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.

  • spaduf@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    but I don’t want hapless allies getting caught in the crossfire.

    Especially not for the sake of hexbear

    • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      10 months ago

      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

      • First Majestic Comet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        0·
        10 months ago

        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.

        • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          0·
          10 months 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, 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.

          • First Majestic Comet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            0·
            10 months 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?