As a more serious response: we… don’t actually do that. It’s not a coordinated thing. There’s no Secret Hexbear Discord Cabal where we congregate and conspire to raid an instance and be dickheads. It’s organic content from real people.
Very early on (years before federation and the Reddit exodus) we made a decision to remove downvotes from our instance. We were having a serious problem with trans users being anonymously bullied by a small number of bad actors downvoting all their content. So, we purged those assholes’ accounts and turned downvotes off. The intent was to encourage a culture of active participation by de-anonymizing disagreement. If you want to disagree with something on Hexbear, you need to say it out loud in public.
Post-federation, other instances interpreted that as “brigading”. It isn’t. If we see something we think is bad, we tell you, instead of just pressing the “I Disagree” button. I understand that isn’t to everybody’s taste, and I don’t blame anybody for blacklisting our Lemmy instance—we intentionally buck the trend of passive scrolling through social media. If you just want to share some memes and have a lark, Hexbear probably isn’t for you. And that’s fine! That’s what’s cool about Lemmy—you can just shut off a community you don’t like!
(And, anticipating responses: yes, I am aware that there’s a small segment of Hexbears who seem to enjoy inter-instance drama. That’s true of all instances, though. We regularly see the same kind of behavior from visitors back home, too. But, we’ve got a culture of being extremely vocal. So our assholes are loud, too. And if something is organically popular enough to show up cross-instance, they’ll dogpile on it. Sorry about that.)
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the enforced anonymity of up-votes and down-votes(and the seeming concensus that “this is a good thing”). Whether I can articulate all of my opinions or not, I definitely don’t care to take the time to do so with all of them, particularly when they’ve already been spelled out by others(yay up-votes). A stupid number is easier to ignore than a well-thought-out(or otherwise) wall-of-text, that spaws others.
Personally, I have no qualms about blocking someone over their up-votes and down-votes, and anonymizing, or disabling, either, just seems to make it easier for trash that can keep quiet to hide. Personally, I identify with Marjory, so I guess it evens out.
TL;DR: I’m all for giving (biggotted)trash the lowest-effort-possible ways to out themselves, provided the rest of us can act upon it.
… but y’all seem to have figured it out within the constraints of the Lemmy system, while I’m still reeling at the notion that this seems to be the best thing out there with any traction among the masses.
Gondor has called for aid?! Rohan will answer!
As a more serious response: we… don’t actually do that. It’s not a coordinated thing. There’s no Secret Hexbear Discord Cabal where we congregate and conspire to raid an instance and be dickheads. It’s organic content from real people.
Very early on (years before federation and the Reddit exodus) we made a decision to remove downvotes from our instance. We were having a serious problem with trans users being anonymously bullied by a small number of bad actors downvoting all their content. So, we purged those assholes’ accounts and turned downvotes off. The intent was to encourage a culture of active participation by de-anonymizing disagreement. If you want to disagree with something on Hexbear, you need to say it out loud in public.
Post-federation, other instances interpreted that as “brigading”. It isn’t. If we see something we think is bad, we tell you, instead of just pressing the “I Disagree” button. I understand that isn’t to everybody’s taste, and I don’t blame anybody for blacklisting our Lemmy instance—we intentionally buck the trend of passive scrolling through social media. If you just want to share some memes and have a lark, Hexbear probably isn’t for you. And that’s fine! That’s what’s cool about Lemmy—you can just shut off a community you don’t like!
(And, anticipating responses: yes, I am aware that there’s a small segment of Hexbears who seem to enjoy inter-instance drama. That’s true of all instances, though. We regularly see the same kind of behavior from visitors back home, too. But, we’ve got a culture of being extremely vocal. So our assholes are loud, too. And if something is organically popular enough to show up cross-instance, they’ll dogpile on it. Sorry about that.)
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the enforced anonymity of up-votes and down-votes(and the seeming concensus that “this is a good thing”). Whether I can articulate all of my opinions or not, I definitely don’t care to take the time to do so with all of them, particularly when they’ve already been spelled out by others(yay up-votes). A stupid number is easier to ignore than a well-thought-out(or otherwise) wall-of-text, that spaws others.
Personally, I have no qualms about blocking someone over their up-votes and down-votes, and anonymizing, or disabling, either, just seems to make it easier for trash that can keep quiet to hide. Personally, I identify with Marjory, so I guess it evens out.
TL;DR: I’m all for giving (biggotted)trash the lowest-effort-possible ways to out themselves, provided the rest of us can act upon it.
… but y’all seem to have figured it out within the constraints of the Lemmy system, while I’m still reeling at the notion that this seems to be the best thing out there with any traction among the masses.