Update: Due to overwhelming support for defederation, we will be going through with that at 12am Moscow time (approx. 8hrs from now). Thanks to everyone who provided their feedback.
It's come to our attention that the admins of europe.pub are allowing pro-genocide rhetoric and Nazi propaganda to be freely posted on their instance.
Additionally, the main perpetrator has been promoted to moderator on the Poland@europe.pub comm where they consistently post pro-ukrainian-nazi propaganda and wish death upon the Russian people.
Due to these factors and the unwillingness of europe.pub admins to act, we are holding a vote to defederate from their instance. Please comment with either an emote or yes/no to the question: should we defederate from europe.pub?
or "Yes" - Defederate
or "No" - Remain federated
If an instance is making it more difficult to maintain a safe space for marginalized people on hexbear, that's when it needs to be axed. But it seems to me that a lot of these "yes, defederate!" arguments are more just about how obviously wrong and bad the mods and admins of these other instances are. And yes, they are wrong and bad, they're fucking disgusting. But by cutting ourselves off from ever being able to even see the shit they post, are we helping hexbear be a better place, or are we only making it so our correct analyses and perspectives are seen by even fewer people (including lurkers and potential comrades on the sidelines)? I'm not saying I have the answer to that question, I do lean more towards it being the latter, but maybe I'm wrong.
The most interesting threads to me are often the ones where hexbears, lemmygraders, and some .ml's are schooling the libs and tearing down the fash. When we defederate from the instances where said libs and fash think they won't get any pushback, we not only make it so those threads don't happen for us anymore (and I respect those who prefer that, dgmw), it also makes it so all that disgusting shit goes more unopposed on the rest of the "lemmyverse." It also makes it so our comrades on .ml, those who do speak up to counter the lies, are more likely to get dogpiled into silence without hexbears even knowing, let alone being able to come to their aid in the posting trenches.
It looks like this is already a landslide for "yes" but I still just have to say that I feel like by doing that we're just making it easier for them and (while it might seem parodoxical) worse in the long run for us, for reasons similar to what others like @Babs@hexbear.net and @SevenSkalls@hexbear.net already said elsewhere in this thread.