Has anyone else noticed how prevalent Hexbear posters have suddenly become? Maybe sometime last week I noticed nearly every political post had at least one long thread of Hexbear users that do nothing but repeat CCP talking points while waving anyway anything even remotely reliable as Western propaganda. That or getting all excited about trolled libs. The way they tell it, you’d think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
Not to mention, their info on the Fediverse observer is either straight up wrong or there’s some serious botting going on. According to that, the instance is less than a month old, yet somehow they already have one of the largest, most active userbases, along with far and away the most comments of any instance.
Seems to me like Lemmygrad on steroids. Considering we defederated from them, seems like a no-brainer to block Hexbear as well.
So glad this thread could become such a perfect microcosm of why we need to defederate.
The way they tell it, you’d think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
Same type of person. Careerist strivers who all accept the basic liberal version of history and society. The liberal version of history coincides with the reactionary version of history because they both refuse to question the premises of capitalism. That is they both agree more over capitalism and Western Hegemony more than they disagree about specific cultural issues. They don’t all have to be in the same room, coordinating on a narrative because they all share the same boundaries of inquiry. So the same kind of stuff gets written without active coordination. This is a roundabout way to say they’re all of the same class. They have class solidarity.
A liberal news source will talk about how good and downtrodden immigrants are. A conservative news source will talk about how all immigrants are drug dealers. But they don’t disagree that there both needs to be immigration or that it needs to be regulated. A good real world example of this is Democrats flipping out over Trump’s racism and then upping funding for “border security” and advocating for a tech wall. Neither question the fundamental assumptions about immigration. Both advocate for the same idea, just in different abstractions. Nobody actually thinks the person who writes a bleeding heart article gets up from their chair and sits at a different desk where they write about caravans of cartel members. Though you do get the same person/organization drifting into sounding like their opposition, like the NYT. Which illustrates, again, that they’re the same class and ultimately share the same goals and fears.
It’s not a hard code to crack. You just have to be willing to actually question things and be curious. But there’s a lot of resentment in doing that (displayed here) because part of the media is propagandizing poor people and getting them adopt the same goals and fears as the upper classes. The people in government right now spent decades selling off your jobs and livlihood to cheaper areas of the world. Because it benefited them. One of those places was China. Capitalists gave China everything they needed to become what they are. It was fun when sowing. Now, because of problems in the West, China must become a talking point and scapegoat. The rich don’t like them because they’re closing themselves off from foreign investment and they’re not playing ball with our foreign policy. That is they pose a threat to unite with other countries and close off investment as well. If US companies can’t set up shop in Taiwan, for example, that hurts wealthy people in the US. You don’t have that wealth or investment so that argument won’t work on you. Therefore the problem must be abstracted and layered under a bunch of cultural or moral arguments. So you get stories about how the Chinese are all savage bug people who work like robots to overthrow your way of life. They’re violating your liberal ideals of free speech. They’re detaining Muslims so they’re too racist. They don’t like LGTBT people. They ruin your bitcoin gambling. They kill their people by cooking in sewage oil and their buildings fall down.
This is to get you to share opposition to China so that by the time we work ourselves into a War, you won’t really question why your children are fighting in it. They’ll go die so that US companies can keep pumping out resources from those countries and keep the competition out. All the sentiments about honor and duty and security and freedom are a lie.
Hexbear is actually one of the oldest Lemmy instances, been around for over three years. Due to technical issues around our high number of active users and having to rely on volunteer labour, we have only been able to federate within the last few weeks.
The way they tell it, you’d think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
Because they are. This isn’t even a radical far left idea. Ever heard of “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky? That’s one of the main arguments, that the media is owned and controlled by the capitalist class.
Lemmy was built by communists and the audacity of these liberals to come here and demand shelter from exposure to communists is really something
I have no problem with communism, I have a problem with authoritarian propaganda.
Which political system do you suggest is more authoritarian than the owner of the largest military in the world, the largest police force in the world, and the largest intelligence (espionage) agency in the world?
