That post explicitly says it’s not a place for debate or participation from users of other instances.
I’d like to respect that but I think events like this need debate and discussion because it helps to develop and evolve the culture of lemmy and the fediverse in general.
The post says:
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.
That’s crazy. I mean it’s their instance and I don’t think it was out of the realm for blahaj to do but over the post of one guy is crazy.
but over the post of one guy is crazy
Not the post of one guy. The response of the admins to that post. Refusing to remove the transphobia (because of, if we take them at their word, a misinterpretation of an unjust court ruling). Refusing to communicate with the blahaj admins.
And why couldn’t they just ban the guy from posting on the blahaj instance?
They could, and probably did. The issue here is with the UK admins’ failure to act in a timely manner on the basis of some nonsensical reasoning, and their terrible communication.
Defederating from an instance over one guy not being banned in a timely manner is a bit overblown though.
The controversy is that Blahaj admins don’t get to decide the content of other instances.
And defederating from evey instance that has a transphobic comment on it means they would need to defederate from every instance including their own.
This Ada doing what she feels like again, without the guise of there being any community input allowed this time because she has learned she doesn’t like the answers when she asks for opinions on moderation decisions.
Ada‘s post contains no details or reasoning. Linking to the offending content would make this appear more deliberate.
The offending content was apparently this.
A woman is an adult female. A transwoman is an adult female who used to be male. It’s not difficult to grasp that they are different things. You can admit that and still believe that transwomen should be treated with dignity like anyone else.
Personally I don’t give a shit what bathroom people use or what they want to be referred to. I’ll go along with whatever… But a woman and a transwoman are different things, and it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Always have been different things and always will be, no matter what the law states, now or in the future.
Kier’s words are still not transphobia. There is no fear, dislike, prejudice, discrimination, harassment, or violence in his statement. The scream of ‘transphobia’ is thrown around too much for anyone who disagrees with a narrow definition. Any disagreement is labelled as hate, and it’s silly.
Should a transwoman have the same rights and respect and opportunity as a woman (as per the legal definition)? Absolutely. Are they the same? No, they are not. Is that a hateful bigoted viewpoint worthy of scorn? I don’t believe so.
I don’t use the term cis. I use the term woman and you knew exactly what I meant. A blonde woman is a description of a woman’s hair colour and is a semantic-based response that is nothing to do with this point. You know this; it’s a foolish riposte that’s nothing at all to do with the clear and simple fact that a woman who used to be a man is not the same thing as a (cis) woman.
I can call it a woman who used to have a penis or a woman who used to be a man if you want me to be pedantic about it. Nothing to do with hair colour, or skin colour, or anything else except previously being a biological male and now identifying as a woman.
‘adult human female’ is not a dog whistle. It’s a legal and common-sense definition that you clearly understand but are trying to make out to be hate for some reason. I am not denying the legitimacy of transwomen; nor is Keir.
Transwomen and (cis) women are different things. And Transmen and (cis) men are different things. They have different names, which you yourself use for a reason. That reason being they are not the same thing. This is exactly the same as saying transwomen are not women, because they are not. They are transwomen.
It’s pretty simple.
That entire screed is a dogwhistle
This is exactly how they propagandize fence-sitters and convert them into extremists.
They start with a factual and level-headed stance that’s hard to argue against, here being that “Trans women are biologically different, but shouldn’t be treated any differently,” but then, by the end, they’re sprinkling dog whistles and covertly separating them, because once you can view them as something external, it’s easier to ignore or even support what happens to them later.
This is exactly the same as saying transwomen are not women, because they are not. They are transwomen.
Blatant transphobia wrapped in a level-headed blanket to covertly shift perspectives. I mean, even if you look over the first reply, having their actual intentions in mind, it becomes apparent that they were very careful not to imply that trans people are in any way the same as cis people, making sure to use more general terms like “deserve respect” in order to not contradict the idea that they’re a totally separate entity. If the admins of feddit[.]uk are okay with this, defedding them was the right move.
People are entitled to have their own opinions on a topic and should be free to discuss topics with out harassment from mods on other instances.
This line of reasoning is gestapo.
you are gonna talk as I told you or you won’t talk at all
🤡
Everyone has the right to be bigoted without being harassed for it!
Okay, bigot. Blocked.
If you’re concerned about implications, you need to be careful of your own, because you’re implying that I think the feddit.uk admins are transphobic, when I think no such thing. They actively pushed back against transphobia in their comments, and not in a half hearted manner. They are quite clearly not transphobic.
However, leaving transphobia visible, even whilst pushing back against it is against their own instance rules, and allows transphobes to know they can safely post more transphobia in the future, as long as they keep it civil. And that last part is the bit that initiated defederation.
I stand by what I said.
The original post did not contain any of this information and did imply that feddit.uk admins were slow to react and did not see this as priority. The discussion around pushback to the comment was actually brought up by a feddit.uk admin who described your statement as mischaracterization.
did imply that feddit.uk admins were slow to react and did not see this as priority.
