As many other threads have popped up about this over the last few days, I thought I’d raise a thread on kbin about this too.
From what I’ve seen, they seem like mainly inflammatory trolls who steadfastly support either Russia or the CCP while adding little of value to actual discussions elsewhere on the site.
Was a vote to federate with them in the first place even had?
What’s everyone’s thoughts?
Nonscientific strawpoll:
I have read a few posts about the hexbear trolls but have not seen a thread were they are present.
Can anyone point me in the direction of what you are talking about?
You can see their pro-russia propaganda in this thread pretty clearly, as an example:
https://kbin.social/m/worldnews@lemmy.ml/t/422878/Ukraine-expands-conscription-removes-medical-exemptions-for-HIV-hepatitis-mental#comments
While the comments are shit (they came across a lame trolls), I don’t see them as bad enough to defederate.
If this is the worst, I would vote no at the moment.
That’s not really the worst, I’ve seen people calling others racist for making fun of Xi Jinping with a Winnie the Pooh meme and intentionally trying to rile others up by acting like their community is above others, but the common thread here is that every Hexbear post I’ve seen is bad faith trolling and there’s no reason they need to be allowed into normal communities. Defederating gets rid of a bunch of wackos in one fell swoop.
Does it though?
For how long?
If hexbear is cut off won’t the trolls just migrate to different instances?
Not likely. They’d been bottled up in hexbear not bothering anybody for a while before they decided to federate. They spend so much time circlejerking it makes sense they wouldn’t even notice going back to that.
Counterpoint: There is no fun being a troll when everyone agrees with you.
The whole point is to say bad things to spark outrage among normies.
That is why the trolls want to be on Twitter and not Truth Social.
If hexbear gets cut off, it becomes boring to the trolls and they will move on.
This wasn’t meant to highlight the worst I’ve seen, just the first one I found afterPons_Aelius asked for an example.
As gk99 said, none of their arguments are in good faith and they don’t contribute worthwhile content of their own to make it seem worth federating with them.
Then what was the point of the link?
If you are not willing to provide evidence of what you think is the problem with the instance, there is no way for me or others to judge.
Trust me bro, they are bad., is all I am seeing in this thread.
Because you asked for a link where they were acting in bad faith? Its Russian propanda
And all you came up with was a few troll comments.
Again, I have herd multiple accounts saying how bad they are, yet yours is the only link.
You say they are bad, prove it.
Otherwise it is just a call to your authority saying they are bad.
Again, post some links rather than replying without them.
Edit: @Whisp
downvoting me without providing evidence kind of proves my point.
Nah I don’t owe you shit lol. Go find it on your own
So it is trust me bro!!!
Do you have any examples of that kind of posting in kbin magazines? For now I don’t see a problem.
Once they start spamming kbin I’m all for defederation. Especially because there are few moderation&blocking tools available right now.
They are not federated with kbin.social, so they cannot post here. We’re invisible to them. We have to endure their posts, but they cannot see our responses.
Ok, that’s a good argument for defederation. Onesided federation makes no sense.
I rarely see their posts. I’m assuming they only ever show up in all? Cause I oddly only ever see complaints about them but never the content themselves unless they post in the complaint threads about them. Not to say I’m against defederation. I would defer to those who spend more time in all of that’s really the case of what’s occurring. It’s just hard to see whether it’s a small problem or a big problem when I only ever see one side of it. Personally, I’d rather assume folks are being rational with their complaints. Though I would rather not see the toxic communities and magazines that exist only to make fun of others, no matter how toxic the targets may be.
I read a lot of news and political discussions in various lemmy instances, so it is probably a problem of my own making.
I wouldn’t even mind the trolling and insincere arguments themselves, but having to see propaganda or misinformation while being unable to respond to it makes me feel pretty helpless (I mean, I could respond, but they would never see it). I think I might be happier without them.
I just tried to block them myself, but there seems to be some kind of bug currently that prevents domain blocking (see my other comment above).
It is not, they’re pretty fond of hijacking things. If they’d stick to relevant topics half the problem would be gone.
I actively try to prune any predominantly political shit from my feed and I’ve still seen a bunch of them with a characteristic shitposting (and not the good kind) vibe.
I don’t see why so many people insist on waiting for very specific harm to be done. Kinda seems like “C’mon everybody, leopards wont eat our faces too!”
Any thread that mentions them (that they can see, at least) immediately blows up into a pile of vapid garbage. They ruin every thread they appear in and there’s no reason to believe they’ll be any better here than they’ve been elsewhere if ever they do decide to federate with us. Also, they do seem to be adding instances so it’s not like there’s no chance they’ll target us too. Or, uh, heroically bestow upon us the boon of their inanity or whatever they think they’re doing.
“I know he smears shit on the walls but unless you have proof of him smearing shit on your walls I’m letting him in”
I see a bunch of hexbear users there, but I also see plenty of anti-that-post posters from lemmy instances as well. This is the first time someone has bothered to post any examples, which is helpful.
Just check hexbear.net, their behavior is largely identical inside and outside of hexbear. It’s best to go directly to hexbear rather than checking via federation as they block quite a bit from view.