Hey folks
I have been receiving a lot of messages every single day about federation with hexbear. Some of our users are vehemently against it, others are in full support. The conversation does not seem to be dying down, rather, the volume of messages I receive about it seems to be increasing, so I am opening this public space where we can openly discuss the topic.
I am going to write a wall of text about my own thoughts on the situation, I’m sorry, but no tl;dr this time, and I ask anybody participating in this thread to first read through this post before commenting.
Before I go any further, I want to be clear that for anybody who participates here, it is required to focus on the quality of your posts. That means:
- Be kind to each other, even if you disagree
- Use arguments rather than calling people names
- Realize that this is a divisive topic, so your comments should be even more thoughtful than usual
With that out of the way, there are a few things I want to cover.
On defederation in general
First of all, I am a firm believer that defederation must be reserved only for cases where all other methods have failed. If defederation is used liberally, then a small group of malicious users can effectively completely shut down the federated network, by simply creating the type of drama between instances which would inevitably result in defederation. In my view, federation is the biggest strength of Lemmy compared to any centralized discussion forum, so naturally I think maintaining federation by default is an important goal in general.
I am also a believer in the value of deplatforming hateful content, but I think defederation is not the best way to do this. Banning individual users, banning communities and establishing a culture of mutual support between mods and admins of different instances should be the first line of defense against such content. There are some further steps that can be taken before defederation as well, but these are not really documented anywhere (in order to prevent circumvention). The point is: for myself, defederation is the absolute last resort, only to be used when it is completely clear that other methods are ineffective.
Finally, I am wary of creating a false expectation among lemm.ee users that lemm.ee admins endorse all users and communities and content on instances we are federated with. Here at lemm.ee, we use a blocklist for federation, which means our default apporach is to federate with all new instances. We do not have the resources (manpower, skills and knowledge) necessary to pass judgement on all instances which exist out there, as a result, users on lemm.ee are expected to curate their own content to quite a high degree. In addition to downvoting and/or reporting as necessary, individual lemm.ee users are also able to block specific users and communities, and the ability to block entire instances is coming very soon as well.
Having said all that, in a situation where all other methods do indeed fail, defederation is not out of the question. Making such a call is up to the discretion of lemm.ee admins, and doing it as a last resort is completely in line with our federation policy.
Regarding hexbear
Hexbear is an established Lemmy instance, focused on many flavors of leftism. They have quite a large userbase who are very active on Lemmy (often so active that they leave the impression brigading all popular Lemmy posts). One important thing to note is that while some forms of bigotry seem to be quite accepted by many hexbear users (but seemingly not by mods - more on that below), they at least are very protective of LGBT rights (and yes, I am quite certain that they are not just pretending to do this, as many users seem to believe). Additionally, while I have noticed quite high quality posts from hexbear users, there are also several users there who seem to really enjoy trolling and baiting (very reminiscent of 4chan-type “for the lulz” posting), and it’s important to note that this kind of posting is in general allowed on hexbear itself.
The reason this whole topic is important to so many people right now (despite hexbear being a relatively old instance), is that hexbear only recently enabled federation. A combination of their volume of posts, their strong convictions, the excitement about federation, and the aforementioned trolling has made them very visible to almost all Lemmy users, and this has sparked discussions about the value of federation with hexbear on a lot of Lemmy instances.
My own experience with hexbear
I want to write down my own experience with interacting with hexbear users, mods, and admins over the past few days. I believe this experience will highlight why I am hesitant to advocate for immediate full defederation from hexbear at this point in time, and am for now still more in favor of taking action on a more individual user basis. Please read and see how you feel about the situation afterwards.
Background
My first real contact with hexbear users was in the comments section of a post in this meta community requesting defederation from hexbear by @glimpythegoblin@lemm.ee. That post is now locked, because several hexbear users very quickly started doing the aforementioned “for the lulz” type spamming of meme images in the comments (these are actually just emojis, but they are rendered as full-size images on all instances other than the source instance, due to a current Lemmy bug).