That’s an accurate summary of my claims. No part of that suggests transphobia however.
who described your statement as mischaracterization.
Likely because said admin knew they were talking about it as a team and believed they were addressing my questions. They just neglected to tell me that part, and just stopped responding to me.
Your actions show you think the feddit.uk admins are transphobic.
You weren’t allowed to control comments you wanted to and you used the power at your control to “punish” the people who wronged you.
This is the actions of an angry child who doesn’t get their way.
Wtf, this isn’t hate. This is someone stating their perspective with no harmful intent. If anything that comment is a great starter to a serious discussion on the topic.
If Ada doesn’t want such content on their instance they have the right to defederade and I fully support their right to it, no matter the reason (it is their instance after all).
I can understand why someone would disagree with that comment, but calling it transphobia or hate speech?
The part that becomes transphobic is the insistence that the definitions are “transwoman” and “woman”. A trans woman (note the space) is a type of woman, no one denies that. It’d be like using the term “blondewoman” and insisting that they are different from every other kind of “woman”, and not included in womanhood.
Ada also pretty clearly stated why she didn’t link to the offending content:
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14101300 in that she didn’t want to start a brigade, which I honestly think is pretty upstanding behaviour on her part. As well, I don’t see where the actual content has been linked, so I think the commenter above you might be full of shit, unless they can give a source.I’m not going to participate further in this circus after this comment though.
The second I saw Ada’s post the other day, I knew there’d be a PTB post with people either ignorantly, or knowingly pushing transphobic viewpoints.(Edit: I actually amend my statement. This comment thread was right at the top for me, but upon further reading people here have been really chill. Genuinely, thanks all for understanding that Blahaj is first and foremost a place for trans people to feel safe above any other concerns) It’s the ignorance that gets to me honestly, as if we don’t live in a world today where the majority of people aren’t susceptible to the overt fascism of Mussolini and Hitler anymore. Fascists, and other bad actors, realised they had to become smarter and more subtle with the way they spread hatred. They sow plausible-sounding doubt about transgender healthcare, like saying trans “children” are put on hormones when that’s only ever offered at 16 or older, or that these same “children” are given surgeries at 16 when no healthcare systems allow under 18 year olds to get surgery, and in fact many block trans adults from those life-saving procedures. It’s designed to be “death by a thousand cuts” because straight up attacking trans folks right to exist will cause most people to push back against that.Let me just ask you (the general you, not the person I’m replying to) what exactly the need for defining trans women as not biologically female actually is? Is it to stop us from using the women’s bathroom? Well, if your goal is to reduce the amount of people sexually assaulted, that will surely fail, and I shouldn’t have to explain why. Is it so that cis women can get the medical care they need, that differs from trans women? That’s not a problem that exists, nor would most trans women deny that cis women have their own medical needs, when we obviously have our own too. Is it to stop trans women from going to DV shelters? Do you really think a woman that’s being terrorised to the level of leaving her home is going to purposefully harm other women?
What is the actual need for defining trans women separately then? Why are certain people so obsessed by this need? The best answer I’ve got is the fact that the US executive government has decided to define them separately, and under the cover of that, they not only have stopped issuing passports with trans folks chosen gender marker, but have stopped issuing them in their gender assigned at birth as well. Let me repeat for you, trans folks Are Not Able To Get A Passport At All Anymore In The United States thanks to this manufactured debate around biological sex. I shudder to think about what comes next after an act like that.
The part that becomes transphobic is the insistence that the definitions are “transwoman” and “woman”. A trans woman (note the space) is a type of woman, no one denies that. It’d be like using the term “blondewoman” and insisting that they are different from every other kind of “woman”, and not included in womanhood.
I see, I wasn’t aware of this perspective.
Ada also pretty clearly stated why she didn’t link to the offending content: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14101300 in that she didn’t want to start a brigade, which I honestly think is pretty upstanding behaviour on her part.
Not trans specific, and not really related, but I disagree with this view. Brigades are bad, they are the internet version of a street brawl and produce nothing of value. What I dislike is that “stopping brigades” usually also prevents actual discourse.
Let me just ask you (the general you, not the person I’m replying to) what exactly the need for defining trans women as not biologically female actually is?
What is the actual need for defining trans women separately then? Why are certain people so obsessed by this need?
I can only speak for myself: Since forever when someone uses the word “woman” in a conversation it is implicitly understood that they are referring to a cis woman. What rubs me the wrong way is that it feels like someone is forcefully trying to change that implicit meaning to mean “cis woman or trans woman” which would then necessitate referring to a cis woman as a “cis woman” instead of simply a “woman”, which in turn feels like I’m being forced to change the way I speak. I personally don’t think this is the case, but it is what it feels like. To me trans women are women as in, included in womanhood, and when I say the word “woman” in a casual conversation I’m implicitly referring to a cis woman.
