Here's my view. Lemmy.nz is intended for an NZ audience. Hexbear has been defederated from 5 of the top 8 largest instances. This is problematic for us, as their All is much more likely to show lemmy.nz posts than All on other instances. It starts to feel like we're being brigaded, even though we aren't, because their instance is the 10th largest Lemmy instance and yet they don't see most Lemmy posts (but they do see ours).

I don't have a problem with international audiences occasionally posting in our posts, even people with no connection to NZ. I think it provides some great perspective on our issues. But when you post a thread, and it gets overrun with international users, I think this becomes a problem.

This may not seem fair on them, but what I want is a friendly-feeling community, and recently we have had a different vibe.

Personally, I have become less inclined to participate. I've written up a post about the Papakangahorohoro street, then decided not to post it because by the time I'd written my 150 word article the thread had such hexbear comments as "Get over it crakkkas" and "sounds like the crackers should go back to europe if they dont like it".

I want to participate in a friendly community, and the last couple of days I have felt like I didn't want to participate because of the hexbear participation - and the participation of others stemming from that. For that reason, and no other, I think we should defederate. However, I want to hear what others think. Some counter-arguments would be great.

https://hexbear.net/post/423647

https://hexbear.net/comment/3824503

Just to inform this conversation about why OP is having a fit

I have temporary blocked hexbear so we can have the conversation in peace.

Edit: Apparently I needed to hit save, so now we are temporarily defederated from hexbear.

Actually after reading the context, I don't agree with OP at all. I want more places to have Te Reo names, and I want people who dislike it to complain so they can be shut down. I love Te Reo and I want to defend it.

If you’re getting that worked up about mild non-offensive inane comments I hate to imagine how worked up you get using a self-checkout machine. Chill out.

I would not support defederation based on this exchange. Surely the bar must be high for such an action?

Every time I read a stupid comment and then check the instance 100% of the time it's hexbear.

So far I've not seen any rule breaking posts.

Edit: I made this comment after only seeing hexbear users in few nz thread but after seeing more and seeing how the partcipate. I think we should defederate. They will never participate in good faith as they are an extremist instance. Majority of the big instances have already defederated with them so its not like we will be singling them out. On the point of "diverse viewpoints", policy so far bans extreme right wing instances and extreme leftwing instances. All the reasonable view points that a hexbear user could provide can be provided by the many leftists across other instances.

This would be one of the funnier defederation reasons so I support it on behalf of hexbear

So as an update, Hexbear have defederated us after a brief chat I had with an admin. They updated their instance on it here:

Removed lemmy.nz from our allow-list due to irreconcilable political differences between the instances. As well as them committing to permanently blocking hexbear.net

https://hexbear.net/comment/3833816

That's not quite how I remember the conversation going, in fact I feel like I said it wasn't permanent (or at least that's what I was trying to imply):

Thanks for reaching out. I do intend to monitor the situation, in particular when more granular tools are available. But for the moment I think we will just watch from the side lines.

But hey, it is what it is.

I'd be fine with defederating. I don't care if they bring in more numbers and more 'engagement' if that engagement is generally shit and too difficult for the mods to moderate with the current tools available. I'd much rather be part of a smaller but friendly community that is actually familiar with NZ, than a larger more popular one that just turns into another cesspit.

Seems like a good move. It's a crap dynamic at this point. Maybe later we could re-federate once the numbers aren't so skewed. If people from there feel the need to discuss NZ issues they still have options. They can join here. They can make their own NZ sub if NZ issues are so important to them.

Being on an instance that defederated them, noticably better now. Just do it....

I have filtered out a lot of the spammer accounts that just spew nonsense.

On one hand I'm lucky I can do that with sync. But on the other hand we shouldn't have to resort to whackamole.

I like having an instance that isn't defederated from too much (except CSAM) because I enjoy being able to see and subscribe to what I want. Hexbear is a shitty place, but I don't like the idea of defederating because my feewings got hurt. I would prefer defederating because it's a legal/human rights necessity.