I did not want to take further actions in that thread in general (for archival purposes), but I did take one action, which in retrospect was a mistake: I removed a comment which contained the hammer and sickle symbol. I ignorantly associated this symbolism with Kremlin propaganda, and the atrocities my own people suffered at the hands of the soviet union during the previous century. Many users (including hexbear users) correctly (and politely) pointed out to me in DMs that the symbol has a much broader use than just as the symbol of the USSR, and people elsewhere in the world may not associate it with the USSR at all. I am grateful for users who pointed this out to me without resorting to personal attacks.
Let me be clear here: while I do not have anything against leftism or communist ideas in general (in fact in today’s world, I think discussion of such ideas is quite necessary), Kremlin propaganda has no place on lemm.ee. Any dehumanizing talking points of the Kremlin on lemm.ee are treated as any other bigotry, and if communist symbolism is used in context of Kremlin propaganda (that is the context in which I have been exposed to it throughout my whole life), then it will still be removed. But there is no blanket ban on communist symbolism in general on lemm.ee, and discussing and advocating for leftist and communist topics (as distinct from the imperialist and dehumanizing policies of the Kremlin) is certainly allowed on lemm.ee.
Hexbear user response
Coming back to the events of the past few days: soon after my removal of the comment containing the symbol from the meta thread, two posts popped up on hexbear. One was focused on insulting and spreading lies about me personally. Another was focused on diminishing the horrors of the soviet occupation in my country. In the comments under both of these posts (and in a few other threads on hexbear), I noticed some seriously disturbing bigotry against my people. There were comments which reflected the anti-Estonian propaganda of the current Russian state, things like:
- Suggesting that my people has no right to exist
- Stating that my people (and other Baltic nations) are subhuman
- Claiming that anybody critical of both nazi and soviet occupations is themselves a nazi and a holocaust denier
I expect to hear such statements from the Russian state - here in Estonia, we are subjected to this and other kinds of bigotry constantly from Russian media - but to see it spread openly in non-Russian channels is extremely disturbing. Such bigotry is completely against lemm.ee rules in general. Additionally, my identity is public information, because I feel it’s important for the integrity of lemm.ee that I don’t hide behind anonymity. Considering this, I’m sure you can understand why I am very worried about my own safety when people leave comments in many unrelated threads (where my original posts are not even visible), baselessly calling me a nazi and a holocaust denier.
Note that the goal of this post is not to start a new debate in the comments about the the repressions of the soviet union in Estonia or other occupied territories, but if the topic interests any users, I can recommend the 2006 documentary The Singing Revolution (imdb). The trailer is a bit cheesy, but the actual film contains lots of historical footage from the soviet occupation, and also many interviews with people who experienced it, who share stories which are deeply familiar to all Estonians. If anybody is interested in further discussion, then I suggest making a post about it in the Estonian community here: !eesti@lemm.ee.
Hexbear admin response
After the above events had played out, I reached out to hexbear admins for clarification on their moderation policies and how they handle such cases. I was actually very happy with their response:
- They immediately removed the personal attacks and dehumanizing comments containing Kremlin propaganda from Hexbear, and assured me that such content is always handled by mods
- They told me that while there are all kinds of leftists on hexbear, Russian disinformation is generally either refuted in comments or removed by mods
- They implemented some additional rules on hexbear to try and reduce the trolling experienced by many other instances, including ours: https://hexbear.net/post/352119
My personal take-aways
Let me play the devil’s advocate here and employ some “self-whataboutism”: among all users that have been banned on lemm.ee for bigotry, the majority were actually not users from other instances, and in fact people with lemm.ee accounts. If we judge any larger instance only by bigoted posts that some of its users make, then we might as well declare all instances as cesspools and close down Lemmy completely. I believe it’s far more useful to judge instances based on moderation in response to such content. Just as we remove bigoted content from lemm.ee, I have also witnessed bigoted content being removed from hexbear.
