this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
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askchapo

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Fun fact : it's my first ever post on any lemmy instance/community blob-no-thoughts ...which is messed up..

Okay tbh I don't know if I should have posted this some place else or if here is just fine oh-shit

So I'm brand new here, I've joined as lemm.ee was going to shut down. I only chose Hexbear because of how big and active it is, and of course for all its shade of leftism (being far left myself) but tbh that part was just a plus for me, what I wanted more was an opened enough instance, an inclusive one with enough peace of mind (not having to deal with unhinged/oppressing posts/comments daily).

But I started noticing that actually Hexbear had been defederated from some big instances like lemmy.world, upon trying to understand why I stumbled upon lemmy.world ~~BS~~ post explaining they did it for preemptive reasons (wtf ๐Ÿ’€), obviously I just dismissed lemmy.world entirely and continued enjoying my time here. But then I noticed other instances like Blahaj blocked Hexbear as well and a bunch of others, I never found out why.

Then, while trying to understand what's with all the defederating I stumbled upon a lot of negative noise against Hexbear, claiming you lot are doing some horrid stuff like war crimes denial, trolling, hate speech, spreading pro-Russian propaganda (like anti Ukrainian stuff don't misinterpret me here, I'm fine with anti-western views or western propaganda skepticism), so much so I don't really know if what I read was some kind of fascists trying to slander this place, or people confused about Hexbear political views, or if it's linked to some Hexbear history I'm not aware of... It's just weird because so far I haven't encountered anything I could hold against this instance, for all I've seen you're all sweet and making nice content, haven't seen anything unhinged, but what makes me uneasy is this defederating thing, I can't help but wonder why.

I'm really confused. Can someone explain to me what this is all about ? Is it just some right wing noise, some unknown drama or what ?

Edit (in case any of you see it): Thanks a lot everyone for all your answers, kind words, jokes, emojis and for being so welcoming. What you all said was very informative, and most of it I sadly expected. Having taken a liking to lemmy I knew that whatever I'd learn it'd be a cause for concern, it saddens me that several instances, big ones at that, would just make more room for the far right by suppressing leftists and spreading hate. As always in any such case I can't say I'm surprised but it worries and disgust me nonetheless. Anyway I'm glad I found this place :)

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[โ€“] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 36 points 4 days ago (11 children)

In the summer of 2023 a horde of reddit racists, nazis, neoliberals and in general trust fund basement dwelling losers moved on masse to lemmy, because reddit banned some third party software or whatever, it was so dumb I can't even remember what the fuss was about

Since then they've been clutching pearls at our anti-racism, anti-Nazism, anti-imperialism, and believe it or not anti-genocide

Every instance besides our own invited these freaks in and violated the Nazi Bar Principle and as a result these reactionary redditers have infested most of lemmy and turned it into a bargain-bin 4chan ripoff

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[โ€“] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 28 points 4 days ago (1 children)

it's common for haters to exist envious of those whose powers are beyond their grasp

[โ€“] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 16 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's why .world is just a waiter at the table of our success.

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[โ€“] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 41 points 4 days ago (1 children)

its mostly just right wing noise, the the side of lemmy that mostly includes world is in general very liberal and right wing (in part because of admin moderation and another because most reddit users are libs/right wing) so they really dislike any opposing views, in the case of world we were preemptively defederated because one of the world admins at the time was a neolib that pushed for that.

nowdays its mostly just making strawman to get angry at since we arent federated with most of the big comms anyway and ml and grad arent that big to influence much, which is kinda funny because they have slowly turned against other kinda leftist instances like dbzero and midwestsocial as the next evil radicals

also we defed from blahaj because her admin refused to moderated ableism and transphobia against our users

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[โ€“] Contrario@hexbear.net 34 points 4 days ago

Personally, I think it's mostly due to people coming in from reddit and being outraged that people further left than themselves exist in this space, you know the .world crowd. Fairly new myself, but I can't say I've seen much here that would be out of the ordinary in any other left wing space.

[โ€“] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

A lot of it is liberals (and to a lesser extent: anarchists), but hexbear users are pretty argumentative (not an insult necessarily!) and tend to flood threads giving the illusion of brigading (happened on reddit as well with r/cth).

edit: if you want to federate with everyone, piefed.social and lemmy.zip are pretty good.

[โ€“] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 33 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (6 children)

I think another big part of that with hexbear is that 1) it was a relatively big instance before people arrived to lemmy so it looked like an army of people disagreeing with someone when they were wrong, giving the appearance of brigading, and 2) down votes don't exist in this instance so when someone disagrees with someone else they have to write a comment to them.

Hexbear is definitely argumentative, too, but it actually seems less so than it used to be to me. Or maybe all the defeding made it less. Or maybe being here so long has made me see other sides to hexbear. Idk.

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[โ€“] tocopherol@hexbear.net 34 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Lot of good answers here, but also, welcome! chicken-bop

This is a fine place to post your question also, sometimes people comment musings for discussion on the general megathread but you'll get more replies with a post.

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[โ€“] axont@hexbear.net 29 points 4 days ago

skeleton-wave Hello and welcome to our silly webzone!

Basically a lot of those instances are full of reddit-brained liberals who really dislike when people say nice, or normal things about third world countries.

[โ€“] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 34 points 4 days ago

We get dorks who come in and spout off lib nonsense, get well thought out and sourced rebuttals and keep doubling down until we start with the name calling. Anyone who actually engages constructively is treated just fine.

Oh yeah, I recall. You see, it's not merely the anti-imperialism (that includes against European vassals), but also the chapo attitude (calling bullshit on our political opponents), and the fact we are more numerous in posters, voices, and posts than lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml combined

[โ€“] RedSailsFan@hexbear.net 32 points 4 days ago

there's a dedicated hate comm called meanwhileongrad where all the worst anticommunists on lemmy/piefed/mbin gather together to circlejerk about how horrible hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml are, it's where a lot of the animosity originates from these days

[โ€“] sexywheat@hexbear.net 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Welcome kim-drip !

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been mentioned, other than make sure to check the news mega if you're a newshead/enjoyer. For whatever reason I avoided the megathreads for years but finally discovered how much I was missing out on.

Enjoy! sicko-jammin

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[โ€“] roux@hexbear.net 20 points 4 days ago

You got a ton of answers and they are all right lol. So I'll just say welcome aboard, comrade!

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