Don’t forget the largest prison population.
name your favourite anti-authoritarian system. you wanna have a revolution to create it? whoopsie doopsie, you’re literally forcing people (maybe at gunpoint!!!) to do something that they don’t want to do, you fucking authoritarian tankie monster. next you’ll be saying you want to get rid of corporations (extremely authoritarian over those business owners)
No I don’t want a revolution, I want people to try to work together instead of fighting.
our literal entire platform is that the people should work together as much as possible and efforts to divide the people should be met with the harshest punishment
hundreds of thousands of volumes of literature spread across every nation, every language, every race, every gender, every sexuality, spanning centuries, and this is like the one thing we agree on the most
We’re trained not to see the violence all around us, because we’re swimming in it all the time. Here’s a quote about the topic from Mark Twain that got me thinking years ago when I was starting to move left. Maybe it’ll speak to you too:
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
I love Monty Python, but I’ll never forgive them for turning “Come and see the violence inherent in the system” into a joke. Dennis was spitting FACTS.
Do you think the capitalists will work with you? Do you believe that their sense of fraternity and human decency will lead them to throw down arms and accept more radical change to the system than the strikes, protests, and abolition movements that the capitalists have met with mass murder for centuries?
The capitalists are not your friends. Their power will not be voted away, it won’t be argued away, it won’t be negotiated away. It can only be removed by force, and removing it is the only way to keep them from using it to sculpt society into an ever-crueler engine of profiteering.
A smooth, voluntary, nonviolent transition to peace and harmony would be every leftist’s dream, but there are institutions with power who have used, are using, and will continue to use violence to prevent it from happening in order to maintain their material interests. Call it whatever you want, but the process of transitioning from our status quo to something better will require dismantling institutions that are capable of defending their existence with violence. It sucks.
Please tell me how you’re imagining getting people like Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk to “work together instead of fighting” and give up their hoarded wealth. What short of sheer force would compel them to do that?
Utopian socialism would be nice if it worked but it patently does not. The bourgeoisie have a very fine time controlling the wealth of the world and they have nothing to gain by accepting democracy. Socialism, like any economic order, is only going to be a reality if it is enforced with violence. If somebody tries to undo the collective ownership to the means of production they will have to be stopped by force, just as force is applied today to stop people from violating bourgeois property rights.
Yeah that would be great, unfortunately the world we live in doesn’t work like that. Asking for cooperation when the other side is perfectly fine using violence and manipulation then you are effectively just advocating for subservience to the bourgeoisie.
Did you have the opportunity to see what the state does in the face of nonviolent resistance when the BLM protests were happening?
Yeah, us too. Unfortuntely society is currently managed by a bunch of literal sociopaths who are more than willing to throw their stolen wealth into militarized police, private deathsquads, and good ol’ normal armies.
We dont get to dictate the escalation of force, the bourgeoisie have and will do that for us.
STATE AND REVOLUTION
Don’t forget the stochastic violence they do to us with their control of media and culture
That’d be nice. Unfortunately the bourgeoise have class solidarity with each other and not with us, they will prevent change from happening peacefully.
I am descending into madness.
Propaganda is any alternative to the hegemony of Western corporate media
all political systems require authoritarian principles until class can be abolished after communism, do you know anything about the words you are using?
Police are authoritarian, for instance. Do you think your “democracy” is peaceful? Do you think it is nonviolent?
authoritarian
You have no idea what this word even means
Let’s not pretend that your politics aren’t inherently authoritarian as well.
Either you support capitalism (or worse), which is grossly authoritarian as it inflicts massive violence not only via warfare but through mass starvation and deprivation, or you support socialism, in which case you have two options:
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The violent overthrow of the current system (spoiler alert: that’s a very authoritarian thing to do!)
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The gradual reform of the current system, meaning maintaining the status quo for an exceptionally long time as we ever so slowly creep our way to a more just economic system while countless people starve, go homeless, die without healthcare, end up in yet-another war and so on (which is a very authoritarian proposition, just throwing away the lives of the poor in your own country-not to mention those in the developing world-just so you can have a neat and tidy reformist approach that doesn’t rock the boat.)
Everything is authoritarian
Ok…
Leaving this here for anyone else who got this far and feels confused:
Hey, what about this tangentially-connected thing from 70 years ago?
from 70 years ago?
lmaoooooo
Has anything changed in 70 years? The legacy of the suppression of the left wing in the United States is still with us today!
rejectetion of political plurality
use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo
reductions in the rule of law
authoritarianism is characterized by reductions in the rule of law?? what???
separation of powers
and Democratic voting
authoritarianism is characterized by reductions in the rule of law?? what???
Here, “rule of law” means roughly “all people are equal before the law” (that is, you don’t have a group of people who are above it).
Emojis unrelated
Using wikipedia as a reference for political ideology is like asking W Bush which countries are good and bad
I wonder who made that definition.
