I had a dude in my private messages going on about how I was both mutilating myself and other children. Many more people on hexbear have had similar experiences, with these worthless ignorant scum popping in to deliver the political equivalent of a giant shit.

As your friends, comrades, and people you say you defend get slurred at, dehumanized, and harassed please ask yourself:

Is it worth it?

I have the answer, I know you know it as well:

No its not

I used to think otherwise

I was a fool

its not worth a few laughs

even if you dunk all you want, that doesn't take away the knife those people put in our backs.

These bigots, fascists, and NATO liberals are as worthless offline as they are here, why should we give them any attention. They are worth less than the dirt beneath our fingernails. Why should we poison ourselves with their influence? We don't make any room for them offline, why should we not online?

And really

How many essays have your written?

How many sources have you combed through?

How many times have you explained the most basic facts of reality?

How many attempts at good faith?

Only for them to dismiss it in their stupidity. They don't read it, they just crumble and divert back to the programming these little shits trust in more than God.

For every time there is a good faith user, there are a dozen scumbag fascists. And most of the time, the "good faith one" just reverts back to their old shit.

Do you really think losing any member of the hexbear or lemmygrad community, longtime members or not, is worth a few good dunks?

I don't believe a small chance of gaining a new user is worth alienating an entire section of the community. The vast majority of those idiots are lost causes. If they are interested, the can just make an account and ask in good faith.

Is posting a meme to "own the liberals" worth your comrades getting more trauma from bigots harassing them?

No its not.

you've had your laugh, but it should end

Ban them all, SJW, lemm.ee, lemmy, the programmer nazi edglords. Keep Lemmygrad.

Defederate from those communities. We shouldn't sacrifice our own for more clicks. For having to subject ourselves to the opinions of people thoroughly brainwashed? We aren't reddit. We came here to get away from that. I'm sick of this. We are sick of this.

End it now

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[–] Egon@hexbear.net 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It’s clearly not fun for a lot of people. And sometimes the dogpile just doesn’t form.

You are completely right. Its not nice to be the only one arguing with a bunch of illiterate morons that react to a well-sourced response with "I'm not reading that propaganda". I don't really know what to do about that. I think it's clear that there is a sentiment on hexbear that "bullying libs" is good and fun, but that only works when you feel you're supported by your comrades. It's also incredibly shitty when you're hit with bigoted language, and nothing happens - that's my main issue so far.

While I don't see a lot of people changing in the moment (I can count on one hand the amount of times users from other instances have stopped to interact with the sources and consider their own position) I think it has an effect long-term, in that I feel I see fewer lemm.ee users with shitty takes now.

DM arassment also complicates the moderation issue + by selective federation

Yeah, it does make it more complicated. Maybe hexbear should out forth an ultimatum that DM harassers get banned from their own community?

we've already acknowledged that some instances should not be engaged with/cannot be regulated, so I don’t think stricter moderation is the only solution.

I agree in that there is most certainly some communities that are just too shitty. I don't know if I think SJW is one of those yet, that's why I'd like to just see much stricter moderation before we go ahead with defederating. I'd like to see if it makes a difference.

The pro-federation crowd were quick to criticize any “dunk” post for fear that it could jeopardize our position and provoke defederation, so even this “bullying” is restricted by the situation.

I agree, I think the idea of waltuh half measures was bad. I disagreed with it when it was put in place and I was happy when it was removed. Things such as those requirements do make this more difficult.

I disagree, you can’t build on hollow ground. Stricter moderation is absolutely necessary, but first we need to reconsider what instances we’re federated with. It’s silly, but what comes to mind is China’s reform and opening up. Deng Xiaoping said, "If you open the window for fresh air, you have to expect some flies to blow in”, and suggested a “net” to counter this. The difference is that we have the freedom to close this window before putting up the net, because federation isn’t a necessity of the new era, it is a choice we made. Some people are in support of it, some people are opposed to it, and popular opinion is all that matters in this case. Before we put up the net, we need to decide how large we want the window to be, so that we don’t accidentally place a net where there should be a solid wall. From our new experience we should have a discussion about what we learned from federation and a vote about what to do with the situation, rather than wait to see what “stricter moderation” (how can this be enforced across all comms? By a greater number of mods most likely, which exposes a host of new issues) will do.

Beautifully put, can't really say I disagree all that much with your points. I think in retrospect we went too quick about federating with new communities, and we should have had a chat beforehand - one that could also have been used to create resources such as I suggested. Other resources could be bots like the Whataboutism - bot, but with effortposts or the like.
It seemed as though we had just about reached a stable equilibrium, and then we went and upturned it once again. However this time we were less prepared for the new users we'd been interacting with - they make lemm.ee users seem like they're acting in good faith.

I think however if we close the window now - to use your beautiful metaphor - it will be more difficult to open it again later. I'm not saying I don't think we shouldn't do it, I'm saying I'm unsure and I'd like to see if stricter moderation and some community-sourced resources like your carrd could make a difference.

[–] WHATABOUTISM_DETECTOR@hexbear.net 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Whataboutism? What about deez nuts?

[–] Egon@hexbear.net 9 points 1 year ago

I love this bot

[–] YearOfTheCommieDesktop@hexbear.net 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

DM harassers get banned from their own community?

This should be how it works already but we need to make sure the admins/mods keep an eye on it and actually see if they are following up. Sorry to ping but @CARCOSA@hexbear.net is there a procedure in place for this? any tracking of which instances offend most?

If instances consistently host DM spam or harassment and don't take their own mod action against the perpetrators, we should block their DMs at a minimum, or defederate if necessary