Recently I was browsing some communities I typically hang out in and I started noticing Hexbear accounts being... well their typical selves.
Which made me check which account I was on because I've got a few, and when I noticed I was on my Blahaj account I had to check and it looks like we're federated again?
Why?
The problem with instance block on a user basis is that points still get federated over
So even if you block the instance then the community can still be influenced by the other community without you ever seeing their accounts
Hexbear has downvotes disabled, so unless you are concerned about their rogue upvotes you will be ok.
Maybe that's a problem but personally I disable vote scores and read all the comments anyway so I don't care that much what people vote. I don't think my instance is going to defederate hexbear so I'm looking forward to it.
A lot of people do view content with votes, which if people see how the community reacts to certain kinds of posts and comments via votes then discussions would still be steered at large in a community
@Gormadt which is crazy because we're not all seeing the same scores.
Eg kbin doesn't federate downvotes, even though it has them.
That is a valid concern. I don't like votes and don't think people should pay attention to them though, as they are mainly just a way of propagating the kind of unaccountable groupthink hexbear exemplifies. Anyway I don't have a problem with your instance defederating with them, good luck with it