The usual instance-wide rules also apply.
Chronicle the life and tale of the fediverse (+ matrix)
Largely a sublemmy about capturing drama, from fediverse spanning drama to just lemmy drama.
Includes lore like how a instance got it's name, how an instance got defederated, how an admin got doxxed, fedihistory etc
(New) This sub's intentions is to an archive/newspaper, as in preferably don't get into fights with each other or the ppl featured in the drama
Tags: fediverse news, lemmy news, lemmyverse
Partners:
Ada makes the wrong decisions literally every time she has a moderation choice.
A coin would have a better track record.
She frequently gives in to trolls over users and bans anyone who dares criticize her
I can't beleive I used to want to participate in that space.
I was banned from all of Bahaj for using “dude” then questioning if dude was the word someone was taking offense of and as the word I misgendered them with.
Meta-pronouns was already a bridge too far.
Seems like Blahaj has no issue with ML supporting russian genocidal imperialism and the way russia treats LGBT folks. It seems their concern about trans folks rights doesn't include Ukrainian trans folks (and Ukrainian LGBT folks more broadly) who were forced to leave the territories occupied by russia.
Compare that to the decision to defederate over a single post (that explicitly stated that everyone should be treated equally and not discriminated against) on feddit.uk.
For some reason the term orientalism comes to mind.
For some reason I've always gotten a very white vibe from blahaj.zone. I can't explain it, but I just don't feel that nonwhite people are exactly as welcome there. I've felt that way in a lot of trans spaces in the past that were very centered on a white view of transness. The racism is never overt, there's just a vibe hanging over those kinds of spaces. I don't have the language to say how I feel that vibe is there, but a lot of people have written about it
I’ve gotten a “youth” vibe from there.
That sort of militant mindset kids tend to have about the thing they’re passionate about.
There is no room for discussion OR nuance and any perceived slight is not allowed to be corrected.
Just militant follow my rules and my view or gtfo, similar to the tanker triad in that regard tbh.
Yeah, I feel the same way. Blahaj is usually pretty good on trans issues within the community. I'd probably have made my account there on that basis alone if it wasn't for... Well, I wouldn't feel safe expressing opinions like those in this post on there. I like to be political, and Blahaj isn't the space for that unless you fall into a very narrow range of views. I don't see any regular users who overtly disagree with Ada on moderation issues. I like a space where I can disagree with the admins, because nobody's a perfect representative. On Blahaj there's a kind of worship that I'm uncomfortable with. I wouldn't feel safe getting into friction there. It seems like there aren't any little disagreements that people move past. Everything's a world shattering issue.
In this case, it's not even a white thing. Purely a cultural thing, a lack concern about LGBT communities that don't speak English.
Btw, this is not mere observation from the sidelines. I live in Ukraine and have a modicum of exposure to the local LGBT community.
I think I can remember Ada saying in the past that her intention with blahaj.zone is to create a safe space for trans people. Not to support trans people outside that space. And I think that's wrong. Trans inclusivity needs to be explicitly political. There is no safety for trans people in a community disconnected from the global trans struggle.
Feddit.uk gets defederated for not responding to a single user's transphobia fast enough, while Lemmy.ml gets transphobic admins and no defederation.
Almost like it's petty Church Study Group power politics instead of principles driving this.
I find that trashing on all of Lemmy development and lemmy.ml from nutomic's one questionable stance to be a little idiotic, but that's just my opinion. Those things are the work of more than just one person. Dessalines is a heavy lifter in moderation and development, and they're pretty decent. Various contributors have provided code/features, translations, apps and interfaces to Lemmy. Moderators of all server types have their own opinions on stuff.
But to an extent we all have to put that aside, because face it, perfectly sanitized opinions have nothing to do with code quality. We all have a couple shitty opinions, but what makes someone a decent human being and not a bigot is recognizing where their actions and opinions cause harm unto others and try to minimize that. This harm reduction can include changing actions and opinions, but it can also be keeping harmful actions and opinions away from people it would harm. This is where Ada probably sees banning nutomic from the instance as sufficient rather than all of .ml
Yeah, the whole China/Russia can do no wrong sort of thing is a pervasive problem on Lemmy.ml, but likewise they keep moderation of that to within the confines of their instance. The running costs of a server are virtually nothing compared to cost of working full-time to maintain software, so most donations don't really go to hosting the .ml server itself but rather to development. I don't personally agree with the .ml admins on many things, but I'll defend them for allowing others to run online communities how they want in return for letting every one of us do the same. I've likewise defended Ada's decisions on how they want to root out transphobia from their server, that's their choice, and so far it seems to have served Blahaj users well.
Personally the sooner we rip off that bandaid, the better. .ml is far from the only activity pub project out there, but they are absolutely one of the most toxic forces on the fediverse and seriously harm the on boarding experience for new users. Nutomic is a bigot and a liar and Dessalines is a cringe keyboard warrior and nobody would put up with them if they weren't writing code. But if Lemmy is no longer the only mature option for federated social media, why should we continue to tolerate their shit?
Yeah fuck them lol. I'd like to see how their platform does without users. Then it'll just be a fun little coding project for them, nothing more. There's already other options. At least Piefed is actively working on adding missing features and improving the end user experience. And isn't stuck in 1999.
It's very cool that they built this platform and much appreciated. But if they're then going to turn around and act like trans people shouldn't be concerned about transphobia if it comes from one of their own, because we should all be grateful and thankful to our overlords instead, then they can shove their fkn half baked platform.
I think this is an inconsistent move from the Blahaj team. They defederated feddit over one transphobic user who the admins wouldn't deal with. And I agree with that decision. They should make the same decision here. If lemmy.ml won't ban Nutomic, then it's clear they aren't interested in creating a safe environment for trans people.
