One of the lines in the sand for me is when people are unironically pro North Korea. I don’t want that on my feed.

And to a lesser extent I don’t want to see weird tankie bootlicking of China either. And I’m not talking about legit good things China has done when compared to other superpowers, I’m talking weird posts that read like full propaganda state sponsored bs, and if you disagree with them in any way they will dig through your intire account history to try and find something they can use instead of actually having a discussion about the topic you originally disagreed with.

Authoritarians don’t want open discussion they will just link you half a shitty book explaining how there’s actually no such thing as authoritarianism.

Edit: I’d like to add that searching lemmygrad for Ukraine will show some really awful takes. I want freedom for Ukraine same as Palestine, Tebet, Hong kong, el Salvador, ect just because the main empire in the west is on the fascism side of authoritarianism doesn’t mean I will cozy up to other authoritarians.

I just spent my lunch break checking out the instance and scrolling through the top weeks posts and checking out the comments.

Hard no.

1. Basically all their posts are political, except very pro-china, pro-marxist, anti-ukraine. Theres not a single post i consider a value add if it appeared in my scroll. Even if I gave the users and their viewpoints the benefit of the doubt, this would be like adding /r/china, /r/russia, /r/communism to my subs. I can’t think of a single reason i want this.

2. I’m not giving the users the benefit of the doubt. Their comments are indistinguishable from what a ccp or Russian employee would post.

All we would be doing is opening a potential vector for propagandists to attack. They post nothing of interest.

Big no.

Echoing from what some others have said, I went back 3 days worth of content from them and found ZERO worthwhile posts.

At least hexbear is somewhat funny in their shit posts, and it’s easy enough to block or filter users who constantly post in their begging for money community.

Meanwhileongrad exists for a reason. I’m content enough to see the smoke from the self immolation that happens from afar.

I never heard of Lemmygrad but after I saw this post I checked them out and I do not think it would be wise to federate with them. They seem terrible. They seem like they’re worse than hexbear.

It’s gonna be a no from me, fam

Not for me, no. IMO, a lot of the users over there are only interested in cosplaying authoritarianism, which I am not personally into.

while hexbear, .ml, and similar communities do engage in genuine praxis in the form of mutual aid and other such assistance forums, their rhetoric and dogma is enough to absolutely destroy any amicable sentiment that might build up imo.

everyone in the comments talking about leftist unity and historical awareness is an idiot and a hypocrite. historically whenever anarchism collaborate with the red fash, we get crushed on all sides. there isn’t an instance that has gone differently. we can be that instance.

the lack of genuine rhetoric, absolute widespread acceptance of bad faith argumentative tactics, and general behavior of .ml and hexbear’s communities are both so egregious as to warrant not federating with either community, honestly. i agree with the sentiment found elsewhere in these comments that i have nothing to be gained watching western incels post about how much they love north korea and daddy putin in my feed.

i can’t and won’t be friendly with people who espouse those views and honestly, if db0 were to start federating more of these communities it would denigrate the space enough to make me want to leave. part of what i like about here is that there is no weird snakey people trying to convince people of crazy fucking conspiracy theories. just anarchist nerds doing tech shit. if we invite these people in, we’ll lose ourselves. i don’t think i’d want to use a forum that will leave me associated, no matter how loosely, with literal fascists. it’s a big part of what drives me away from mainstream social media to here and if need be it will drive me away from here, too.

No, don’t need to see more tankie shite.

Big no from me

Absolutely not.

All I will ask is that you go have a look at lemmygrad.ml before you vote, and ask yourself if there is anything posted there you think warrants keeping them defederated?

This is the wrong question. The correct question is, “has something materially changed at lemmygrad.ml since we defederated from them, and has it changed sufficiently to warrant refederation?”

My issue with grad was never their local content. Yes they have shitty propagandized tankie takes and deepthroat Mao and the North Korean state all the time, but I always filtered and blocked those sorts of communities, which is any user’s perogative. Hell, since we can blanket instance block on a user level these days, it’s even easier.

The issue was always their users picking fights outside of their instance and actively spreading dangerous misinformation in every community they can get their fingers in; then their admins doing nothing, if not actively encouraging, this sort of bad faith engagement. Grad, hex and ml would all to varying degrees end up on many news comms and try to flood them with a certain viewpoints. And if you get into their space with an opposing view point (e.g urgyhur genocide) you will be banned more often than not.

Look back in history and see why we defedded. Db0 made the call early on because he also realized they do not make any arguements in good faith and are, for any purposes, just fascists with a different kind of red flag that were directly antithetical to this lemmy’s principles. They were not worth the added moderation load to manage their users when they would get into our local comms then. And I doubt they’re worth it now.

I opened their site, and right off the bat I see at least three usernames I recognize as bad faith actors that I previously blocked, I can only assume their administrative structure has not changed a bit. Refederating will be a net negative for db0.

Off topic: I forgot how the governance system works, can someone link the post where it was implemented because I’m on mobile and search is really hard here. I don’t know how to see my vote tallied. _{___}

No thank you. I have zero interest in dealing with genocide apologists, regardless of their purported idealogical leanings.

Hard disagree. Honestly, this would even be a compelling reason for me to leave this instance and spin up my own. I wanted to try out running an instance for quite some time now, and this would probably push me further toward that. That wouldn’t have an impact on my moderation efforts, e.g. in c/piracy; there would be a smooth transfer.

KEEP OUT THE TANKIES :p

I am anti censorship and we need the users to develop critical thinking, because then the problem would eliminate itself. However, as instance owners, you (unfortunately) have the responsibility what content is visible on your instance, even if it is just some copy from somewhere else (the law is not quite compatible with distributed systems). This means, you have to block any extremist views which could endanger any of your instance’s users (even visitors, technically). So even if it is censorship, the survival of this instance is of more value, than to enforce pure anarchy.

I am for blocking lemmygrad. And hexbear. And @[email protected].

In others words: don’t ever federate again.