At the same time, I am aware of some internal conflict between hexbear users over the more strict moderation they are now starting to employ, and I am definitely keeping an eye on that situation and how admins handle it.
I am also still quite worried about the amount of distinct users on hexbear who have posted Kremlin propaganda. I so far don't have reason to believe that these users are employed by the Russian state, but the fact that they are spreading the same hateful content which can be seen on Russian television seems problematic to say the least, and it remains to be seen if moderators can truly keep up with such content.
Where thing stand right now
I am not convinced that we are currently at a point where the “last resort” of defederation is necessary. This is based on the presumption that our moderation workload at lemm.ee will not get out of hand just due to users from that particular instance. My current expectation is that as the excitement of federation calms down (and as new rules on hexbear go into effect), the currently relatively high volume of low effort trolling will be replaced by more thoughtful posts. If this is not the case then we will certainly need to re-evaluate things.
Additionally, nothing is changing about our own rules regarding bigotry. Especially relevant in the context of Kremlin propaganda, I want to say that dehumanizing anybody is not allowed on lemm.ee (hopefully I do not have to spell it out, but this of course includes Ukrainians, LGBT folks, and others that the Kremlin despises), and action will be taken against any users who do this, regardless of what instance they are posting from.
Finally, I am very interested to hear thoughts and responses from our own users. I am super grateful to anybody who actually took the time to read through this massive dump of my own thoughts, and I am very interested to get a proper understanding of how our users feel about what I’ve written here. Please share any thoughts in the comments.
I'm sorry. I do hope you come around to at least tolerating leftist perspectives before you leave for an echo chamber. That all wealth is created by labor is one of the core leftist beliefs, you'll find anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, etc all agree on that.
In houses. There's dozens of vacant homes for every homeless person. Just as capitalism requires some people be hungry to maximize profit of food, it requires some people be homeless to maximize profit of landlords.
The people who build houses deserve to be compensated for their labor. Owning a house on the other hand, is not labor.
Rent isn't compensation for the construction of a home, otherwise the renter would own the home after 20 years of renting paid off the mortgage.
I'd categorize the parasitic relationship as evil, but as for judging individual people for the poverty and homelessness caused by that relationship, it's more complicated as we live under capitalism.
Are you talking about the description of the cultural revolution in that one province in China people post? In the context of generations of peasants seeing their children die of starvation-related disease or conscripted never to return, the people were more merciful and practical than just. It's easy to criticize any change if you ignore the violence of the status quo. To quote Mark Twain:
THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
It's not.
My partner and I should have a 50 percent equity in the apartment she rented for 10 years. Instead we were unceremoniously kicked out last year because the landlord's son wanted to make more money.
I accept this nuanced revision to my more angry framing. I have a personal vendetta, and this is actually the correct take.
What in the world makes you think you deserve 50% equity? Did you pay half the down payment? Did you pay half the mortgage and interest to the bank? Did you pay half the property taxes? Did you pay half the maintenance? Did you make any agreement woth the owner up front that this is what you would get? No? Did someone mention communism to you and you haven't thought twice since?
The amount it appreciated while we were paying the rent that whole time is how I got that 50 percent. Also, the property actually tripled in value 100k to 300k.
The total maintenance the owner did over the entire time we were there was 1000 dollars. One month's rent. Add painting and new carpet, ok, that's like 5k? We paid more than 100k in rent over that time.
It was pure profit extraction. The owner actually sent us the numbers to justify kicking us out. , His mother made more than him because of property tax, but after reassessing property taxes, he would have _only_been making 300 a month profit off of us. That's pure profit after everything. He was mad he couldn't raise our rent by 500 dollars all at once and instead had to do it yearly.
And? What makes you think you deserve any of that? If you'd wanted to rent-to-own that's a thing. It's something you should have talked about . Of course that appreciation you mentioned would still be a thing and your payments would have gone up to the point you couldn't afford it and null the contract... so... what point are you making?
Paying rent is NOT buying... buying is buying. And you are free to go give that a whirl. I guarantee you will pay more over the same time frame as a homeowner vs as a renters.
