This post is “FYI only” for blahaj lemmy members. It is not a debate, and is not intended for non blahaj lemmy users to weigh in and offer opinions.
I recently received reports of a feddit.uk user espousing transphobia. Specifically, this was a feddit.uk user refusing to use the word cis, repeating the “adult human female” dog whistle, and claiming that trans women are not women. I approached a member of the feddit.uk admin team and raised my concerns and sought clarification of their stance on posts like this, where the transphobia is mostly dogwhistles, and “civil disagreement” on the validity of trans folk.
I was told by the feddit.uk admin that their preferred response is this kind of transphobia is to “sort it out through discussion and voting”. However, the comments in question are currently more upvoted than downvoted, and little “sorting out” has occurred. The posts remain in place.
At this point, the admin stopped responding to my messages despite being active elsewhere on lemmy. When it became clear they were ignoring my messages and had no intention of removing the posts in question, I made the decision to defederate the instance.
I know some folk agree with the feddit.uk admins approach of pushback through discussion and voting, but this instance is not designed to be that kind of space. Blahaj lemmy is meant to be a place where we can avoid the rampant transphobia universally visible on nearly every other social media platform, and where we can exist without needing to debate our right to do so.
Based for defederating from feddit
Cringe for another decision that effects all blahaj users without their consent without posting any proof.
Scrolling through this thread, I don’t see any blahajis with less than full approval. If there are, they are more than welcome to show their disapproval by moving to a different instance.
I appreciate this sort of moderation. Imagine if somehow it was voted down: then people who don’t want to be federated with feddit.uk would have no options. “Posting proof” may have some benefit, but few of us want to tread through more transphobia, so that sounds like a net negative to me.
This is precisely how things should work. Way to go, Ada!
Scrolling through this thread, I don’t see any blahajis with less than full approval.
As with all rule changes on blahaj, the consensus comes from the ones who weren’t banned…
What are the odds these “disagreements” are actually just transphobia wearing a mask? Plenty of us disagree with Ada. We’re still here.
It’s pretty funny watching tourists who aren’t using blahaj (or even feddit.uk) crying out that this doesn’t fit their ideals. This instance is clear about its purpose, and this moderation is perfectly in line with that goal. There’s no need for hypotheticals, because like you said, this was received almost-or-fully unanimously.
I really thought I had created my account there. I will move over at some point. Edit: I also like the openness of the decision.“We took this action. No, it is not up for discussion.” We can laugh at the tourists. Anyone with a heartfelt disagreement can act as they see fit, and everyone else can go about their business.
Of course some of them are clueless, but others see marginalized people protecting themselves as an attack on them.
Registration on this instance is clear enough about what this instance is about, and this move is perfectly in line with it. The post isn’t even for you.
One user upset you and the admins didn’t capitulate exactly how you wanted, so you’re defederating… You’re making way more drama out of it than anyone else. How do you handle any sort of difficult situation in your life?
This is why no one takes y’all seriously. Expecting every interaction to be perfectly suited to you or you opt out. Guess what, life has adversity. Life has difficulties. But if you shut yourself off from everything that makes you slightly uncomfortable, you’ll never grow and develop as a person.
Who do you mean when you say “y’all”? Either way, I’ve faced enough adversity that I’ve overcome to laugh at your comment, and I bet people reading this have, too. Your comment might make you feel better about yourself, but it has very little to do with the realities of the people reading it. I’m sorry you’re not as insightful as you hoped.
If you keep othering people and making assumptions, you’ll stay as ignorant as you seem. That’s not a very productive way to be. I hope it gets better for you.
Blahaj doesn’t allow transphobia, period. It is a safe space for those who don’t have anywhere else safe to go on the Fediverse. If an instance refuses to deal with its users being transphobic, then it gets defederated, simple as that. It’s better to defederate from problematic instances than to allow Blahaj’s userbase to have to deal with transphobia, both casual and direct. If its users wanted to be around that, they wouldn’t be on Blahaj. It’s pretty telling that 99% of Blahaj’s vocal userbase is supportive of Ada’s decision here.
The feddit.uk admins failed to remove transphobic nonsense from their instance and went silent when told how and why it was a problem by Ada including violating feddit.uk’s rule 1. Hence, defederation until they get rid of that transphobic nonsense.
They didn’t ban the people on their instance like you wanted so you shut out the entire instance. I love watching “liberals” discover disctorships in their own communities. It’s cute.
This instance (and I refer to the instance to intentionally be inclusive of both Ada and our community) takes issue with certain kinds of content, at least while we’re on our local accounts.
Admins from another instance have taken the stance that this sort of content is not, by their own evaluation, harmful enough to be removed from their instance. That’s a subjective choice about what they feel is right for their users, even if I disagree with the position.
Blahaj has decided that exposing the community to that sort of content, knowing it will not be removed by the remote instance, is not worth doing. However, in the interest of transparency and allowing users choice, has made sure its community is aware of the change.
Blahaj users who still wish to engage with the instance can easily still do so with accounts homed on other instances, should there be Communities or content that are of value to them.
What part of this do you have an issue with? This is how most people SHOULD be living their lives. If there’s something that doesn’t enrich your life, find ways of mitigating its impact. Don’t like some vegetables? Find new recipes or supplement the nutrition otherwise. Uncle is kind of a douchebag? Stop going to holidays at his house. Friend holds political views you disagree with? Make sure your engagements with them are still something you enjoy.
Nobody is saying that there won’t be aspects of life that are negative AND unavoidable. People have shitty jobs, terrible families, poor health. Why should that mean they should accept worse things in the parts of their life they do have discretion?
This is a good move. I’ve reported a lot of tankie-like remarks on feddit that never get their comments removed and it’s concerning. Better to cut off any suspected tankie incubator than suffer the consequences
I’d rather my comm ban people that complain about ‘tankies’. It’s a useless term which can mean 100 things to different people, only serving really to divide the left.
No, they mean people who blindly slurp up Chinese propaganda while denying the issues china has.
I’m unsure what tankies really are and why people are so divided on them. Are they transphobic?
Some are, but not most (in my experience).
Way back in the day, the term was used as an insult to describe authoritarian communists. I know anarchists used it.
For today, my understanding is that ‘tankie’ still means authoritarians, but I’ve been seeing a bunch of people use ‘tankie’ as an insult to complain about any leftists.
None of this is at all pertinent to this thread, or to transphobia, or to Ada’s action, so it really didn’t belong here.
I have an irl friend who is a self proclaimed tankie and I don’t really know a ton about it. I’ve asked them before, and their take was “you know how you believe in all the far left freedoms and that stuff and anti billionaire morality? Well I’m like that too and believe it’s basically evil, but I just think it should be enforced with an iron fist and literal tanks. Don’t agree? Doesn’t matter. Fight against it? Dead.”
To my understanding, they very much just don’t believe in giving people the choice because people are stupid as hell and will try to corrupt it with bad faith, and so should be iron fisted in bad faith preemptively. Which, to me, is such an extreme and problematic stance. I just didn’t know if there’s some subtle anti trans stuff as part of being a communist/tankie or what, because when they and I talk politics, we don’t super agree on stuff because they’re kind of a sith absolutist about it.
Bubble, echo chamber, besieged fortress syndrome… Combined they make what Ada envisions the blahaj.zone to be.
I mean what the fuck, just ban the person you don’t like.
Bubble, echo chamber, besieged fortress syndrome…
Hmm, maybe we should consider this viewpoint on its own merits. Oh wait
I mean what the fuck, just ban the person you don’t like.
B does not follow A.
Users who don’t like what an instance is doing can register with a new instance.
Can you please link to specific offenses?