To me trans women are women as in, included in womanhood, and when I say the word “woman” in a casual conversation I’m implicitly referring to a cis woman.
These two statements are an oxymoron though, you can’t really have it both ways. So if it “feels like” you’re being forced, that’s merely because social conventions push us to be clear with our language choices. It really isn’t any different from situations where you might have to say a “straight woman” or a “white woman” because it’s expedient to distinguish that group separately.
Also though, I wonder what situations you’re even referring to? If you start talking about women that can get pregnant (and just say “women”), as a matter of course I’m not going to scold you for not defining it as “non-menopausal women that haven’t had a hysterectomy”, nor would most people. So, have you been scolded for something similar where you meant cis women? If not, this feels like it’s just a strawman, a situation that doesn’t really come up, but is easy to try and win arguments over.
Ada also pretty clearly stated why she didn’t link to the offending content: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14101300 in that she didn’t want to start a brigade, which I honestly think is pretty upstanding behaviour on her part. As well, I don’t see where the actual content has been linked, so I think the commenter above you might be full of shit, unless they can give a source.
How do you know the poster is full of shit? You didn’t even ask for the source.
Also defederating from an instance while not including the actual offending content is not very transparent.
Well, transparency only matters on blahaj.
And making a post warning users of blahaj is transparency. It’s coming to users and saying : here is an administrative decision being made, here is the rationale behind that decision.
There’s no need to link, copy, or otherwise bring up the original comment when the decision is based on the choices of other instances. It would be nice yeah, but not mandatory for transparency.
An instance can do what they want. That doesn’t change the fact that accusing admins of another instance of supporting transphobia (that was de facto the claimed reason for defederation) without proof is not appropriate.
Get fucked 😀
Thank you for confirming the following:
The Blahj instance takes everything you hate about Reddit power mods and elevates them to federation level. Extreme overreaction, self-righteousness, the ‘If you disagree with me, you’re transphobic’ bullshit and the complete inability to have a conversation with people who disagree with them.
Courtesy of FauxLiving (an excellent point I must add).
How do you know the poster is full of shit? You didn’t even ask for the source.
Because no one, not even the admins of feddit.uk, has stated the offending comment directly. It would be weird for a user of a different instance to be the only one in the know.
Also defederating from an instance while not including the actual offending content is not very transparent.
In this case, transparency has taken a backseat to preventing brigading, which I accept as a perfectly valid reason not to disclose. Considering I’m a user of the instance, my opinion here is actually important, because it’s not her job to be transparent with users elsewhere. Not even feddit.uk’s users, the admins there have the context and if they decide to share it is up to them.
But you didn’t ask the user how he got it! Surely before claiming that he is full of shit, you could have spent ~10 seconds typing out, “what is your source?” I didn’t see you do that in piefed thread.
Not even feddit.uk’s users, the admins there have the context and if they decide to share it is up to them.
BLZ can do whatever, but others are also allowed to make their own conclusions about the possible reasons for the lack of transparency.
They’re the only person in this thread trying to sow division and call the Blahaj admins decision into question, besides you of course. I don’t need to assume the best intentions in that case, and can draw my own conclusions. As a trans person, if I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt all of the time, I’d expose myself to far too much hatred.
If you want to choose to believe the reason is anything other than “to prevent brigading” than that’s up to you. feddit.uk admins seem to know the context, like I said before, so I don’t see how Ada could be lying here…
You’re welcome to assume bad faith or not bother, it’s your right.
The fact remains, you don’t know whether Pondercat is full of shit or not. You don’t have any evidence and you are not interested in interacting with Pondercat.
"Prevent brigading” is irrelevant at this point, the text is out, so you cannot prevent brigading if it’s real. So the question about transparency remains.
Pointing out clear lapses in logic is not “sowing division”.
Just a sense check here, are you asserting that Ada is a PTB for defederating from feddit.uk after their admins failed to take action?
Blajah Zone is specifically run as a safe space for trans folks, so it’s an emphatic YDI to feddit.uk from me.
Given that the UK Supreme Court recently ruled that the legal definition of a woman in the UK is based on biological sex, and the supposedly Labour PM Starmer is running with it (wtf Starmer???), it’s not surprising to me that TERFs and their supporters are coming out of the woodwork on feddit.uk.
Fuck TERFs and fuck Starmer for jumping on Trump’s anti-DEI bandwagon just to pander to transphobic voters.
I’m not asserting anything. My motivation was exactly what it says in the opening post. I think discussion about these things is important.
Sadly it seems I’ve made a mistake and that this sub might have been the wrong place to post. I didn’t realise this community did PTB / YDI style determinations and yes, I failed to read the side bar prior to posting.
Unfortunately it seems like there is some actual discussion happening so it feels wrong to just delete the post at this point. I was going to report my own post but it seems that’s not possible?
terfs fuck off.
