Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]

Well, some of those are actual bigots and some of them are false positives

Hexbear has a powerful immune system designed to target bigots. Sometimes that immune system sees a threat where there isn’t one. Veteran Hexbears have either learned how to avoid being seen as a target or have learned to endure it when it happens, and as much as we may regret false positives, we also recognize the value in purging legitimate targets.

Some people hate the immune system because they’re false positives, but a lot of people hate it because they are the legitimate targets - and generally they were always going to hate us regardless. Then there are those who haven’t been targeted but just don’t like the idea of an immune system on principle, the free speech centrists and tone police who see us an indistinguishable from 4chan (kinda telling on themselves that their main problem with 4chan is the rudeness, not the bigotry).

We’ll always have a solid core of haters who we also hate who’s concerns we don’t care about. I’ve lost track of the number of times someone’s whined about us being too harsh only for it to come out that they said some nasty shit about the homeless or something. For the rest it’s a matter of convincing them of the advantages of the immune system and communicating how to avoid becoming a false positive, while making sure to double check targets on our end.

Enough debate about whether the persecution is true. I don’t want this post about Hexbear to devolve into an argument about whether the Uyghurs in China are being oppressed.

This is a pretty ridiculous thing to say, right after relitigating the whole discussion. You deny the genocide being carried out by Denmark against the Danes (which I just made up), but I don’t want this to devolve into a discussion about that so let’s just close it there. See how unfair that is?

That’s not how it works. You don’t get to lob accusations at us and then say we’re not allowed to defend ourselves from your allegations. This post is very much acting in bad faith and engaging in crybullying.

The fact is that you can plainly see in this user’s post how we’ve caused them to walk back their claims by raising legitimate criticisms. They’re now admitting that their primary (afaik only) source alledging genocide is a Nazi sympathizer, and now the criticism has changed from “Denying a genocide that is definitely happening” to "Being overly skeptical about the possibility that a genocide may be happening. This to me proves that we’ve raised valid points and don’t deserve to be deplatformed.

If I were debating someone who was denying the Holocaust, I would not have to move one inch, because the Holocaust is very well documented and well established. The homework has been done, the case indisputably proven, and the only people who deny it are Nazis and Anti-semites. But what OP is trying to do is to skip past the part where they actually have to collect that kind of evidence. The world they’re trying to build, whether they realize it or not, is one in which politicians need only say the magic word of “genocide” to rally everyone to support aggression - just like they did in Iraq. And we at Hexbear consider that to be an extremely dangerous norm to set.

Additionally, equating claims with dubious evidence to something well established as the Holocaust is a form of Holocaust trivialization, for which OP has been correctly called out for. Once again engaging in crybully tactics, they came to our instance and accused us of being equivalent to Nazis, and then when we turned it back around on them, they run off to teacher to whine about how it’s “a very serious allegation.” Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.

I fully expect that posts like mine will be used as evidence that we’re hijacking the thread with political discussion. But this discussion is the primary reason why OP is calling for defederation. But despite this, they “don’t want this post about Hexbear to devolve into an argument about the Uyghurs.” Once again, they want to jump straight to the matter being settled without discussion or consideration of evidence.

Putting words in my mouth is not intelligent discourse

Maybe you should have extended me the same courtesy.

I have been polite, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to back down when you lob baseless accusations at me. Do better yourself.

Yes, there is currently some disagreement among our users on how much we should change our, let’s say, idiosyncratic site culture now that we’re federated. Not everyone wanted to federate in the first place, and most of us didn’t really know what to expect. For the past three years, we haven’t had to play by anyone else’s rules, and not everyone is enthused about the prospect. Also, as an explicitly political space, while we have discussions about other things, we don’t have any spaces where veering into politics is unexpected or unwelcome.

Personally, I think federation is the most excitement we’ve had in ages, so I’m in favor of adapting and playing by the rules, because otherwise I think it’s inevitable that we’ll get cut off eventually. But it’s a pretty big change in a pretty short time-frame, so tbh idk what will happen.

I talked with the lemm.ee admin and he did not mind if hexbear users engaged in that post in a way that was not low-effort.

I interpreted that to mean that our admin asked and was specifically told we could do it.

I posted here only after one of our admins said this:

I talked with the lemm.ee admin and he did not mind if hexbear users engaged in that post in a way that was not low-effort. I’ve removed a couple comments from there that were inappropriate. Basically if the meta community does not have a sidebar rule specifying it is for local users only or the post explicitly asks for only local users to comment then hexbear users are free to defend themselves/hexbear. Abiding by the CoC of course.

deleted by creator

I’m firmly in the “tone it down” camp on Hexbear (especially on other instances) and I appreciate people’s patience and I’m glad that some people have gotten past our rough exterior. I’m hoping things will quiet down and stabilize before we burn our bridges. I’m glad to hear that your experience with our mods was positive and that you’re focusing more on that, over the years I’ve come to trust our mods and I believe they’re committed to making this work.

As has already been mentioned and acknowledged, clarification on Kremlin propaganda would be appreciated. I agree with removing false information, but I’m of the belief that it’s important to understand the positions and perspective of every nation, especially those considered enemies, for the sake of peace. I do not trust any source from any state implicitly, but rather I believe in gathering information from a variety of sources and critically examining each. I grew up in a “post 9/11 world” and in that context, any attempt to understand the motivations or historical context behind that event, beyond “They hate us for our freedom,” was treated with suspicion, along with all sorts of lies about Muslims in general. Since then, I don’t go along with hating who I’m told to hate, at least until I feel I’ve investigated the matter fully. To that end, I think there is value in listening critically to state-affiliated sources, from every side.

I look forward to having productive discussions in the future.