no left solidarity with red fascists. And there shouldn’t be any other kind of solidarity either.
Every single one of us is one little disillusionment away from holding the same or similar views as any person from Hexbear
This seems silly to me. The opinions held by Hexbear at large are very specific, and one little disillusionment doesn't suddenly make you a communist. Just because your views line up with Hexbear already and you feel like you are on the precipice of going "full leftist" doesn't mean everyone is. Hexbear isn't the Joker, there's no "one bad day" that will make you into a hexbear.
Each of us has the potential to become radicalized once disillusioned and failed by the systems in power
Happy?
I was half asleep when i wrote the original.
The views held by people on Hexbear are not "very specific" and you would understand that if you actually actively engaged with the ideas.
Maybe I phrased it badly too. I'm sorry for the way I engaged. I was just trying to say that they're specific as in not generic. There's specific theory there, and I thought you were saying that being disillusioned makes one see things that Hexbear folks do immediately, and I was trying to say that there's an intermediate step of theory and radicalization, but it seems we're on the same page on that and I spoke too quickly.
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.
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.
Yes, this! This is exactly what I hope we get out of it.
I do want to say that user level instance blocking is in the works: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3869
Oh and I had a suggestion. If you're able to, look at the poll figures for accounts created after this announcement vs the figures for pre-existing accounts. There may be evidence of people attempting to steer the results one way or another.
The Android app "Connect" does instance blocking and it's so useful!
It's too bad that it doesn't also block comments from users of blocked instances. Isn't there a uBlock Origin cosmetic filter that does that? Does anybody remember what that was?
Also, does anybody know of a way to browse two instances as one feed, and easily switch between users? I swore I heard there was some way to do that, but I don't remember the details.
It's too bad that it doesn't also block comments from users of blocked instances.
That is indeed my main concern.
The communities they host may not be my cup of tea (although many are) but I curate my home feed and I’m prepared for literally anything when I browse all.
The problem is that a number of accounts on that instance seem to have a serious case of “fite me bro” they take into the rest of the system.
Also, does anybody know of a way to browse two instances as one feed, and easily switch between users?
I've heard the Liftoff app allows that but I've stuck to the webpage installed as an app on my phone so I can't check to confirm.
I’m not a GitHub user, although I’ve done some browsing of open issues. Am I seeing that this feature has been coded (or is actively being coded) or am I just seeing that people are still discussing the issue?
I ask because last time I looked (probably 2-4 weeks ago), I saw some discussion on the issue dating back to over a year ago, but nothing that looked like actual traction on it getting implemented.
Thanks for that. Looking again, I see now at the top that I’m looking at pull requests and not “issues”. And because I don’t really know, I just looked up what pull requests are:
Pull requests let you tell others about changes you've pushed to a branch in a repository on GitHub. Once a pull request is opened, you can discuss and review the potential changes with collaborators and add follow-up commits before your changes are merged into the base branch.
So that means that code has been written and requested to be merged into the main branch. Does that mean it’s already been tested in a non-main branch and is (hopefully) ready for prime time after some final review?
Yeah, assuming the code is ready (im not very good at programming so idk) the owners of the repository just have to merge those commits and the feature will end up in a subsequent release
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.
Yeah. I certainly do not like the support for authoritarian regimes. Like, sorry if I don't like the idea of putting my trust and life in the hands of some small handful of people in power. No matter whether they are the capitalist owner class or dictators. We don't need to apologize for Russia or China to oppose and criticize the west.
Holy shit, shut the fuck up. You don't understand socialism or neoliberalism well enough to speak for either if you think the George Floyd murder was "democracy at work". Delete the comment and maybe your account.
Very similar thoughts, also consider myself to have an anarchist bend.
after I saw the first 2 posts about hexbear i actively searched for posts and comments from hexbear users to get an idea how big of a problem it really was and I found very little. I think defederation should always be the last resort. as long as there is no coordinated brigading and the admins can bereasonedd with to sanction the worst behaving users I simply see no need for it.
I honestly think the hate toward hexbear is mostly manufactured. A lot of the people complaining are the same ones erroneously comparing them to places like exploding heads, claiming they're nazi trolls, that they go on downvoting raids (they can't even downvote btw), accusing them of terrible things, but then don't (or won't) provide any proof of them acting this way. And when people like me who aren't on hexbear question it, we get accused of being a "hexbear in disguise" and ignored. It all feels very dramatic and reddit, and I thought the point of lemmy was to not be like reddit. Defederating from problematic instances I get, but defederating because you hate tankies or because of a few bad members seems more of an 'echo chamber' choice than a 'keep the community safe' choice to me.