TDI (they deserved it) unless Feddit admins pop in with some extravagant response
They chimed in elsewhere, sounds like they want consensus amongst the admin group and they are worried about the recent (frankly transphobic) UK Supreme Court ruling. They also expressed understanding that blahaj wanted to move faster and defederate.
Edit: Source I was referencing. Not advocating for or against, but there at least appears to be a bit more nuance than straight up support of or apathy about transphobia.
I’m not sure there is any nuance there.
Rule 1 for feddit.uk is explicitly against transphobia. The comment was transphobic and against the rules and should have been removed.
The UK Supreme Court ruling is, as you said, blatantly transphobic.
So they have two options:
- Adhere to their own rules
- Drop rule #1 and be OK with transphobic comments.
Regardless of the excuse (and I will not call it “reason”, because it is just an excuse at best IMO) the only option for blahaj would be to defederate. Feddit.uk has, in their lack of moderation of transphobic comments, chosen option 2.
At present, feddit.uk is totally cool with transphobia.
Think I blocked most of their communities anyway… Most of them seemed to be trans memes I had no interest in.
I feel like this community serves a great purpose. And I’m a massive fan of drinking my tea and reading all the drama it attracts. But I am just beyond tired of the same handful of commenters popping up to always agree with whoever is opposed to blahaj.
I give this one a YDI. Anybody posting anything transphobic who gets caught by Ada is gonna be banned. Any instance with a mod or admin who makes transphobic posts or comments will get defederated. No one is entitled to having their content served on Ada’s servers, and the people who join blahaj know that, and seem to appreciate it.
Which is sort of why I always wind up agreeing with her. Her server has clear, concise beliefs, and clear, concise administration, and she has the clear-throated consent of her governed or they would leave.
The only server whose vibe I appreciate more is divide by zero. Shout-out to what I feel is the most neurospicy, nonconformist bunch of pirates I ever met.
How are people still struggling with the basic concept that the person who runs Blahaj can do what they want with Blahaj?
All I get from this type of moaning is: “I joined a decentralised platform and now disagree with decentralisation in action.”
If this kind of action is what it takes for Blahajists to protect their necks then this is how it’s gonna be…
They’re not struggling at all, just supremely butthurt that they’re not being given a direct platform to abuse people.
Hit the nail right on the head here, they’re whining because the trans people won’t allow them to debate and strawman their existence. I’m happy that Blahaj challenges socially acceptable transphobia and I really wish more people would do it. These types of transphobes shouldn’t feel welcome anywhere
with trans peopleat all.Blahaj should do more like this.
That username though, </////<
Your username is kinkier.
I, it is?
If I was a princess, my family would marry me off to a French duke ten years older than me for political favours. I’m basically being sold, like an object. He’s probably rough in bed. Maybe after a hard day’s work ruling the duchy, he likes to come home and hit me until I bleed. And it would be un-christian for me to complain or ask for a divorce, so I just get raped and beaten by Daddy every night like a good little girl. 🤤❤️
So some feddit.uk user posting some stuff an Blahaj admin didn’t like. So the Blahaj admin want to a feddit.uk admin about it. The feddit.uk admin said, “Let the users sort it out.”. People liked what as being said. This made the Blahaj admin so mad. They defederated from feddit.uk because over it.
Jesus, Blahaj always been full of crazy people. But this takes the cake. The feddit.uk admin did nothing wrong.
EDIT If you see a post/comment you don’t like. You don’t ban or defederate. You write an counter to them to get people to be on your side of it.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if other instances start considering defederating from feddit.uk over this. If folks want to chat with racists and transphobes then stay on Xitter ffs. Hopefully their admin team do the right thing here, after talking it over.
I think @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone totally should publish a censure on fediseer if she didn’t already with details so people can decide if defederating feddit.uk would be best.
What does a censure imply? Would it also include the offending comment (a possible copy of which has already been shared).
Surely you can’t just call for broad defederation (if that’s what censure implies) without actually providing hard evidence?
Fediseer censure is a message they post to the Fediseer it includes a custom message and is a warning to other instances to maybe not federate with that instance. Whether instances choose to defederate based on that it entirely up to them.
I find it absolutely crazy that they de-federated over 1 user, when a block would suffice.
I don’t agree with transphobia (of course), but Blåhaj can’t demand that their rules be enforced in other instances.
but Blåhaj can’t demand that their rules be enforced in other instances.
Didn’t ask them to, nor have I asked any other instances to defederate from feddit.uk. What I asked for is clarification of how they implement their own rules, in order for me to decide whether or not LBZ stays federated with them.
The truth is, transphobia is now legal in the UK. UK instance admins are in a hard spot, because removing transphobia that is institutionally protected in their own country is now a lot more complex.
However, it’s not more complex for blahaj zone. We don’t allow transphobia. End of story. And if the difficult situation feddit.uk finds themselves in means they will allow transphobia that aligns with the UKs legislation, I’m not going to tell them they should do otherwise. I would hope they do otherwise, but ultimately, it’s their call. However, if the call they make is to allow legal transphobia, we will remain defederated to minimise the transphobia that reaches the blahaj zone community.
