This is an admin post, intended for blahaj lemmy users. Top level posts from members of other instances will be removed.
==
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 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.