I genuinely don't see how you feel entitled to something no one ever agreed to.
I feel entitled to a place to live as such. The system and its facilitators that make it precarious is the thing I take issue with.
Great. i don't owe it to you. And I M not evil for not giving it to you. Make your case actually about the things you want- not some proxy bullshit that makes no sense and attacks me (and people like me)needlessly.
If you want to do something different- go do it. Go buy a place. Get a loan. Petition your senators. Give your house out as an example, etc. If you aren't willing to do anything no one will do anything for you.
Just for the record, nobody thinks you need to individually give up your houses. These are systemic critiques, the contradictions of capitalism aren't solvable by capitalists and landlords being more generous.
If the owners did all decide to be more generous, they'd eventually get out-competed more effective capitalists as the tendency for the rate of profit to decline squeezes them tighter.
Maybe say what you mean then rather than you're evil for being you.
This is a good post, but I think the person you're replying to is trying to bait a ton of belief statements out of you so that they can then piss you off by contradicting each one with effortless status-quo normalizing, and use that as a justification to defederate Hexbear. That, or they're just going to dig their heels in and you'll have wasted your time.
Buddy I'm replying to the things he's saying. If it hurts your brain that I'm detailing why the things he say make no sense that's on you. If hexbear is all people like you- that's on them.
I am new to lemmy and would prefer actual discussion- if certain groups brigade and shitpost in lieu of discussing- that's on them.
I could give you the benefice of the doubt. However, this is the calibre of argument you're throwing at us :
The obvious answer is that yes, the tenant pays for all these things, because that's why the landlord charges rent to begin with. This is such an obvious thing, irrespective of any political beliefs, that the mere fact of you having asked it makes you suspect. I'm not even trying to be mean to you here, I'm just describing the situation as I see it.
Uh- he literally didn't. The owner did these things. He paid the agreed upon amount to live in the house that he doesn't own and doesn't improve or repair or pay taxes for.
I pay taxes - does that mean I own some percent of the road? Schools? Emergency service? Of course not. Do I get to utilize these things that I didn't build but do pay a fee for over time? Yes.
That you can't see this makes you quite a bit more than suspect.
The money does not disappear when it changes hands, nor is it laundered. Most landlords cannot afford any of these things if the houses that they own are not occupied by paying tenants.
If they can't afford the empty house... either it is rented or they sell it. Do you think people are sitting on houses they can't afford and also intentionally keep empty? What point are you trying to make here?
The point is that renters pay for home equity. They just don't earn home equity. Landlords retain 100% of that and 100% of the value gained by the asset. You are catastrophically wrong about that.
Whether or not you think that's ethical, it's still a fact.
~~Please respect hexbear user pronouns~~
Ironically an issue of pronouns, since you're directly replying to a he/him but it's unclear who the antecedent in the first sentence is. I'm gonna trust that you're not intentionally doing it tho, thanks.
Him/her/whatever.
Misgender me all you want- I know who I am and don't require you to know innate things or particular responses.
But if you really need it: I didn't mean to misgender anyone.
At the end of the day 'evil' is not a particularly valuable analytical framing if we are being proper social scientists (since, of course, "the capitalist becomes capital personified", e.g., their actual personality traits don't matter and they needn't be sociopathic to do horrible things. Though a disproportionate of landlords are horrible people ofc). On a social media site, however, there's nothing wrong with using emotive language like 'evil' and using venting memes like the guillotine pictures and I guess there is a disconnect in how it's perceived to the 'materialist' mode of analysis that does not focus on individual personality traits + does not see the individual as the supreme and singular unit of analysis.
I'm not leaving for an echo chamber. I'm just leaving. It's your echo chambers I'm exiting.
All these empty houses aren't producing rent are they? You can go buy one and give it away if you want. Oh what's that? You don't want to do that?
What's the difference if I hammered the nail myself to build the house or if I buy it from the guy who did the hammering. This is the insanity that permeates your argument. I've done both by the way- either way that home is owned by someone and rented to someone else.