And you won’t see me telling any other admins they have to make the same choice we do.
The power of federation is that people have the choice. If people, trans or not, are happy to wade in to debate with transphobes, there are options for them to do that. Or, there are instances like blahaj zone, where they don’t have to play whack a mole with every new transphobe that appears.
but Blåhaj can’t demand that their rules be enforced in other instances.
They can and they did.
I think most instances have a baseline of what is not acceptable, even on other instances. This is one of those baseline rules.
I think this take is a bit disingenuous. From what I can tell, LBZ defederated because the admins ignored requests from ada to reign in transphobia/clarify rules around dealing with transphobic comments or posts.
Defederation is the opposite of enforcing one instance’s rules on another instance. Both sets of instance rules are still intact. LBZ has chosen to stop federation because of their own instance rules. If changes are made and the instance rules and enforcement no longer break LBZ’s instance rules, I’m willing to bet ada and LBZ would be open to federate again.
but Blåhaj can’t demand that their rules be enforced in other instances.
They can, or choose not to interoperate with servers that don’t have their best interests at heart. That’s the whole point of defederation and people honestly need to understand that. I know in the beginning the Fediverse propaganda painted this place as a free speech safe-haven. That is a lie, this place has rules and servers expect you to follow them. They aren’t obligated to tolerate bullshit. Blahaj.zone isn’t obligated to tolerate or listen to transphobia.
Also one important fact here is that feddit.uk themselves has rules against transphobia. It’s not even about following blahaj’s rules, it’s about them not following their own rules now.
Borderline YDI.
Reasoning for that is that the decision to defederate is one that is in line with the stated goals of blahaj. They have made it clear that they will defederate, ban, or otherwise use the available lemmy tool to allow blahaj to serve as a safe, sheltered place for people that are under siege by the world at large.
Ergo, this can’t be a power trip as it isn’t arbitrary, or outside of stated goals. Were I a blahaj admin, I would have taken similar steps to maintain the instance as intended, even though I tend to look on defederation as a last ditch tool in general. You can’t maintain a truly safe space without aggressive defenses.
If blahaj was established as a general purpose instance, this would be power tripping. But it wasn’t, and isn’t a general instance. It’s like beehaw was; they’re using lemmy as the underpinning software, but the instance has a different goal than the typical ones. The federation status is one that’s nice but not necessary for the instance to achieve its primary goal.
This is more equivalent to a forum blocking links to breitbart, only at a bigger scale; curation rather than control for control’s sake.
However, I want to make it clear that .uk didn’t do anything wrong as an instance. That’s why it’s “borderline” YDI. It’s only YDI in the sense that the instance policy is incompatible with the instance goals of blahaj. The decision to aggressively moderate dog whistles is a difficult one, as dog whistles change over time, and are not always something every admin is going to hate resources to do.
Now, once you’re aware of a dog whistle, you have a few choices. One is to hide your head in the sand and pretend it isn’t anything at all. Another is to remove that specific occurrence, and do nothing else. You can delay a decision until you have time to verify that it is a dog whistle (you don’t have to just accept someone’s word that it is, no matter who is saying it). You can choose to not give a fuck. You can even agree with the dog whistle and directly support it. You’d be an asshole if you chose that option, but it is an option.
And there’s in betweens of all those.
The .uk admin decided to refer to their standing policy and take no action. Since it is a standing policy, it isn’t a direct support for the bigotry, only an expression of some factor that leads them to choose not to tale actions outside of instance policy. That factor may be something unpleasant, but that’s not the same as being something like bigotry, or even apathy. We don’t have anything at the time I’m writing this book from a .uk admin giving further insight. In other words, while I don’t agree with their choice, they didn’t do anything wrong either, unless there’s some evidence of bigotry on their end. And no, just not agreeing to remove a single comment or post is not enough evidence to determine that.
From my end of things, though I won’t go far into it because I don’t believe in derailing the main goal of this community, dog whistles are so common now, and have been so effective that they get picked up by people that aren’t expressly bigoted, they should be as aggressively monitored as possible. But nobody can keep up with all of them, even just one targeted branch of the practice. I try to keep track of the ones that are most relevant to my personal areas of militancy, and I keep running into new ones because the people creating them change them so frequently. But, when reported, they should be taken seriously, and after confirmation, be treated just the same as slurs and other hate speech. I also recognize that nobody is obligated to act before confirmation, and that it may not always be possible to confirm that a newish dogwhistle is one. It takes time for such knowledge to circulate.
There is only one part I don’t agree with…
.uk didn’t do anything wrong as an instance.
Inaction is also an action. I read that inaction as implicit support, regardless of any statements otherwise.
Fair enough.