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.
Hey America (and Canada, UK, Australia, etc.), how ya doing?
✅ Rejection of political plurality (See: Range of acceptable thought among mainstream political parties; Also, consider some self-reflection)
✅ Strong central power to preserve the political status quo (See: Mainstream media apparatus, spanning news, movies, tv, etc.)
✅ Reductions in the rule of law (See: Absolute failure to hold politicians or corporations accountable)
✅ Reductions in the separation of powers (See: Politicians funded by and catering to corporate interests)
✅ Reductions in democratic Voting (See again: Politicians funded by and catering to corporate interests + absolute failure to hold politicians accountable; Also see: Rampant gerrymandering, erosion of voters’ right, zero democracy in the workplace or outside of political elections)
No see you’re allowed to decide if the guy with the blue tie or the guy with the red tie is your representative (uh… if you live in one of the handful of districts that are competitive anyway) so that means it cant be authoritarian. God I love our illusion of democracy. It makes me feel so nice.
So we have to pretend political plurality is inherently and self evidently good now?
Hey! The guy in the red tie and the guy in the blue tie disagree slightly on one issue! The ability to decide between them is true freedom!
I didn’t say everything is authoritarian, I specifically stated your politics as being authoritarian.
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All political systems are authoritarian.
Then you should have a problem with the term itself “authoritarian propaganda”
Seems like you’re missing a ton of nuance in manufacturing consent, and have turned from the frying pan into the fire in that sense.
Yes, Western media is biased towards corporations. This is most clearly seen in anything labeled “finance” or “money”, but is pervasive.
But the only time I can ever think of Western media doing anything on the scale of censoring the 1989 Tiananmin Square Massacre is the Iraq MWD debacle. And they’ve never done anything like the Great Firewall.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
And even if you’re 100% on board with every word Marx has written, I don’t understand how that leads one to defend modern day Russia and China.
The West absolutely has problems. And it’s good and right to point those out and try to fix them. But to try to paint the East as the answer to stand against the West is dangerous and dumb.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
Hexbear doesn’t “defend modern day Russia”. I’m sure there are some users who do purely from a position of believing a multipolar world is preferable to one dominated unilaterally by the US, but even in those users think Putin is a piece of shit.
There’s a difference between understanding NATO’s role in provoking the war in Ukraine, not calling Russians orcs or comparing Putin to Hitler and defending modern-day Russia.
And they’ve never done anything like the Great Firewall.
The great firewall is for your own protection, just look at how you guys react to a small group of users with different opinions!
Are people stupid enough to believe this?
The real answer is it is, among other things, an economic tool
The alternative was having the big US techs invade china economically, along with the mass propaganda from capitalist entities (chief among them the US, always pursuing efforts to destabilize China) that would have followed
You don’t speak to actual Chinese citizens often, do you ? basically all young people there have VPNs, and nobody cares. Like, at all
No, the truth is the CCP is a violently authoritarian government that needs to control what it’s citizens think in order to stay in power.
Lol, you’re complaining about other people being propagandized while you say shit like this.
I mean, visit any third world country where there’s no such thing as a “great firewall” and you’ll find western services and corporations embedded in everything to do with technology. WhatsApp has basically replaced text messaging to the point where even banks use it in my country, twitter is basically a PSA and tech support tool, and Facebook is everywhere. This is terrible for sovereignty. Meanwhile China has developed their own stuff such as WeChat and Weibo. So they’re not subject to relying on Zuckerberg and Musk for everything from texting to banking.
That’s the main economic purpose the great firewall served, it allowed China to develop their own tech industry instead of relying on silicon valley dorks. Not everything is some evil authoritarian communist scheme to oppress everyone. Chinese citizens could just get a VPN if they wanted to find out anything cordoned off.
The US Is the most violent police state in the world, not that you actually give a shit
Do you think people don’t have VPNs?
CCP is a violently authoritarian government
The US state has spent the last three-quarter century sending their intelligence and military forces all over the world to violently snuff out any movement that went against it percieved interests.
China did not do that.
So why are you focusing on China? Who is the real “authoritarian” government here?
No I’m pretty sure they do that by increasing their citizens quality of life. I know, it’s a bizarre concept.
lol, the great firewall is protecting you right now from getting bodied by millions of CPC members
That was clearly a joke
The Great Firewall was to protect their own citizens from being data mined from foreign companies and propagandized by hostile state actors that want to put the Chinese in mines to extract resources for dirt cheap like they’ve done to many other nations in Africa, South America, and Asia
Notably also to make room in the domestic market for the domestic bourgeoisie to fill the roles Facebook, YT, etc. fill elsewhere, since those companies collaborate with the US.