I really don’t understand the hate towards Hexbear – sure, some users may be problematically argumentative, but that seems to be true of many instances. Meanwhile, as a trans person, Hexbear was actually one of the first places I felt safe when I started looking for a reddit alternative, and, to me, that means a lot. I’m glad I eventually found Blahaj Zone (both the lemmy and hajkey instances), but Hexbear really does feel like a good, queer-friendly, solidly leftist space, which we need more of on the internet, imo.
Like, we may disagree with their politics at points, but I’ve seen conservative and neoliberal users from other instances being awful to Hexbear users far more often than the other way around. I also think it speaks heavily in favor of Hexbear that some of the anti-Hexbear comments on the previous meta thread were from transphobic users from other instances.
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.
*removed externally hosted image*
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 was fairly neutral after my first post and the admin response until I read that post. There are hexbear folks in that post explicitly saying “the whole point of federation is to dunk on people on other instances”. Also saying things like “you can’t have civil discussion with libs, you have to dunk on them”. Like they’re saying “we’re federated to be assholes to people who disagree with us”, which is a hard pass from me.
To be clear, it has nothing to to with being leftist. It has nothing to do with being trans. It has everything to do with them wanting to be assholes.
Hopefully their mods can reign stuff in to prevent that kind of behavior.
saying things like “you can’t have civil discussion with libs, you have to dunk on them”
Tbf, this is pretty consistent with my experience engaging with liberals on the fediverse. They almost invariably treat leftists like we're naively ignorant of how political systems work while never entertaining the possibility they might be wrong.
You were hardly neutral when you made the request in the first place.
Correct, I was not. Ada’s response moved me to neutral because it brought understanding to why we federated in the first place, and I was ok just blocking their communities and moving on with my life.
And then their users started in on the thread.
As could very easily be expected. As has happened before and likely will again. Judging anything based on people upset when you bring up an inflammatory topic about them is no basis for a sound judgement.
We’ve had two other threads that they can easily see and they have not touched (except voting, presumably). That seems like the particular problem was solved.
As I said previously, if they wanted to defend themselves they were free to do so. But they instead attacked our admins and the instance as a whole.
Plus if they bothered to read, they'd have seen Ada saying defederation wouldn't happen
That post doesn’t bother me at all. Someone talked some shit on their instance in the midst of some drama yesterday, seems like something they should be able to do on their own instance. I do not support defederating over that.
It's just more about the whole attitude not inspiring much hope for me. I don't really expect them to operate on good faith when they act like that.
They were acting like that in response to a thread where someone asked to defederate with them for petty reasons and their impression that our admin was upset that they’re anti-NATO (a mischaracterization). I’d probably be mad too. I disagree with a knee jerk reaction to a clash of cultures.
While, sure, saying we were "whining and crying" and stuff like that is just really off-putting to me.
It's one thing to be upset and respond to it, it's another to pretty much go straight into insulting. Like, yeah, sure, give them a chance, but I really don't want that kinda stuff around.
If they keep it to just their instance but otherwise don't change their behaviour, I will probably just end up blocking their stuff, as it just makes me mad, and call it a day. For now though I'm still reading their posts.. even if they do make me mad, to judge for myself.
Most people didn’t go straight to insulting, they’re a pretty big instance and we would definitely know if they did. One of the reasons we have defederated people before is lack of moderator action, but their mods seem to be pretty on the ball. I’m more offended that Gormandt has posted the same picture several times all over the place as some kind of evidence of a mass issue, than some people being rude on an instance with 25,000.
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.
I don’t believe anyone on hexbear is actually cheering for people who would remove us from existence. I’m LGBT+ myself, and a huge part of why I’m against the current capitalist system we live under is that I see it as incredibly harmful for people like me. There are numerous examples, such as anti-trans laws in the US, the extreme anti-trans rhetoric in the UK, the American funding of draconian anti-LGBT+ laws in African countries. I also truly don’t value people in western countries higher than people in the rest of the world, so when I see the death toll from our military interventions and siege warfare in the form of sanctions, it makes my blood boil. 100s of thousands of people were killed by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan alone; statistically thousands of them were LGBT+. This means the coalition forces killed more queer people than the countries that have actual death penalties for homosexuality.
