Is it bots? Are those humans whos mission is to cause chaos? Is the weird behaviour caused by the creation of the concept of lemmy?

Somebody please explain to me wtf is going on.

They answer destructive comments, assuming shit, demanding shit. Are they trolls?

Are they being paid for causing chaos? It’s insane

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    7 days ago

    What had me block the instance was how the majority of Hexbear posts and users I was encountering initially was how annoyingly spammy they were. Acting like Lemmy was Twitch chat, spamming giant ugly reaction stickers everywhere, literally behaving like 12 year olds.

    Then I also started to notice the far-right authoritarian simping buried under all that chaos.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      My understanding of the stickers is that on their instance they aren’t massive. So it’s some disconnect between their UI and others. But I might be misremembering.

      • mke@programming.dev
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        6 days ago

        If I see a comment with 12 replies, all from the same instance, all just the same emoji over and over, I don’t care that it’s small, that’s spam to me. They have their culture, so let them have fun. But I’m not part of it, so leave me out, it’s annoying. I think both of these are fair takes.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      Yeah, as the other comment says, my understanding is the stickers are the size of an emoji on their instance. Something about either federation or the client on their server messes it up. Maybe some clients have fixed it, but mine (Sync) has not. Maybe it’s unfixable if you aren’t from their instance.

  • CubbyTustard@reddthat.com
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    I fucking love hexbears. the weekly trans mega threads are my favorite place on lemmy.

    At the same time I have probably blocked more hexbears than any other instance’s users. I don’t enjoy fighting online and just block anyone who is remotely aggressive or who i see bullying others.

    I rarely see blocked users in the trans or other hexbear megas though (my client shows when a blocked user posts just not the name or content). I think there are some who use the server to argue their political positions from but it’s definitely not the majority.

    I don’t blame anyone who can’t abide the more ornery ones but if you ignore them the rest are just lovely and willing to share a lot of knowledge.

  • yarr@feddit.nl
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    6 days ago

    Nope, just good ol’ fashioned communists! Beware the red scare!

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    Hexbear isn’t being paid for anything, they are largely made up of Anarchists and Marxist-Leninists. Hexbear has been unafilliated with Lemmy for years before integrating with Lemmy a year ago.

    You might be seeing their zero tolerance policy for liberalism in action, but if you genuinely want to know what their users are about, just visit it. Just hop on over to Hexbear.net and scroll the news megathread and whatnot, try to understand what’s going on.

    Finally, I want to question why you believe anyone would be paid to mess with Lemmy, moreover when the lead developers are aligned fairly closely on ideological lines. If they were here to “cause chaos,” why would the devs support them ideologically? To ruin their own network? That narrative is just a wild hypothesis.

  • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    They have a zero-tolerance policy for political viewpoints that differ from their own. That becomes a breeding ground for an extremely toxic echo chamber.

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    6 days ago

    I have been doing the “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” book club at menby@hexbear.net recently which has been my only real interaction with hexbear. The book club has been great so far and if anyone wants to talk about feminism and masculinity should join.

    There are a lot of in-group signaling across their own users which mostly shows up with acronyms, specific phrases and calling everyone comrade. This hasn’t been that difficult in the book club which is long form text and discussion and everyone is respectful and nice. That being said I have blocked a few communities at hexbear because I have found them annoying and taking over my feed. So like everything here at Lemmy I had curate my own experience

  • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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    7 days ago

    Just block people you don’t want to interact with. My instance isn’t even federated with Hexbear but there are still people fitting that description. And plenty of folks there didn’t fit that description.

    • sit@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      6 days ago

      I’ve had contact to single toxic people. But never encountered such a mass of such toxicity and to suchan extend.

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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        The community is based on fandom of a podcast that champions antagonizing liberals.

        They encourage vocally expressing disagreement and disapproval and don’t have downvotes to facilitate that.

        This runs counter to most instances that tend to prefer disagreement and disapproval be expressed quietly through downvotes.

        So they tend to culture clash.

        • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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          So liberals like quietly shutting up people they disagree with and leftists shout at each other to get their points across…

          Sounds about right.