Be more direct. Who are you even replying to?
I’m not replying to anyone, I’m posting this for other people who come along and might be susceptible to Hexbear propaganda.
Well thank god they have you to tell them… what exactly? What counter-movement do you stand for?
It might shock you but you aren’t required to stand for an anti-establishment whatever and shove your opinions down other people’s throats.
Capitalism in it’s current form may be responsible for incredible suffering and truly horrific global environmental damage. That doesn’t mean the concept itself is 100% wrong, that Communism is compatible with human nature, or that it’s in humanities best interest to split of into a bunch of counter-movements.
1989 Tiananmin Square Massacre
They can’t even spell it right, of course they never took the initiative to question the massacre narrative
I’m always so paranoid about saying something wrong let alone spelling something wrong. It blows my mind when people just spout off without double checking themselves.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
How do you know that? Did the US government tell you?
looks at my own account age
Nah bro I think we’re all one month old bot accounts personally ran by the standing committee of the Politburo of the People’s Republic of China and the standing committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the People’s Republic of Korea
I don’t think that the CCP cares enough about Lemmy to make bots. Lmao.
We are a leftist community that has existed for about 3 years before we federated.
The stuff we believe and discuss are leftist talking points you would hear in any ML org.
Have you ever spoken to any actual, theory-reading leftists or have you only ever spoken to Neoliberal Democrat types? Because from a political science point of view, Dems are not leftists, they’re capitalists.
I swear we are not scary people, we are just really, really frustrated with the capitalist status quo and the liberal bullshitting some people use to defend it.
Bots are cheap, and Lemmy is growing. It would be foolish for them not to get in on this early.
You are right, of course, that leftism != liberalism. But just saying that doesn’t count as an argument. I haven’t yet seen what Menachem is complaining about, but I will be paying attention.
EDIT: On further read, you guys kind of feel at the very least like the left-wing equivalent of somethingawful.com.
If you want to take the issue of social media manipulation seriously, you need to take a moment to consider who is best positioned and best motivated to carry out these operations. The vast majority of the English-speaking social media platforms are headquartered in Silicon Valley, domiciled in the US. This includes TikTok. Despite all the hippie California Ideology bullshit, the Valley has been closely linked with the Pentagon since its inception (See Palo Alto by Malcom Harris, or Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine as two examples of this history.) Today, these giant tech firms still live off the teat of military contracts. From Microsoft to Google to Amazon.
The social media platforms enjoy a regime of immense power and nil regulations. There are a lot of ways the state could cause these companies pain if it were interested, from rescinding contracts to imposing regulation, to engaging in some bona fide anti-trust litigation, but this doesn’t happen because they have an understanding. These companies collaborate with the state in surveillance, they install figures like Jessica Ashooh at Reddit - straight out of the Atlantic Council - to run moderation policy. They facilitate counterinsurgency by sweeping up disclosures like the Blue Leaks and shutting down dissident communities in the midst of large scale civil unrest. They flood these platforms with war propaganda when it is convenient, lay the seeds of doubt whenever US interests are challenged abroad. They allow floods of fake users to post positively about US-aligned coups like the one in Bolivia, or the SOSCuba nonsense. We literally have military formations who’s sole task is to manipulate opinion on social media.
These are the people manipulating public opinion on social media. They are the ones holding the keys to the platforms. The ones who DECIDE what the algorithm is going to show you day after day after day. The ones who let shitholes like r/The_Donald to run roughshod for years, then ban communities like r/ChapoTrapHouse in the middle of the biggest domestic protest movement in US history. The ones who remove moderators from places like r/PresidentialRaceMemes and replace them with ideologues from r/Neoliberal to ensure the website closes ranks against the most underwhelming candidate and political vision conceivable for the moment.
Seriously consider the power held by the people operating these platforms. What they believe. What their material interests are. Who they network with. Who they do business with. What constraints exist to severely punish them if they undermine the interests of state. Consider that, and balance that against the overblown panic about foreign influence bots. Which one do you think has a bigger impact?