I don’t love Russia, they’re a capitalist country with terrible laws and a regressive culture, but Ukraine isn’t really any better. They’ve elevated right wing militias which have targeted people like me and banned trans women from leaving the country.
China is behind on LGBT+ rights, but seem to be moving in the right direction. Cuba has the most progressive LGBT+ laws in the world. Vietnam is moving in the right direction pretty rapidly as well.
I hope this helps you understand why at least one of our users thoughts on these issues. I don’t speak for anyone but myself, but I feel certain my views are quite close to the majority of hexbears.
At least half of it is reasonable and I would fully agree with it. Unfortunately then it went of the rails.
I read the same argument the other day with the US/NATO wars/invasions and equated to the persecution of other countries and that's just ridiculous. If they were sent there and died because they were queer it would be a whole other story, but if they were there because they were equal to their comrades then it was the actual equality we strive for. Not that I support any wars or any military, but that rhetoric is just dumb. Also guess what this is true for any military ever. Queer people exist even if they don't have the freedom to live their lives in the open.
Regarding Ukraine it doesn't really matter. Russia is the agressor here. There is no way Ukraine was ever a threat to Russia yet here we are. It is a developing souvereign (!) country with many problems they try to solve one step at a time. Russia is actively working against everything we fight for. Whatever you believe Ukraine is the situation got only worse due to Russia and there is no way the invasion should ever be glorified by any sane queer person at all.
Funny you mentioned Cuba. Cuba still has major problems with corruption and all the LGBT+ laws are very, very recent additions. I want it to be a success story probably for the same reasons as you, but let's wait and see for a few more years or decades. I dearly hope they manage and so far it looks better than ever, but unfortunately that's not great yet.
Anyway this post is also a great example for the US centric whataboutism I talked about in my initial post.
I’m very confused by what you mean about sending people to die? I’m talking about civilian deaths due to invasions and sanctions. I don’t believe you can actually be supporting queer people while bombing them and/or starving them with sanctions.
I also don’t fully agree that my arguments are us-centric. I focus on the US and UK because I am Anglo and so am more aware of the role they play in the world.
Wars are all the same. The argument is just dumb. Either queer people are targeted specifically or it is irrelevant to any discussion about queer persecution.
I had not thought about the similarities between sanctions and siege warfare, that is an excellent observation
Sanctions are only meant to hurt people, not leaders. In fact, they politically weaken poorer people who end up trying to stay alive over trying to overthrow the government.
Yes I know it's just the specific point about it being modern day siege warfare is new to me
It’s not an original observation, but it was something that once I was aware of really made me question why sanctions are so normalized.
If you’d like a better explanation from people who are much smarter than me I recommend the podcast Citations Needed. They’ve got an episode that goes into the harm sanctions cause, especially to the most vulnerable people in the target country.
The following link has both the podcast and a transcript if you prefer reading over listening:
https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-106-the-sanitization-of-sanctions-56f976af6019
Are you familiar with the concept of atrocity propaganda? Like, for example, the Nayirah Testimony?
As I was telling someone else, it is very difficult to discuss the criticisms of us without talking about political issues because those criticisms are predicated on political claims, such as what you accuse us of here.
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.
I get that people aren't a fan of their type of leftist politics but I don't think they really do that much harm. I at least haven't seen any brigading or vitriol from them and I think they're valuable as a trans-positive space.
Did you miss their comments on the first post about defederation from hexbear? 95% of the comments were from them and were super aggressive and brigade-y
that's true. it's better that we've made our own post for instance-only discussion. Idk I don't blame the reaction since it puts them in a tough spot where they feel inclined to defend themselves. but aside from a post literally being about them I haven't seen them interact aggressively much on our instance.
I would not describe the comments on that post as defensive. Ada initially said we wouldn't defed as there hadn't been any issues, so there wasnt really anything they needed to defend themselves from. Everything they commented was aggressive and filled with vitriol. Even the comments regarding our instance over on hexbear are just rude.
Ok sure, but my point is that's NOT what was happening in that thread. Hexbear wasn't just like "oh hey now we're not all bad" or "I don't know what behavior you're complaining about". They attacked Ada, Blahaj as a whole, and were just generally aggressive and unpleasant
And they're still doing it both in this community and over on their own instance.
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.
Agreed. And I had not intended to cause the drama that it did. I was hoping for a civil discussion about hexbear because I was getting really frustrated by constantly seeing their communities show up in my “All” feed while I’m still building my subscription list. Like seeing a story I thought would lead to an interesting discussion, opening up the comments and just saying “goddamnit” and blocking another community was really frustrating.
