Update: In light of the programming.dev update here https://programming.dev/post/8399272, the defederation is no longer going ahead.
However, something more needs to be said. Even here on Blahaj, some of our users took issue with the choice to defederate over this issue.
So I would like to give some background and context.
Blahaj Zone exists, because both Kaity and I left mainstream social media to escape transphobia. Reddit, with its lackluster approach to fighting transphobia, and twitter, with its outright celebration of transphobia pushed us here, to the fediverse, and to create Blahaj Zone and Blahaj Lemmy.
To that end, we will continue to treat transphobia seriously. Our goal is to create a space where gender diverse folk can exist and let our defenses down a little, where we don’t have to worry about getting dragged in to an argument with a transphobe, or a bad faith actor “just asking questions”.
If you are looking for a more reddit like experience, where in the interest of increased engagement, we let low level transphobia slide, and push responsibility for dealing with it on to community mods and individual users, then you will likely not be happy with blahaj going forward. If you choose to stay here, understand that we may defederate again in the future over similar issues.
The choice is yours.
======
It has recently been brought to my attention that the lead admin of programming.dev is engaging in ongoing transphobia.
You can see the conversation in question here https://programming.dev/comment/6131539
For that reason we will be defederating from programming.dev in 48 hours.
There are only three communities on that instance used by small number of our users, so this won’t have a big impact, but if you are one of those users, you will need to use an alt account on another instance if you wish to access the communities.
You must log in or # to comment.
I love you all and I’m obviously against transphobia or any kind of bigotry, but this is probably where I leave this instance.
The action is Pretty blown out of proportion when we are honest…
Right? The admin here sees hexbears engaging in their typical bad faith spam-bullying tactics against someone who, unless there’s something really bad in that deleted comment, doesn’t seem to actually be a transphobe, for the crime of enjoying a popular mainstream video game, and the admin decides to defederate the victim of the bullying.
Yeah that game brings out the worst in the “woke” people. I haven’t played it, but its definitely good from all the reviews and this whole dogfighting behavior just harms the Trans people and their “allies” and makes them seem unreasonable and annoying, wich isn’t doing them good in a rightful fight against discrimination.
Yeah that game brings out the worst in the “woke” people.
With good reason. Nobody has just picked a game at random and said ‘everyone must hate this game now for no reason whatsoever’.
But, as I said, in a previous comment, there is a difference between ignorance and wilful ignorance. Up until a couple of years ago I was totally unaware of JKR’s transphobia. This was because I read the first HP book when it first came out, thought it was shit and dismissed it and her from my mind. I’ve never had a twitter account and I don’t read the ‘celebrity’ bits of news websites so I knew nothing of the whole situation. As a result, when a trans friend of mine started talking about it, I responded out of ignorance. Thankfully, they realised it was ignorance not malice and took me through the whole thing.
My point being, it’s impossible to tell from just this quoted exchange if the PD Admin is being ignorant or willfully ignorant. If it’s the former I hope they come to realise their error and how it affects people. If it’s the latter, they can do one.
The problem with that thread was that the admin kept arguing and trying to educate trans people on transphobia. If they didn’t know about JKR’s transphobia then they shouldn’t have kept on arguing as long as they have.
This alone doesn’t seem like something worth defederating over. It seems like they just got baited hard by Hexbear. Did the comment chain get censored? It doesn’t seem like there’s much active transphobia here, just ignorance of the issues at worst.
From my cursory read, the only thing that reads as actually transphobic to me is when they say “And getting offended by it really isn’t helping your case here.” in response to someone getting mad at being referred to as “they”, and that itself was due to technical issues and not transphobia.
Frankly, one angry snapback and a slap fight with Hexbear doesn’t seem worth defederating over. I’m all for defederating bigots, but I don’t want hapless allies getting caught in the crossfire.
Frankly, one angry snapback and a slap fight with Hexbear doesn’t seem worth defederating over.
I have to agree.
The bulk of Hexbear’s userbase actively chooses to interact with others in the fediverse in antisocial ways, finding any excuse to be offended and generally make argumentative nuisances of themselves. This concerns us because they wrap themselves in trans-colored flags.
I’m tired of Hexbear users stomping around Lemmy being jerks to everyone in the name of being trans. And I don’t want us, or this instance, to suffer for it.
but I don’t want hapless allies getting caught in the crossfire.