States are massive, chaotic social systems. I’m not going to say that foreign influence ops don’t occur, because within each state there are competing factions with different interests. But consider China is much more concerned with domestic conditions within their country than they are about what a bunch of Redditors, who they have blocked, think about them anyway. Consider the same about Russia. Consider the disparity in power these countries have to manipulate infrastructure owned and operated in the United States compared to the people who actually own it, and the state agencies which have the jurisdiction to destroy these firms if they step out of line.
The way they tell it, you’d think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
They are, it’s called the capitalist class.
And your information is incorrect, hexbear is one of the oldest Lemmy instances, and we’ve always been among the most active. My account is over 3 years old. It’s just that we only federated recently.
It’s so strange how all the rich news companies would report in a way that supports the interests of rich people. So weird!
I just noticed them today when a post from their community reached my front page. They called my server, lemm.ee, which is just a neutral general Lemmy instance, a racist neo lib instance and should be defederated. No idea what’s up with them but I did notice them show up out of nowhere.
edit: oh this thread definitely convinces me they’re a toxic as hell lemmygrad 2.0. Luckily there’s a Lemmy PR that allows instance blocking. It’s just being tested right now and then will be merged.
They called my server, lemm.ee, which is just a neutral general Lemmy instance, a racist neo lib instance and should be defederated.
Lmao new site tagline dropped
10 upvotes in 10 mins have to be botted or something, this whole instance is sus
We have a community that has been together for years. We actually care about each other, We love supporting each other whenever possible and We are a real community.
None of the shitlib
wannabe instances will ever understand.Sucks to suck.
Yeah ngl the whole “we” thing is weird to me. I have never cared about any internet community lol.
Like I said you would not understand.
I told you all that so you all quit accusing us of post/stat manipulation.
We’re just terminally online and upvote each other
Their stated goal is to disrupt conversation to deny “shit libs” a platform. Users who do this should be banned as trolls if they continue, IMO. Unfortunately they seem to get special protection on lemmy.ml, perhaps unsurprisingly.
Lemmy was never yours to begin with but also where did we state this “goal”. Thats straight out of lemmy.world’s paranoid ramblings about us that have no basis in reality.
I never said anything was mine. However the circlejerk shit should not be allowed to infest every discussion. It’s obnoxious. That’s my opinion.
Edit - there’s literally multiple threads on the front page of hexbear about “dunking on libs”
What threads? I’m looking at the Hexbear front page right now and the only thing I see is a user suggesting we don’t use PPB outside of Hexbear. Not a single post about lib-dunking.
Hey, yaknow what, I think we’re going a little hard on it too actually. Not necessarily with volume of posts. I think anyone can post as much as they want, there just happen to be a lot of us, we’re opinionated, and we were just let out of our cage, and some topics that we happen to have strong opinions on happened to be posted just in time for that, AND then someone posts something like this where they literally ask who we are and what we are doing. I think at the very least you can agree we have a right to respond to this right?
But with some of the aggression and things like pig poop balls. Yeah, I think we’ve probably gone a bit hard on it and I try to engage with a little more good faith.
But I’m still wondering where we stated this “Goal” you said we stated.
These meta posts I personally don’t give a fuck. Stretch your legs, grab a drink, whatever. It’s every worldnews thread since federation which has been filled with literal pig shit, which apparently counts as “alternative opinions” or whatever helps you sleep.
The stated goal please.
So glad this thread could become such a perfect microcosm of why we need to defederate.
You asked about us. We came out in force to answer you. Why is that surprising or evidence of anything? We don’t have a downvote feature, so we’re used to responding when we disagree. And of course we’re going to defend ourselves.
Its so funny how you guys became so used to being able to live in an echo chamber of western capitalist propaganda on reddit, then moved here, then had that bubble popped by us and lemmygrad, then became INCREDIBLY DESPERATE to get away from opinions you previously were sheltered from. Its just a funny reaction to witness. Meanwhile, liberalism is something I can never really escape. Because its everywhere. I dont actually have the option to completely unplug.
Anyway, if your instance defeded lemmygrad I have no doubt you’ll get your way with us sooner rather than later.
Sure is interesting that now 16 hours later, not a single one of these epic redditors have even tried to respond to this lol
I’m all for some good dunking, but this is the response that most clearly, patiently, and convincingly explains what the deal with Hexbear actually is. OP, we are also humans who have built our opinions on real information, both historical and modern - probably more than 99% of liberals - and you’d benefit as a human and a citizen of the world to make a good faith effort to understand us.
So many visible pronouns to upbear in this thread.