Now they I’ve blocked most of their big communities it’s been better, but their behavior in they thread as well as some of their community’s reaction to proposed rule changes has me thinking that maybe my initial reaction was correct.
Lots of good points in this thread, but I'd like to offer that even if everyone on hexbear were terrible annoying people, I'm an adult who can block content for myself.
Defederating is good for when an instance is hosting illegal content and you need to keep it off our servers, or if an instance is spamming stuff with bots and abusing the fediverse, but when it comes to content I do or don't want to see, I want to make that decision myself.
Right? People talk about how frequently they utilize the block button and it's like... keep doing that! Don't ruin federation for everyone else because your sensibilities and your politics make it hard for you to interact with others!
We should primarily defederate:
- nazis, because their ideology inherently calls for violence against marginalized groups based on their race, religion, sexuality, etc.
- Gore, due to its ability to cause trauma simply by viewing
- Illegal content for which Blahaj could be held liable
Yes, this exactly. I left another instance because of too heavy-handed moderation, don’t really want it again, and especially not over a problem that began when someone didn’t like seeing annoying things in the All feed and Lemmy’s broken sorting.
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.
Leftists use the term liberal to refer to people who are moderates, e.g. the Democrats rather than the communists. Liberals often hold some progressive ideals, but ultimately believe it should happen within the context of capitalism and our existing systems.
Hexbear hates on liberals a lot, but they're hating on them because they're not progressive enough. It's not a right wing thing.
I've seen some of them claim to be a "leftist unity group" while "lib dunking" on anyone with a slightly different geopolitical opinion then them. And then there's the incessant questioning if someone is "really a leftist". It doesn't seem to matter how progressive you are.
I used to call people libs, but after contact with them it feels cringe now, not gonna lie.
There are some cool people, but in my experience the vast majority are trolls pretending to be communists.
You ban trolls. You can't reason with them because they derive enjoyment from engaging in bad faith.
Trolls are trolls first and foremost. They may adopt some ideology for the lulz, but only as a way to rile people up and troll them.
But their ideology has been consistent for the years they've been completely isolated from the Fediverse. It doesn't make sense that they would be trolls trolling no one but themselves for years with consistent ideology and rhetoric.
When they say "liberals" I personally understand it as referring to liberalism in the textbook economic sense, i.e. support for private property, market economies, Age of Enlightenment ideals of personal liberty, and what could be called "bourgeois" democracy. You may be somewhat familiar with the economic definition of "liberal" from the term "neoliberal", which refers to the types of market liberalization associated with Reagan and Thatcher.
So basically the confusion comes because in the popular discourse of the United States, political terms are often used with completely different meanings from their more international/proper definitions. This is made worse by the fact that leftists use a number of words, such as "anarchy" and "dictatorship", in completely different ways than most of the rest of the world.
The issue of contradictory definitions is particularly problematic for me as a Norwegian-American leftist, because I might say "I'm a republican. I'd never vote for Liberals or Democrats in my life. I strongly oppose liberal ideology." one moment, and then the next I might say, "Oh, no, I'm absolutely a liberal! I hate Republicans like nothing else and only vote Democrat.", with these statements not being contradictory in the slightest because these words are all autoantonyms with meanings depending on who exactly you're speaking to. And don't even get me started on the American versus Norwegian Overton windows!
Edit: I guess you could say these are examples of what the What Is Politics? podcast refers to as political "worbs". Great podcast IMO.
You are completely correct and explained things well.
As a note for those wondering, anarchy refers to the absence of "unjust" hierarchy (take that as you will, different anarchists take different views on it) and dictatorship is the "rule without restriction" that a class has over society, e.g. a capitalist society is the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" not because there is a single person who is a dictator but because political power is overwhelmingly placed in the practical control of the bourgeoisie through many different means (corporate media, lobbying, speaking fees, etc.)
If you look at their post about rule updates for their instance, there are several of them that say things like “but dunking on people is the entire reason to be federated”. Like they’re explicitly wanting to federate to be assholes on other instances.
Hopefully their admins can rein stuff in a bit.
They definitely have troll vibes going on. But at least they seem mostly harmless. I've noticed a lot of jokes are copy paste. I like allies around as well.
I followed the previous threads without participating, so let me just quickly say I'd rather we stay federated. I can see how some people might get really annoyed by their more vocal shitposters and political takes, but I think they're overall good.