Especially not for the sake of hexbear
But the admin here really likes Hexbear and has expressed the intention of federating with them the moment instance level blocking works
Honestly this whole thing has me window shopping for another instance due to our admin again siding with Hexbear
expressed the intention of federating with them the moment instance level blocking works
Ah so I take it they don’t believe the spam and hostility concerns about Hexbear users are legitimate, if they did their solution to the problem wouldn’t be “just block them lol”, it would be to keep Hexbear Censured. Though it might anyway, since the Instance blocking doesn’t seem like it’ll ever work the way anyone thinks/wants it to:
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
Siding with Hexbear is a red flag, considering the ammount of problems they cause from spamming to the pro-genocide propaganda they push out.
Oh no they see the spam and bullying behavior (they’ve even been on the receiving end of it) they don’t see it as a problem because they’re a “trans positive instance”.
And the politics of the Hexbears is something they’re seemingly willing to overlook in the name of keeping trans positive communities together.
Yeah, the admin ain’t great and the only reason I’m still hear is because the overlap in communities I want to be federated with and one’s I don’t want to be federated with currently align enough. As long as Hexbear stays defederated (and I believe Lemmygrad (almost as bad as Hexbear) is as well but IDK). But defederating with programming.dev is a big deal IMO.
I’m curious though how our admin found out about that one thread with the admin of programming.dev. Looking in the thread I didn’t see them, but I did see a bunch of Hexbears. My guess is Hexbear in their dog piling decided to inform our admin (probably en masse) about the thread once it completely went to shit to drive a wedge to isolate our community further. Hell that thread was 2 days ago and this announcement came out only a few hours ago.
Oh no they see the spam and bullying behavior (they’ve even been on the receiving end of it) they don’t see it as a problem because they’re a “trans positive instance”.
And the politics of the Hexbears is something they’re seemingly willing to overlook in the name of keeping trans positive communities together.
Yeah that’s really weird because hexbear often behaves in a way that paints trans people in a bad light, including the fact that they often push for certain ideologies and philosophies that are directly harmful to trans people. As well as certain philosophies that hurt everyone in general like being pro-genocide. How are they in any way a good representation of this community or the people in it, and how is it good for this community to have such destructive people tearing the place up?
So everyone involved seems to agree that transphobia is bad, but the dude had an idiotic notion of what constituted transphobia.
I feel that if we are in the business of defederating anyone who fails a purity test then lemmy will be quite small indeed.
I will defederate from any instance with admins that excuse transphobia. If that makes our part of the Fediverse quite small, that sucks, but it is what it is. I moved here to get away from social media that won’t take action on transphobia. I’m not suddenly going to decide it’s ok if it means we get more traffic.
And this is why blåhaj zone is the best lemmy instance, I’m so glad I found this place.
Not talking back or being snarky but if you feel that way you might seriously want to look into Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, they have very bad track records of letting transphobes and bigots run wild, Lemmy.world is the worst, many of the people they’ve banned for bigotry have been unbanned or were only given temporary bans to begin with, often times they won’t even action users who are engaging in transphobia, even if reported. It’s really not great.
I used to believe Beehaw was a bit overly strict but honestly I can see they blocked these instances for good reason, especially Lemmy.world.
often times they won’t even action users who are engaging in transphobia, even if reported. It’s really not great.
As I said in my other reply. I don’t live that life so we might not get all the cues but if anyone on our team sees transphobia it will be removed.
I think a bigger problem is that like Reddit or Facebook Lemmy.world lets these people continue to post and participate there, most only get temporary bans, I distinctly remember a person who used the R-slur multiple times and was blatantly transphobic, yet last I checked he only got temp banned, and otherwise are completely welcome back even after such atrocious behavior.
One user I can refer to is Mojave, but he certainly isn’t the only case, there are plenty more like him. I remember he had quite the abusive spree in [email protected], if memory serves he made quite a few transphobic attacks, unfortunately it doesn’t show up in the modlog because they purged him rather than removing (he also apparently had some very bad behavior in [email protected] but I’m not there and don’t remember it).
[I got a bot to automatically delete all my comments over 1 month old so you can’t see this comment anymore]
