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.

    • TheCaconym [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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

      • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          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?

      • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’m not replying to anyone, I’m posting this for other people who come along and might be susceptible to Hexbear propaganda.

          • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Grimble [he/him,they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              So what i’m getting is, you’ll never do anything to make it better and just roll with the material conditions like a boxing dummy on a swivel. You lash out at our approach to the system bc you have none of your own.

              • unperson [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                They won’t just roll with it, awwwyissss thinks there’s an immutable “human nature” and that communism is not “compatible” with it. They think communism is anti-human, while they do not judge the current system as anti-human: it’s easy to see the little they would do of any political impact will only serve to keep the current barbarity going.

            • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Why do you speak so confidently about subjects you clearly have spent almost exactly zero time investigating? There are over a hundred years of accumulated knowledge and study from a Marxist perspective on the nature and mechanics of capitalism (and that’s basically what Marxism is). You say that [single observation] isn’t proof that it’s inherently bad? Well big fucking whoop. The conclusion comes from a LOT more than that.

    • GaveUp [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        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.