It feels like it's dying. Just anecdotally it seems like there have been less threads lately, less quality threads, and less discussion overall. More anecdotally I feel like the last couple of federation / defederation slap fights ended with many users leaving as well. I can think of a few who left because we were federating, some who left because we then subsequently defederated from lots of the fediverse, and then even a few who said they would leave if we didn't defederate and then left anyway when we did.

I feel like mostly overall I have seen very few new posters, and have seen less and less of some certain power posters.

Is this just a illusion or is this really what's happening. What is to be done?

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[–] AlpineSteakHouse@hexbear.net 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes and no. Hexbear as a political project is more or less dead. It's been that way since the first year or so. It's more or less just a club for commie shitposting now. I used to do organizing/theory on Hexbear, now I just use it for non-political posting.

Hexbear, barring some huge shift, will stay around this size for the next few years and experience a slow decline until shutdown. It is a site just past its peak experiencing a slow fall to obscurity that all things must go through eventually.

[–] shitholeislander@hexbear.net 34 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

idk why anyone ever thought this was a "political project" and not just a reddit clone that isn't beholden to the Atlantic Council/is friendly to communists and marginalised people, seems like a v internet-brained outlook. this site originated from a subreddit for a podcast

[–] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

yoo they made a hexbear podcast??

[–] PaX@hexbear.net 10 points 8 months ago

the-peoples-podcast troll

[–] AlpineSteakHouse@hexbear.net 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'd say people were still on the high of Bernie and were decidedly more optimistic about the future at that point. It wasn't that long ago that Chompsky, Bernie, and other faux progressives were very well liked here.

I still remember when admins made changing the name from "chapochat" to "hexbear" a moral imperative because "We have to appeal to more people and the podcast would prevent that." Then deciding a month later that converting people is hard and no one wants to do it.