If I may, allow me to explain why I think it was a not wrong decision. Now, notice how I phrased it this time, please. It is definitely different in implication from my original phrasing, and that does represent some thought that has occurred since the time of the comment.
.uk is run by multiple admins. It is run as something between a collective and something akin to a democracy within the admin team. When it comes to making a decision for the instance that would require a change to policy, or a deviation from policy, a single admin making the decision without consulting the others would be a bet difficult choice.
It would require that admin to explain their decision going against established policy, possibly creating a big problem, one that could result in long term instability for the instance, possibly even the breaking of an instance.
A single admin holding to policy means that the instance is running as intended. The policies may need changing, but it isn’t a decision that is an emergency. There’s plenty of time for admins to discuss things, debate, weigh possibilities, come up with a plan, verify the plan would be effective, maybe even explore the possibilities publicly.
A delay is not a bad thing, when the issue is one that requires a change to policy. Since the admins have stated that they are discussing it, and that their reason for delay isn’t support for the comments in question, their decision to move slowly is not wrong as an instance. To the contrary, with it not being an emergency, it’s the smart decision.
Now, I’ll also say that the specific admin Ada contacted has publicly stated that they’re concerned about running afoul of UK regulations, and thus are weighing that in as part of any decisions regarding policies on dogwhistles as a form of transphobia, I’ll add that the specific admin did not make a wrong decision either.
However! As an individual admin, they did do something wrong, but not about the decision itself. Poor communication about internal matters when dealing with a credible issue reported by a reliable and known member of the fediverse that is also an admin and would understand even the most barebones explanation was a bad decision. I hesitate to call it wrong, but it fits that word well enough in this context for it to be acceptable, imo.
So, o would amend my previous opinion “didn’t do anything wrong as an instance” to “didn’t make a wrong decision as an instance”, as it more accurately reflects both the events as known to me at this time, and my opinion on those events. I hope it obvious that if more information comes to light, that opinion could, and almost certainly would, change if the new information was relevant to the previous events.
I say it that way because if .uk decided to just allow dogwhistles to go unchallenged and to stay up because of that, it would be wrong, in my opinion; but it wouldn’t change whether or not previous actions were appropriate or not unless there was an indication that was the intent all along.
Now, I also have to say that inaction being implicit support isn’t true in all cases all the time, and that statements do matter (or should) in coming to the conclusion that that is what’s occuring, but I don’t think anyone has to agree with me on those two subjects. They’re tangential to the issue here, in c/ptb to begin with, and I do believe that when the issue is dogwhistles, it does hold true with certain criteria met, so I agree in this case anyway.
It would require that admin to explain their decision going against established policy
The first rule:
No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia
It would be entirely under that first rule to remove it. There is nothing to explain other than “Rule 1”.
So I will firmly disagree. This was not only a communication problem, but a complete lack of moderation by their own rules. There is no way to allow the comment without them changing the rule.
Leaving that comment up is and was implicit support for the comment by saying it was not against the rules.
makes sense to me, that is what blahaj is for 😒 besides people that agree with that user don’t want to interact with blahaj. And those that do could do it elsewhere
literally the fediverse working exactly as intended… blahaj clearly states its purpose and lives by it. on any other instance it might be ptb, but on blahaj thats just good instance administration
I’m not commenting on the rest of the situation, but I do want to mention this part.
It takes a lot less effort for me to comment here, off the top of my head, than it does for me to delve into an existing situation to try to determine what admin actions should or should not happen.
Just because I’m not doing your community team/admin thing right now doesn’t mean I’m ignoring it forever.
However it shouldn’t take a week.
The feddituk admins didn’t ignore it, they did answer. They just decided to not do anything, so blahaj defederated in response to protect their users, which is the specific reason for the instance to exist.
One should also note that their approach of “letting it sort out itself” is just admitting that they don’t actively moderate the instance, which poses a danger to all federated instances
To be clear, at the time of defederation, they had not answered my question.
In response to my initial general question, I was told their preference is to let push back come via comments and votes.
I then provided links to posts in which someone explicitly stated trans women aren’t women alongside several common transphobic dog whistles. I pointed out that one of the posts has more upvotes than downvotes, suggesting that social pushback isn’t working, and asked for clarification on whether or not posts like that would be removed.
At this point, I got radio silence. I was not advised the admin team was discussing it, the posts were not removed and the admin who I was talking to was active elsewhere. After waiting nearly two days for a reply despite having mentioned this was serious enough to defederate over on two separate occasions, I made the assumption I wasn’t going to get a reply, and defederated.
I’m happy to write that off as miscommunication though, given that they were talking as a team. If they ultimately decide that posts explicitly stating that trans women are not women will be removed, we will refederate
Clearly not a power trip, just protecting their user space like they promised they will.
PTB
Blahj is a problem instance.
The important distinction here is that they’re not simply trying to moderate their communities. They’re free to moderate their communities for their users. They want to push their rules on other instances.