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    7 days ago

    I just don’t get all the anti-hexbear hate I see on other Lemmy servers. Questioning your mainstream/western/capitalist beliefs and arguing about it shouldn’t be ground for blocking them. I have yet to see any egregious behavior from them. Sure, I see somewhat outrageous takes on their own hosted communities, but have yet to see them cross the line on other servers.

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      Setting aside the content of their comments, I have often found their commenting style to be obnoxious or rude. They’re free to do their thing of course, but since I’m not into it, I’ve blocked that instance. Over time I’ve seen fewer and fewer comments from hexbear users, and I imagine that’s because some instances have chosen to defederate from them.

      • xapr [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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        Yes, a lot of instances have blocked them, and I have yet to see a proper justification for it, other than that they confront people’s beliefs. As for being obnoxious or rude, I would love to see some example exchanges that make people think that. Unfortunately that has been difficult to come by so far. From what I have seen, they call people liberals, fascists, etc, and in turn people call them tankies, etc. Seems fairly even to me so far.

        • klemptor@startrek.website
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          7 days ago

          I don’t have sample exchanges at the ready, but I take issue with the gigantic stickers, the unwarranted confrontational tone, and the childish namecalling.

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            7 days ago

            I understand that the gigantic stickers thing was actually a bug that has been fixed several Lemmy versions ago. I haven’t seen a giant sticker/emoji from hexbear in quite a while. I can sort of understand what you’re saying about the confrontational tone and namecalling though.

        • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          and in turn people call them tankies,

          It’s hard not to when their first message is a dismissive “another fucking lib 🙄”. You try to be civil but every comment after that is along those lines. It only sounds fair when you don’t consider the rest of the context.

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            5 days ago

            Understood. If it is as you described and some of their responses were disproportionate relative to your posts, then that’s regrettable.

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      It’s a firehouse of falsehood kind of thing. Fragment people’s concept of reality to the point where people can’t even have a conversation.

      The “question your beliefs” crowd is just people trying to create an alternate (and false) narrative so they can control you.

      And that’s all hexbear ever does. People not as naive as you are about these things find them to be a waste of time and they do nothing other than interrupt actual conversations based in reality. Which isn’t healthy for a discussion forum.

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        7 days ago

        I suspect that your perspective of the world (geopolitically speaking) is very different from mine, so it would probably not be a constructive use of our time for either of us to go into the details of what you wrote.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      Questioning your mainstream/western/capitalist beliefs and arguing about it

      I wish that’s what they actually did. Instead we get 12 year-old Twitch chatters pretending to be wiser than thou punching down

      I have yet to see any egregious behavior

      Lucky you!

      • xapr [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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        6 days ago

        But that’s another complaint without providing actual examples. I could just as easily complain about the same things from liberal lemmy.world posters.

        • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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          Fair enough. I wish I had saved the thread that time I got piled on by 40 Hexbear and .ml users acting like children when they misunderstood my point about communism. It would’ve been a great example of their pretentious and shallow meme culture.

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            5 days ago

            I’m sorry to hear that you had that experience. I can imagine that the tendency of some people online to pile on is only magnified and strengthened when socialists and communists who feel that their ideology has been unjustly maligned and distorted for the last several decades finally find a group of people who think like they do.

    • gerryflap@feddit.nl
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      Because they turn everything into a debate. I don’t want to constantly be called a “lib” just because I don’t think communism is the solution. These people would turn everything comment section into a warzone, even after I left all political communities. Even meme communities and communities about random unrelated topics became a minefield. I come here to destress and read some interesting stuff about topics I enjoy, not to be piled onto by 5 commies and be called a filthy lib for daring to say anything that doesn’t fit their view. I’m left-wing myself, but to them everything to their right is evil. I’m happy I don’t see their poison anymore

      • xapr [he/him]@lemmy.sdf.org
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        6 days ago

        Ok, I understand you feel that way and believe that you’re being sincere. I just rarely get to see actual examples to back up all the complaints. Like someone else commented on some other thread I read today, I see 10x more complaints about hexbears and tankies than I see actual bad behavior from them.

        • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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          I think generally it’s calmed down over the past 12 months and don’t see so much shitty behaviour like we used to. There would be a tendency for them to jump onto a thread and swarms of them would dogpile onto people spamming them with pictures and antagonize people.

    • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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      7 days ago

      Tribalism is a hell of a drug, and generally speaking people don’t like it when you support fascists that aren’t on your team.

      That said, I don’t think my instance is federated with them so I only see their comments in rare circumstances, and even then half their takes are straight from RT

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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          I block them through the app too lol

          That’s definitely not perfect though. You won’t see the instance itself but they’ll pop up in comments

  • rusticus@lemm.ee
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    7 days ago

    Russian slash communist pieces of shit. Life is much easier if you just block hexbear.

    • iturnedintoanewt@lemm.ee
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      7 days ago

      Yeah but…how? How can you block from your account the whole of it? I keep getting communities belonging to hexbear popping into my feed, and I have to individually block each one of them. It’s rather tedious. Isn’t there a way to make a whole instance block from your account?

      • Zomg@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Some apps might have nicer blocking features. Or move instances to one that is defederated from them

      • Baguette@lemm.ee
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        7 days ago

        I think most popular apps (boost, voyager if i remember, etc.) have this feature. I dont believe lemmy has this natively.

        Note that blocking instances doesn’t mean you wont see comments from there. It only works on communities.

        To be honest though, most of the problematic people only comment on specific posts/communities so blocking certain keywords and instances should fare pretty well.

  • 1984@lemmy.today
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    7 days ago

    I think you just want to be protected from opinions of others and you call it chaos because your mind can’t handle it.

    And what’s even more interesting, the more sheltered you live your life, the more chaotic you will think the world is.

    Good news is that if you stay on Lemmy.world, you will be protected from it. :)

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    It’s a combination of tankies and some more level headed leftists. They do have a decent proportion of OK users and the occasional decent meme, but the frequent genocide denialism and too many tankies have resulted in a lot of blocks and bans.

    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub
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      The problem is that the tankies are running the instance and get off on banning anyone that doesn’t toe the line of the party ideology.

    • stinky@redlemmy.com
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      Please remember that some people don’t know the lingo yet.

      New people for example. New people who might come to this thread trying to learn about the different instances.

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      The “Just Kidding, but maybe not” kind of memes are both common in the tankie group as well in the right-wing group, which makes me thing it’s just the same people with different costumes, also known as a reskinned model.

      • swirle13@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Sounds like political compass shit, left or right, but primarily in the “authoritarian” top half

        • squid_slime@lemm.ee
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          The political compass has got to be the most bullshit metric, I’m according to the compos a left libertarian. It doesn’t account for theory and for people who are marxist and understand that communism has not yet materialised. Anyway just a slight annoyance i have.

        • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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          5 days ago

          It’s that horseshoe again.

          Far left and far right, hand in hand, both reminiscing for a 1950s that never existed. One in Russia and one in America.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          The Political Compass doesn’t actually mean anything, you cannot simplify political views to a grid, moreover nobody is “authoritarian,” people have different views on centralization vs decentralization. For example, Marxists believe in a fully publicy owned, centrally planned economy, whereas Anarchists believe in full horizontalism. I would describe the Marxist system as having more potential for democracy, as you have a unified system and thus your votes and voice covers a broader area, whereas an Anarchist would disagree, most likely.

        • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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          7 days ago

          Authoritarians are authoritarian first. Left or right is an afterthought. No horseshoes required.

            • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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              Only if you have a juvenile concept of political Spectrum. That only extends across one dimension. Leninists are barely nominally left-wing. In practice most of them are State capitalist and not at all left wing.

              In practice social Democrats and even Democratic socialists tend to be more left-leaning than leninists. And don’t feel a reactionary need to Slaughter or imprison those that disagree with them regularly. I mean if we are going by the providing social benefit to your chosen class of people qualifies a socialism. Then that would make the Nazis socialist. Which they most definitely we’re not.

                • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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                  The order was not meant to be significant. And purely just a construct of a stream of consciousness speech to text. Though you aren’t wrong.

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                Yes, the theory comes from the superficial observation that the actions of the nominal extremes look very similar. And when your head is being crushed by the boot of authoritarianism you don’t care if it is the right foot, or the left foot wearing it.

                At one time there were many concepts of what Socialism is, and at the time nazism was A socialism, of course completely opposite of the concepts that survived.

                • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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                  Hardly. Lennonism still exists. It’s highly similar. In fact Lenin and Stalin helped Hitler invaded Poland. And exterminated their own ethnic polish population in Russia. Leninists still defend these actions to this day and hypocritically criticize “the west”.

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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          I would argue authoritarian ‘leftism’ is just a misnamed right wing ideology wearing the sheepskin of socialism, where as Anarchism / Libertarian Socialism is the ‘real’ far left.

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          Lol I literally got banned from ml for “horseshoe theory”

    • actually@lemmy.world
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      I’m sort of new to Lemmy, having only been here a few months, and I started my first account here in world, the one I am commenting with.

      What I found is that world has many cool and fun and interesting communities, but for news ( world or USA centered) is really centralist USA based. World has cut off access to many other cool and interesting communities that may have different viewpoints here and there.

      I think the few experiences by trolls here from other communities is more of a walled garden thing, and if world has a more inclusive mix this would solve a lot of issues .

      Me migrating to another instance still allows me to participate here in world, and I simply ignore what I don’t like here and elsewhere.

      Honestly, world has as many issues with gatekeeping and power hungry mods as instances and the only way to get the full lemmy experience is to pick and chose what fits best with oneself

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        I think the few experiences by trolls here from other communities is more of a walled garden thing, and if world has a more inclusive mix this would solve a lot of issues .

        You say be more inclusive of tankies and I say learn about the paradox of tolerance.

        • actually@lemmy.world
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          It’s not wall to wall tankees , this is only a minority. Which for the non tanker, can be avoided and ignored.

          I was talking more of a general problem by deciding what I wanted to censor myself rather than letting others do it for me. Baby and bath water analogy and all that.

          And this extends way beyond tankees and piracy.

          And since people are talking about hexbear, it does have the best Syrian news coverage

          • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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            If you call out genocide denialism you get banned. That’s enough for me to consider it wall to wall tankies

            • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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              Yep. If you have nine tankies sitting at a table and a person joins them you have 10 tankies sitting at the table. It works the same as it does for fascists.

              It’s like saying that there we’re good people in Nazi germany. Therefore we should have tolerated Hitler. Why?

            • actually@lemmy.world
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              If you call out genocide denialism you get banned.

              Which is the reason I stopped participating in some of world’s news and political communities, but because of a different genocide.

              But I certainly did not go running to a community that promoted denial of other crimes. Instead I use the power of lemmy to pick and chose healthy communities.

              Each instance has communities which are toxic.

              • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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                That’s true in general.

                Indeed I’ve witnessed Palestine denial on .world, but I’d hardly call it the prevailing sentiment on any mainstream comm there. Each time the comment would be ratioed and loudly disagreed with, which is encouraging.

                I will acknowledge that .world mods have some serious pet projects and issues which is very concerning.

                • actually@lemmy.world
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                  It’s something that is sporadically done, by some people based on the phase of the moon or what they feel like; but it’s tolerated by the other mods.

                  One does not see it much unless it happens to oneself or it’s read about elsewhere. However it certainly has an effect and perhaps is one of the reasons there are cycles of low engagement ( or at least lower than normal). Often people like me who have issues with it just quietly go elsewhere, which I more or less done.

                  But once I moved away, choosing a non political server as my new home, I was exposed to all the communities world blocks, and it was then I realized I had been censored

          • 1984@lemmy.today
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            I feel the same but ive given up on Lemmy. Probably need to find another platform for more grown up discussions.

            Even reddit is far better. Hate to say it but it’s true.

                • hendrik@palaver.p3x.de
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                  I know. But there are different platforms catering to different people, interests etc. I’m part oft some Linux, Free Software, special interest forums. And there definitely are communities with a very different atmosphere… So I wouldn’t say it’s impossible just because people are people.

            • actually@lemmy.world
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              I think any large collection of people online are going to have issues similar to here; and while the distributed social networks have a distressing tendency to bunch up and get tribal, it’s better than only one instance, such as Reddit.

              That said, I think these can be improved later

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        Yup, that’s pretty much spot on. I don’t really have a problem with .world myself. I do hear a lot of complaints about admin powertrips, but I’ve never used .world so I have not experienced this myself.