My first months on Lemmy were spent on Lemmy.world, which was the biggest instance at the time. I had no experience with Hexbear because .world had defederated that instance. I sometimes saw it being described as a “tankie” instance, but it was nothing specific.

After I moved to .zip, I came across !games@hexbear.net, which seemed to be free from anything overtly political and reminded me of r/Gamingcirclejerk, so I subscribed to it and occasionally made comments related to gaming.

Today I made multiple comments to a post about an article on the STALKER game developers having removed the Soviet symbols and the Russian audio in the remastered edition of the game. I would argue that in the thread, there were no comments from me that could be construed by a reasonable person as defensive of Nazism, fascism, or even hinting at it. For example, in one of the comments, I linked a Ukrainian law that prohibits the use of Nazi symbols, though I highly advise looking through all my ten comments as to avoid any misunderstanding or false impressions.

Conversely, one comment posted by another user dismissed Holodomor as Nazi propaganda, which I reported, but a moderator of that community just ended up calling me out for that and taking no action, followed by them banning me.

The thread containing all of my untouched posts is still available via lemmy.zip. My comments are also available for viewing via my user page. They are not available on hexbear due to the ban.

    • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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      16 天前

      I align more closely with hexbear politics than almost all non-hexbear users. IMO, their politics is not the problem – they’re just an astoundingly toxic community.

        • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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          16 天前

          I don’t really know how to do that other than to dig through replies from hexbear users pointing out how much vitriol they use. But in general, there’s a lot of name-calling (e.g. since you disagree with me, you must be awhite cracker,” “minstrel,” etc. – wtf kind of problem these guys have with minstrels I don’t understand); a lot of posting of flippant reaction images instead of actual responses, and so on. They’re clearly very angry about politics, which I get, but also have no interest in actually debating politics with any level of subtlety; even when I agree with someone in broad strokes but disagree about a particular item because I think it’s counter-productive to their own cause, I just get harshly told off. As a result, I can only assume they imagine everyone else is disingenuous.

          • Rose@lemmy.zipOP
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            16 天前

            Ah yeah, even in that thread, there were people responding with images or immediately labeling me a liberal without explaining or knowing anything about my views except that I seemingly sided with Ukraine. One person was very angry and needlessly escalatory with their “go fuck yourself”. Another felt the need to comment on my post history and try to use me running an Epic Games community against me. There’s a lot of ad hominem and straw man type arguments, which is usually indicative of not having strong counterarguments on the main subject itself.

            • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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              15 天前

              I get the same shit on world or other super lib instances claiming I’m a Tankie or fascist apologist or what the fuck ever if I at all question the msm narrative, point out democratic failings, etc.

            • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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              15 天前

              Yeah that’s basically my feelings too. I wonder why they are so defensive. (edit: /gen)

              • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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                16 天前

                I don’t know if this is sarcasm. If it isn’t, it’s because they’re supposedly leftists, but they have also been told they need to support authoritarian regimes who often harm people they’re supposed to want to help, especially Russia invading another much smaller nation (and fighting them poorly). They can’t reconcile these two beliefs, so instead they can only attack others.

            • newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml
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              15 天前

              There’s a lot of ad hominem and straw man type arguments, which is usually indicative of not having strong counterarguments on the main subject itself.

              That’s every internet discussion. You skipped over the constructive arguments and effortposts, didn’t address any of their valid criticism, and focused solely on the shitposts. If you’re not engaging in constructive discussion, mods can remove you at their discretion.

              • Rose@lemmy.zipOP
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                15 天前

                Are you serious? If anything, I ignored the angry comment, the low effort image comments, and the one outright denying the mass killing of millions of Ukrainians (which was my reason for reporting it), but I engaged at length with the people who were making more or less proper arguments. I could have engaged with the top one about Ukrainians praising Bandera and remind the person that they should have a perfect understanding of how that works, given that tankies (which was that user’s self-description) too praise the adversaries of their countries despite Stalin and Putin’s track records making Bandera’s pale in comparison, but I thought that would be way too triggering, so I didn’t post that draft.

              • jsomae@lemmy.ml
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                15 天前

                No, that’s not it. I am not denying that there is constructive and high-effort activity on the instance. But the moment-to-moment conversation is superlatively hostile, (at least when I show up lol), and I’m making pretty tame comments – it’s not because of me. I don’t anywhere near that amount of venom in other instances.

                • newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml
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                  14 天前

                  Start making leftist (i.e. anti transphobia, pro worker, pro environment etc) comments on .world or .shit and you’ll experience a lot more vitriol. At least that’s been my experience and the reason I stay away from these cesspools.

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            16 天前

            Yeah, they’re the worst part of the worst periods of 4chan. I don’t think that’s where most of them come from, but it’s the same type of people.

            The fact that they always support authoritarianism is just the cherry on top that makes them totally unreasonable.

            • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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              14 天前

              Funny, I would’ve thought “the worst part of the worst periods of 4chan” would be all the bigotry, racism, transphobia, and that sort of thing.

                • OBJECTION!@lemmy.ml
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                  13 天前

                  Bigotry gets you banned from Hexbear fast.

                  Unless you wanna play the, “Saying Palestinians should have rights is antisemitic” card or something similar.

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        16 天前

        I agree, and both their problematic hot takes and their toxicity are well-represented in OP’s link.

  • Schwim Dandy@lemm.ee
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    15 天前

    It sounds like you finally learned about hexbear firsthand and don’t have to rely on others’ reports on their behavior.

  • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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    16 天前

    putin sympathizes with elon nazi musk. I wonder what they think about him.

    • Oniononon@sopuli.xyz
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      15 天前

      Musk can’t be a nazi, he is white, loves trump, hates minorities, wants white power, supports putin and comes from a family with strong beliefs. There is no way mr putin would befriend nazis, as he is waging a war against invasion of nazis right this moment.

      I think thats what they think.

    • Merva@sh.itjust.works
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      15 天前

      They will claim to hate him (and Trump), and then keep on regurgitating propaganda constructed in favour of him.

    • newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml
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      15 天前

      They fucking hate both, Putin because he’s a liberal and Musk because he’s a deeply unserious shithead.

  • viking@infosec.pub
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    16 天前

    Well, now you know why sensible admins defederate from this trash. I’d suggest using an app that allows you to block instances from your side and ignore them.

  • Hubi@feddit.org
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    16 天前

    Do yourself a favor and just block the entire instance from your profile settings. It’s irredeemable.

    • Lupus@feddit.org
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      16 天前

      In the app you can mute posts from instances, to also get rid of the users you need to use the webpage as someone else mentioned.

      To mute the instance in the boost app go on the profile icon, lower right, settings (upper right), “Filters & blocks”, there you should see the option “mute instances”, type in the instance handle and posts from that instance shouldn’t show up anymore.

    • irelephant [he/him]🍭@lemm.ee
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      15 天前

      You can block posts from different instancs, but you cannot block comments.

      I’d recommend you switch to a server that blocks them, like lemmy.ca, sopuli.xyz or discuss.online or use a different software like piefed which supports proper blocking (piefed.social).

    • walktheplank@lemmy.world
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      16 天前

      Log into the web version and block the instance. I just did this for lemmy.org yesterday and couldn’t find a way to do it through the app. I also use boost.

  • Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee
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    15 天前

    Getting banned from hexbear is your initiation into the broader world of lemmy. It happens to everyone who isn’t a tankie at some point. Wear it with pride

  • zaphodb2002@sh.itjust.works
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    16 天前

    Yeah I think Hexbear is the only big server sh.itjust.works defederated with, probably for the best. ML is bad but there’s enough other people to water it down I suppose

  • lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com
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    16 天前

    Some people there post burning flags of other countries and want the total destruction of them… “Death to country XY” being upvoted is as normal there as using toothpaste… Mods seem to support that and ban people who criticize it.

    If we had only those people on the planet, there would be nothing but war.

    • AmidFuror@fedia.io
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      16 天前

      I think you’ve just made a completely unwarranted assumption about how often those people are brushing their teeth.

    • newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml
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      15 天前

      If we had only those people on the planet, there would be nothing but war.

      we’d have a stateless, classless, moneyless society. If only.

      • odelik@lemmy.today
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        15 天前

        Humans have a natural urge to rebel and question authority.

        If your response to that is to be a authoritian dipshit and beat them into submission, you might be a facist and causing more harm than good.

        • newaccountwhodis@lemmy.ml
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          14 天前

          See you’re pushing back against my point so you might be a fascist and causing more harm than good (this is how dumb your argument sounds. Update your definition of fascism)