Recently I was asked if we’d be willing to reconsider federation with Hexbear, followed by CARCOSA reaching out to me to see if it was something we’d be open to.

They made a post asking if their community was interested in refederating with us, similarly I’d like the opinion of our local users.

Why refederate?

Hexbear has a decent number of sizable active communities:

These all seem fairly well moderated, giving us access to more diverse posts and viewpoints. A lot of our feed right now is dominated by US centric communities, and it’d be nice to get some more variety.

Why not?

They love trolling and I don’t expect them to follow our rules when commenting (primarily “be civil”).

Just looking at their thread about us, there’s a significant number of immature replies slandering us / Canada. I’m not confident their users will engage in actual discussion in our threads, rather than just showing up to throw out insults and memes.

We can try to handle this by banning users / blocking specific communities, but that’s going to increase moderation workload for both admins and mods. Hexbear is self admittedly quick to ban users on their side, but they also don’t mind ban evasion - not ideal for us.

So what’s next?

This is where we solicit your opinions, how does our community feel?

Edit: Well, it looks like the community is overwhelmingly against refederation. Decision made, thanks everyone for your feedback!

  • Shadow@lemmy.caOPMEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    I think it’s reasonable to say the community is overwhelmingly againts refederation, so we’ll keep the status quo for now.

    Rough counts of comments and votes from local users:

    • no - 23
    • maybe if/and/or/but - 3
    • yes - 2
    • asymmetric@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      1 month ago

      Thanks for asking us and then following through by actually listening.

      This thread is the complete opposite of the “Soliciting Feedback for Improvements to the Media Bias Fact Checker Bot” thread lol.

  • IronKrill@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Thanks for bringing this to the community instead of immediately making a decision yourselves. It is nice to have the opportunity to be a part of the choice, since it’s open as a possibility.

    That said, no thank you. Lemmy instance blocking still cannot block both posts and users, which means that even though we can avoid their posts as we wish, we will still be inundated by Hexbear replies on every post. Considering that the comments are quite possibly the worst part of Hexbear, this will result in the same shit-show we had last time. The comments on their refederation post just reassure me that we don’t want to be associated with them. I won’t shed a tear to be missing out on the 5 extra meme posts on my all page.

    • Shadow@lemmy.caOPMEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      Thanks for bringing this to the community instead of immediately making a decision yourselves. It is nice to have the opportunity to be a part of the choice, since it’s open as a possibility.

      The community is what makes this happen. IMHO any major decision that impacts all of you, should involve all of you.

  • Beaver@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Yes, I’m up for interacting with more leftists. As they have been polite visitors on Vegan Theory Club.

    • Shadow@lemmy.caOPMEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      The problem is they have rules about not abusing vegans, so VTC is safe by default. We won’t have that safety net.

      • Beaver@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        I will be informing Vancity of this hostile comment towards a marginalized group trying to protect animals.

        • Shadow@lemmy.caOPMEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          I’m sorry but I think you misunderstood me.

          Hexbear has very stringent rules against bugging vegans, so they won’t brigade VTC for that reason. Lemmy.ca doesn’t have that protection from hexbear, as we’re a multi purpose instance rather than vegan specific.

          That’s all I was saying. I have no issues with veganism at all.

          • Beaver@lemmy.caEnglish
            0·
            1 month ago

            Yes, you’re right about Hexbear having an extra rule about the treatment of animals.

            I appreciate the response however I took issue with the wording “We won’t have that safety net.” I will not pursue further action.

            • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              1 month ago

              Phew everyone stand down, beaver has chosen mercy today lol

              Pray their benevolence is not tested again