They’re not free to dictate to the greater social media space the acceptable policies on discourse. Their admins are constantly trying to enforce their ban lists on other servers and communities (or else, you see what happened to feddit.uk).
To see this, go make a new account and get banned from Blahj (you don’t even have to post in their communities, see my PTB post as an example) and you’ll see that 40+ other completely unrelated communities will also automatically ban you. This is the result of their backroom bullying and toxic behavior towards other admins/mods.
It’s easier for an admin or moderator to simply accept their bans than to deal with admins who will take extreme measures, like defederate your entire instance (and lobby others to defederate you) if you don’t accept their dictates.
If their goal is to create an instance with communities for trans people then banning users from their communities would serve their goals.
But, that isn’t what they’re trying to do. This isn’t about creating a safe space, they have all of the tools that they need to make Blahj safe. Blahj users in Blahj communities could have been protected from this problem user by the user being banned.
There’s no need to contact the admins of other instances to ban a user from your instance or from your communities. Trying to bully other instances or communities isn’t required and it is incredibly toxic. Even the moderator here, in this community, has received pressure from Blahj admins about suppressing topics related to Blahj.
It is content censorship… No feddit.UK rules were broken is my understanding
They proceeded to have a melt down over another admin not doing as they got told…
Enough with this shite, these people are not mature enough to be federated to gen pop
It is content censorship
Exactly.
People treating this like it is justified seem to misunderstand how the federated social media space works.
If the Blahj admins felt that the user wasn’t welcome in their communities then they could ban them. That’s the end of that user.
There is zero reason to contact the admins of another instance.
The reason they’re doing this is because they want to pressure the admins to change their content moderation policy to something that the Blahj admins (I mean Ada) approve of. If the admins feel that it is too onerous to do so, well then they can just apply the Blahj supplied user ban list to automate the process.
So now if Blahj bans you, you’ll get banned by every other instance that they’ve managed to bully and cajole into their censorship network. (This is easy to see, make a new account and get banned from Blahj. Look at your modlog and you’ll see pages of other non-Blahj communities that automatically ban you within seconds).
They don’t want the ability to ban users from Blahj, they want the ability to dictate to other instances which users should be banned. It has nothing to do with creating safe communities, they have all of the tools that they need to do that.
This is the very essence of power tripping.
To a certain extent similar instances with similar rules should share bans. It makes no sense for them to individually ban the same user for the same reason as they trudge through communities.
It is absolutely worth talking to admins on different instances to see what their rules are to deffedirate from any instance that is bound to be the nazi bar. With ought talking to the admins they have no idea if content is allowed or just hasn’t been removed yet.
The idea that they are a big powerful bully group is insane. Other instance admins can simply ignore them and suffer no meaningful consequences. The worst they can do is deffedirate.
Ideally everyone would be filtered in their space on an individual basis. This however is utterly impractical and filtering out problematic instances completely makes sense. It makes no sense for volunteers to give themselves more work to allow users from instances where they don’t want to deal with say 90% of their user base
similar instances with similar rules should share bans.
Welcome to Reddit.
To a certain extent similar instances with similar rules should share bans. It makes no sense for them to individually ban the same user for the same reason as they trudge through communities.
The problem with sharing ban lists is that it is ripe for abuse and only multiplies the damage done to a user by a wrongful ban.
I agree that the admins and moderation teams should be in contact with one another (and, in my experience they are) to handle issues like spamming or connection issues. But, in the end, responsibilities and obligations are pretty clear cut: Each instance handles its own moderation. The user was not in Blahj’s communities, was not a Blahj user and so an outside moderator or Admin has zero say in how that user is handled.
An administrator can ask another administrator to do something but they are under no obligation to do so. This includes things like banning a user or changing policy.
In this case, an administrator from another instance came to Feddit.uk and asked the administrators to ban a single user. The administrators investigated and determined that the user didn’t violate their policies. The administrator wasn’t happy with this, tried to argue and was ignored, they noticed that the admins were active elsewhere. Once they thought they were being ignored then they defederated the instance.
Notice how they don’t mention any disruption to their communities on their servers, they don’t say that the Feddit.uk instance was responsible for an unusual amount of banned users or any other reason that would lead to the conclusion that they needed to defederate.
My read of it is: the admin asked for a ban, was brushed off and then they were angry at being ignored so they defederated the instance and posted a justification loaded with emotional terms and light on facts and reasons.
This is, at best, an interpersonal problem between Admins, not a moderation issue like it is being framed. So, PTB
To be honest we were just getting sick of all the posts complaining about Blajah’s policy of banning folks who they consider to be transphobic from their instance. No pressure was applied from Blajah, we just felt it was the right thing to do. Your whole narrative is bullshit tbh.
In reality, the fediverse is (mostly) quite left wing compared to most other social media spaces, so obviously the majority of instances are gonna be supportive of Blajah’s attempt to create a safe space for those folks who need or want that. While we don’t run dbzer0 as a safe space, I think it’s great that those spaces exist. And they only exist at all because Ada and her team go to a lot of effort to keep it that way.