Regardless of any funding question, I think every instance should be questioning federation with .ml over their acceptance of Nutomic. And that goes double for any instance committed to inclusivity, because they have a responsibility to their users to uphold the values those users expect.
I don't think it's inconsistent. My understanding is that the bad comments were in private messages and although they don't disown then or apologise for their views, they are not making transphobic comments in threads.
In the feddit case, transphobia discourse was active and unmoderated. I have no doubt that if that was the case for .ml, then blahaj would defederate.
There is no point in federation of you defederate from every instance with bad users. Ban the user, not the instance. In the case of an instance not moderating hateful content, ban the instance.
Feddit.uk was defederated because they did not address transphobia on their instance and stopped responding when I asked for clarification of how they will handle similar incidents in the future in light of the transphobic legislation introduced in the UK. If it becomes clear they are acting on transphobia, we will refederate.
lemmy.ml does act on transphobia and despite their admins comments in DM, I have seen no indication that transphobic posts are allowed to remain on their instance from admins or users. If it becomes clear they're not acting on transphobia, we will defederate. Either way, Nutomic will remain banned.
Which is to say, neither scenario is really contingent on the actions of an individual, rather they're contingent on how the admins respond to transphobia.
I can definitely understand how this may seem as an inconsistency on Ada's part. I've been critical of Ada in the past, but I see this as more of Ada taking a calculated, diplomatic approach.
With the Feddit situation, Feddit is just another random Lemmy instance, so there's no real loss in defederating. But ML is where Lemmy development is centered, and whether Blahaj users like it or not, they do have an intrinsic interest in the development of Lemmy's code. They want Blahaj to be a safe space, which requires moderation tools to be developed, and it's helpful to keep an open connection with the developers in that case so that Blahaj's input and contributions can be considered when these tools are built.
At least, that's just my speculation as to why there's an inconsistency.
I think it would be better for Lemmy's development if everyone defederated lemmy.ml. If Dessalines weren't so busy banning users on other instances for pointing out the Uyghur genocide, he'd have a lot more time to write code.
Nutomic is banned from blahaj anyway.
That alone isn’t exactly hard to have happen.
Well said. Ada's stance is reasonable, and whoever keeps bringing this up should consider taking a trip to their account settings and blocking users, communities and instances to their hearts' desire instead of pressing others to do it for them.
I halfway agree with you, the first part at least: I don't mind if people have opinions I think are wrong or stupid. It is fine. Unpopular opinion, I also think letting nutomic have some kind of transphobia and talk about it is fine. The alternative is that every opinion that someone thinks is "incorrect" gets driven underground where no one talks about it, and so anyone who does hold that view can't really have a conversation about it or learn where and how exactly they are wrong. It just festers, and eventually they find more people who also think that way, and none of them talk about it in public because they've learned not to. It's just a stupid cultural feature.
This stance does make it kind of silly that Ada defederated from some other server because of one random user on there, saying that if the admins won't ban that user then how can she protect her users against ever seeing someone with a wrong opinion, and so bang, defederation. For some reason, the exact same logic does not apply to lemmy.ml even though the one random user in this case is also an admin. Who knows. But anyway, for my opinion she is making the right call in this case, and made the wrong call in the previous one-random-user case.
To me, the great sin of .ml isn't their bad opinions, although they are very bad. It is that they are unapologetically heavy-handed about manipulating the conversation to require their users to hold those opinions also. That to me is terrible. It's dishonest. It's like sending fake votes out into the network, it's like editing people's comments after they write them. It's just wrong. I think someone who takes that attitude towards other people's communications has no place on a shared network where we cooperate to get communication done, and the fact that those other people have accounts on their server and so "belong to them" or whatever doesn't in any way excuse it.
I don't know what's in their heads that they think "these users are ours, so we can do what we like with their content" is reasonable. Also, to be honest, I don't know why people put up with it. I think the propaganda that recasts it as "defending the space" from bigotry or Western propaganda has a lot to do with it, sort of putting up a distorted reality where what they are doing is actually some other, unrelated, thing, and so people look at it in that light instead. I don't know.
Anyway, I sorta agree with you on the main thing. nutomic holding opinions I think are wrong isn't a crisis. People can think what they want as long as they're honest about it and let other people be honest about it too. That's my feeling.
Blahaj is a shit place, so no surprise. You can support the biggest warmongers and dictators on planet earth, but as long as you dont't have some mild criticism of the lgbtq community, you're good to go.
Pathetic instance with a really fucked up moral compass.
mild criticism
You misspelled “totally innocent unrelated comment which stepped on some kind of weird and arbitrary rule which they will swear is hateful and proof you are a bad person on purpose, BAN!”
Can that hypocrite leave already?
Yes. Supporting genocidal regimes and fascists that have been plaguing society for the better part of the century are ok UNTIL they become transphobic.
Pathetic self interested selfish instance. Now I don't think we should be defederating for any reason other than illegal content, so I agree with this move, however I disagree with the reasoning.
Blahaj.zone and its mods have been the king of bad ideas and accelerating echo chambers, so I'm not surprised. In fact this is probably one good thing they've done until they say doors are transphobic or something and ban people who don't remove doors off their houses.
I'm surprised to see this many people think the same as me. They are way too strict and full of censorship. Saying anything will get you flagged as transphobic, even if you’re just politely debating about a subject you want to get informed about.
"You should have known" - "you’re just transphobic"
blahaj.zone is an insult to the LGBT
Not Ada making another move that definitely doesn’t support transphobes.