When did I say rent was compensation for building a home? You say that- and you are wrong for bringing it up. I built a thing- someone wants to use said thing- we make an agreement that we both agree to.
I characterize this insane rationality as evil. You want a thing to be given away for free without compensation. It's crazy to think this investment I've made is somehow going to magically fix something if I just transform it into some other thing you aren't all brigading over. If it wasn't a house- it'd be a restaurant, or a clothing business, or whatever. And you'd eventually get up in arms about that too. What you really want is others to give you an equal share even though you haven't done anything to earn it and I fucking have.
Personal charity is not a solution to a systemic problem! This will not actually get rid of the problem, it will palliate it! Also, I literally can't because I personally don't have the money that would be needed to buy a rental property off of someone who can afford to leave such properties empty, since if we assume they are willing to sell, it's a high price, but more likely they just won't because an apartment on the fourth floor of an eight-floor complex being someone else's property seems like a litigation nightmare if there's literally any type of water damage or anything of the sort that occurs after the sale.
Right. So because you can't afford it- it should be given to you for free? What have you bought recently? Am I entitled to that? How about you loan it to me for a set fee over time? Which makes more sense?
If I was monopolizing a resource people need to live, sure, repatriate it! I, uh, have a lot of books and I actually do like lending those to people -- even ones I hardly know or somewhat dislike -- so long as I think that I will get them back in good condition.
Part of the problem with your need to individualize everything is that we encounter class antagonism, i.e. people in different classes have different incentives. I am totally fine with the idea of virtually everything I own being held communally and living in a monastery -- so long as there was enforcement against just trashing things. What matters to me is use, not profit, because I am not in a class that profits but one that subsists on labor and therefore am mainly seeking to ensure the easiest subsistence possible by the means I know. I also see that many people are in my same position and we can't all subsist by lying at the top being fed grapes while being paid to own things, the viability of selling a commodity comes from people not having it. On that basis, since I don't want to make enemies out of my fellows (enemies are dangerous) and I don't want to be stuck under someone else's corporate boot heel if I fail, it is more appealing to me that we collaborate rather than compete, so that our best interests lie in mutual benefit rather than scalping scarce resources.
I have no issue with any of what you said. My entire argument is about the Individual ownership and the attacks I receive from you guys.
Your arguments have not been the system is bad and it's the mega billionaires etc... it's all landlords are bad because they own something you feel should be given away for free.
I would like to try to explain something while avoiding reference to those liberal economists that you seemingly care just as little for as Marx and friends.
Person A owns a car. Person B steals the car and fences it to an unwitting Person C. Person C fixes up the car in various ways and then tries to sell it. The origin of the car is discovered and it seems like perhaps Person A should get their car back, but Person C has put in work on it and didn't know it was stolen, and doesn't want their labor value to be for nothing. What is to be done?
You might disagree on or not see the relevance, but humor me here.
Person b compensates person c. Person a gets their car back.
Person b goes to jail for theft.
Not seeing the connection here.
What if person B doesn't have the money to compensate person C? Many car thieves are poor, which is part of why they engage in a crime where it is so likely to get caught.
Don't worry, there's a connection.
Except I do want you to be compensated, for the labor of building the home. Everything beyond that is theft.
You are the one expecting others to work for free. You are demanding a greater amount of wealth from the renter than you've produced.
To put it another way, construction and property management are forms of labor and deserve compensation for the wealth they've created. Landlord is not.
Cool- then buy my house and I'll just reinvest in something else for profit- which you will then move on to claiming is for everyone. And the cycle will continue.
A core belief most of us have is that workers are very literally not being given what they've earned. But we also believe that all humans deserve food, shelter, and care. If you think that's evil, there's not much more of a discussion to have.
That's fine. That's not what you have been saying though. What you've been saying is take my stuff and redistributed because I'm evil.
Way more effective to actually say the things you mean because we didn't all buy into your Marxism and discuss it internally- so we don't know what that you mean y when you say x.
Okay.