And by way of comparison, we recently had a vote in our governance community about defederating from another instance because their admin initially didn’t want to take action against some right wing communities, and we felt it was becoming a nazi bar situation. The whole point of having the vote was to apply pressure on the admin to deal with it. And there was a positive outcome because the admin did deal with it and so we didn’t defederate. I mean sure, the admin didn’t like being pressured, but it got the job done.
Hopefully feddit.uk will change their policy to explicitly ban anti-trans dogwhistles, and the fediverse will be better for it imo. Freeze peach instances all become nazi-bars before long.
To be honest we were just getting sick of all the posts complaining about Blajah’s policy of banning folks who they consider to be transphobic from their instance. No pressure was applied from Blajah, we just felt it was the right thing to do. Your whole narrative is bullshit tbh.
You’re running the ‘Are these people are power tripping?’ community in the Fediverse, a community of majority left wing people, and you get a lot of people posting about a single instance, so much so that it dominates the posts to the point that requires moderation intervention.
You can read that in a lot of ways.
One of the ways to read it is that the instance’s admins are power tripping. That doesn’t mean that they’re not trying to create a safe space or that there are not some transphobes. All of these things can be true at once. Some people get caught up in the righteousness of their cause and fail to consider how their actions affect others.
Hey, I’m a dbzer0 member (I even contribute financially to keep it running) and I’m one of the people who complained about how salty suckers like you come in all the goddamned time to complain about blahaj.
It’s not because Ada is doing anything wrong, it’s because enough of you don’t like what she’s doing that you whine and complain every chance you get. And you don’t even have the decency to complain about different things!
Waaaah! Ada banned me! But I feel like I wasn’t transphobic/I wasn’t on blahaj when I said that/but what about free speech/but what about my feelings?
And so it’s the same post, over and over. And the community rules the same way, over and over. Surprise! Ada made a safe space for blahaj members! They love what she’s doing and thank her for it! No one over there is sad that you’re gone! The fediverse is working as intended!
Not only that, every time one of you makes the same tired, self-centered post, it doesn’t matter if you’re downvoted to oblivion. It doesn’t matter if the community hands your ass to you. You linger. And the next prick shows up and complains. And the community gives them the finger. But the first asshole is here still, and he tells the second asshole that they’re right! And Ada is a monster! And the community is wrong!
So they linger. And the next prick comes along. And the community tells them to fuck right off. But now two assholes tell them that the community is wrong. Ada is a power tripper. Free speech. You weren’t actually transphobic. You’re right. Everyone else is wrong.
And now, in this very thread, we have like five assholes who all made posts to YPTB, complaining about Ada. And you’re finding each other and you’re turning our community into enough assholes that you’ll eventually have enough to turn every. Goddamn. Post. Into your little butt-hurt pow-wow.
So not only are you posting the same tired bullshit over and over and over, even though the community has made it clear what they think- you’re also using these posts to build a shitbird coalition. So. Why the ruck would anyone intentionally allow that to continue? These “Ada was mean to me” posts add nothing of value, and they empower a bitch element.
Ada and I have never exchanged words (that I remember, fediverse is a big place) and zero blahaj members have ever asked me to complain about people constantly having the same goddamn problem with blahaj. So let me just nip this in the bud right now- dbzer0 is a self-governing instance, and if enough of us think you’re being a whiny bitch, no one has to come and try to dictate what is and isn’t allowed in our community.
TL;DR I know you feel empowered with your handful of transphobic asshole friends here to upvote you and back you up, but you have been told, over and over, that Ada isn’t doing anything wrong. And when dbzer0 community members like me complained that the blahaj posts were the same fucking post over and over, our team fixed it. I get that you don’t like that, but this is the fediverse. Make your own instance to bitch about Ada and kindly fuck off.
It’s not because Ada is doing anything wrong
Banning people who were never active on your instance and applying pressure on other instances to ban users is nothing wrong?
I am all for trans rights (see my recent post about nonsensical UK supreme Court judgement) and this is not the way to support these.
You keep saying it over and over but the downvotes and the vast majority of replies every single time you complain disagree.
Remind me, how did that post of yours here go? Was it… -18? Were the comments overwhelmingly telling you to stuff it? Sure seems that way.
And yet all you do is continue to say the same garbage over and over. You’re allowed to say that this isn’t how you support trans people. But the people of blahaj disagree. You can complain that this is power tripping. But the people of YPTB disagree. You can whine that legitimate complaints are being silenced on YPTB. But the people of dbzer0 disagree. Which is why we asked to put a stop to the “waaa I was banned by Ada” posts.
You keep saying it over and over but the downvotes and the vast majority of replies every single time you complain disagree.
Say what now?
Some people get caught up in the righteousness of their cause and fail to consider how their actions affect others.
Seems to me that’s exactly what you are doing right now.
