I figured since their admin has asked them to stop participating over here it may be worthwhile to get a new discussion going that is primarily blahaj. I'm almost certain they'll still be upvoting so keep that in mind as that may skew things. Worthwhile to check in from instances that have already defederated them. The previous thread definitely left a bad taste in my mouth but what do y'all think?
Old thread can be found here
EDIT: With regards to the post on new federation guidelines here: https://hexbear.net/post/352119
The current top comment is:
Every instance that has talked shit and got dogpiled should be thanking us for breathing some life into their dead and boring ass websites.
The top comment is that, and the rest of the comments are saying what...?
Primarily deflection and shitposting. I see exactly ONE comment in praise of the new rules.
The top-level comments I see in order are,
A lot of shitposting, sure, but I don't see how you can really call any of that "deflection".
The comments I consider deflection:
Ultimately the tone of the instance and its infectious nature on the fediverse are the issue. Particularly as it does not seem that the admins/mods truly have the ability to reign in their users.
Also, their admin telling them not to participate in this thread seems to have worked, so maybe they have more of an ability to reign in their users than it seems? It might be best to wait a while to see the impact of their rule change before defederating.
I figured it was those comments you were referring to, and I can sort of see where you're coming from now that I think about it, since it should be on the users to behave even without changing Lemmy's features. Still, I don't think it's particularly malicious to discuss how to improve the site, and how they could've approached federation differently. I think that functionality shapes behavior, so these are the types of things that should be discussed.
Edit: And regarding "most instances do not have these sorts of problems" — I don't think it's good to treat the majority experience as the universal experience.
Don't get me wrong hexbear is absolutely anomalous. I do not think that is an argument in favor of federating with them.
I don't think them being anomalous is an argument in favor of not federating with them, either.
Them not jiving with the broader threadiverse is absolutely reason to defederate. They should probably be in their own network of leftist shitposting and trolling instances. Places with similar tone and customs around dogpiling.
I still think it's too early to reach a verdict.