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.
These are tough calls to make. On the one hand I applaud the step taken to protect the community hosted by this instance, on the other I also find that simply cuting ties and conversation only furthers the divide.
Sure we should not have to defend the validity of our existence, and also realise that most hate leaves little place for heathy discussions. But in avoiding their echo chambers I find we quiet ours too, we renounce our visibility for our comfort and theirs.
I guess I wish there were other ways to warn users about potentially triggering instances rather than outright defederating, but I do understand your main motives.
You are absolutely welcome to maintain an account on another instance and here if you want to have the option of having those discussions. And I don’t mean that in a “Well, there’s the door” way. What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t want to have the types of conversations you’re talking about, it’s currently very hard to find spaces that make that possible. That’s why lbz exists in the form it does. However, I completely understand that some people do want that opportunity. And if that’s you, you’re welcome to maintain multiple accounts. You’ll always have a space here, but you can also use instances that give you access to less protective spaces.
ada continues to be the realest MVP
Obviously I’m not on blahaj, but I think the decision is pretty on point for the goals of blahaj.
It also makes me disappointed in feddit.uk. “Leave it to discussion/votes” is bullshit and just support for the behavior.
Edit: The admin responded elsewhere with “we want to make sure we comply with the law”.
My comment remains unchanged. Allowing this is support. Fuck your bullshit law. You’re explicitly supporting this bullshit by your inaction.
Admin, ban this person! Clearly a non blahaj user voicing their opinion where explicitly told not to!
Tap for spoiler
/s, doh.
Right? Imagine if you said that about the rights for like black women or something? Like, come ON. It’s 2025, we KNOW these behaviors are bigoted, rules are way too chill with letting shit like that fly, and is part of the reason it’s so prolific now - it’s not being treated like the hate speech that it is, and people in power in certain places are like “no I’m not sure we need to discuss it again”. It’s just gross and horrible and makes me feel so fucking helpless sometimes when a space is dominated with shitties like that.
100%.
It’s nothing short of support for the behavior. Its why I constantly comment of Lemmy.world being trash, and why I say 196 mods are garbage and don’t belong on blahaj, long live [email protected].
Even suggesting that sort of vile nonsense is worth discussing/voting on makes them bigoted morons.
Edit: Sorry I sound cranky about it, but this “tEaCh tHe CoNtRoVeRsY” garbage puts me in a cranky mood.
lemmy.world is basically the fediverse version of Reddit from what I’ve experienced in terms of overall culture.
I still think that’s their tagline/site motto
Eewww
I’m not on here often enough to be in the loop, what’s the 196 community drama?
The mods from 196 tried to forcibly move everyone to 196 on Lemmy.world because they personally disagreed with Ada’s approach.
They locked the comm and pinned a post about it.
So during that time (while they continued arguing that “let the discussion happen” and “teach the controversy” but “we still totally support queer folks despite trying to move to an instance where shitty behavior is acceptable, and briefly had an admin level rule they are ‘reworking’ where it would explicitly be against terms to delete that hateful content”…
[email protected] then opened up as a new comm.
196 on blahaj was reopened, and unfortunately many folks still land there because of the name.
Personally I refuse to trust any of the mods on 196 (.world or on blahaj) because:
- The move was forced
- There was no discussion prior
- They only backtracked when onehundredninetysix took off
- Their entire reasoning for the move was based off “we dont have accounts on blahaj and reporting is complicated” and “we want to moderate differently than what’s permitted on blahaj”.
Sorry that was kind of a long-winded summary.
Edit: there are threads at both[email protected] and [email protected] iirc that will show the whole story.
There was no discussion prior
I’ve been involved in a lot of communities, some alright and some which nosedived, and it’s always amazing how out-of-touch most moderator cliques become if discussion isn’t ingrained in their culture. I also haven’t kept up with 196 comms, not my style, but I hope the community has enough consciousness to tell the mods where to shove that crap and become independent.
“we want to make sure we comply with the law”
on here?
…Christ, why? lmao
They must think they’re the main character of lemmy or someshit.
Just as bad as Lemmy.world with their admins being totally pro lawyers who just haven’t taken the bar, they’d totally pass though.
Maybe worse, we’ll see.
“meh, those things sound like work”
– feddit.uk admin
They had the time to make a new rule about no generative AI content but couldn’t work this out? Stuff em.
i tried to tell them it sounded more like cowardice than laziness but they just wouldnt hear it.
Agreed, fuck 'em.
If the users of feddit.uk want to engage with us, they’re totally welcome to do so on our terms by making an account somewhere that holds their users to a better standard. I hope they do. As far as I’m concerned, the users are cool, but we don’t have to coddle somebody else’s bigotry or put up with hatred.
It’s pretty fucked up a court ruling that’s shit sees such quick implementation.
Good riddance, fuck TERF island. If communities don’t like this change they can move to an instance that isn’t filled with and supported by transphobes.
Thanks ADA and I appreciate all the work that you’ve done. This is why I love Blahaj Lemmy, I dont want to deal with that nonsense.
Calm discussion doesn’t work, ridicule them and deplatform them.
They’ve only grown stronger because the neolibs want calm discussion between The people who want to exist and the bigots who hate them for existing.
Calm discussion doesn’t work, ridicule them and deplatform them.
They’ve tried calm discussion, it’s confirmed their position, so (while this decision doesn’t really affect me) I’d be satisfied that Ada’s not jumping to conclusions. It doesn’t matter how diplomatic or polite they are, they’re on their way to becoming a Nazi bar.
For those who weren’t here before the reddit API exodus last year, Lemmy used to have a sizable US Free Speech instance, Wolfballs, whose owner was more the anti-vax flavor than the bigoted kind and sincerely believed in the Libertarian/liberalist marketplace of ideas. Perhaps out of desperation for growing the platform (Lemmy was in the hundreds of users at that point and that owner was contributing software improvements), it took a while before the bans turned to full defederations. Their admin was diplomatic, they were polite, I believe they were sincere, their instance rules were neutral and open to everyone, and then after a couple of years they shut down their own instance when they realized the literal white supremacist neo-nazis they were platforming, who had scared anyone sane away, weren’t just doing a bit to troll the libs and actually did believe they ridiculous junk they spouted about shapeshifters and non-aryan marriages.
When someone creates a permissive instances which platforms bigotry, the people other instances reject will tend to flow there, whether the admin agrees with them or not.
They’ve only grown stronger because the neolibs want calm discussion between The people who want to exist and the bigots who hate them for existing.
Ah, the classic both-sides false equivalence - I’ve seen a few rare losers playing the “banning someone for their political choices and actions is the same as oppressing someone for having a body I don’t like!”, and it’s mindboggling that certain instances tolerate their fake-neutral chavanism.
Thank you Ada. I really appreciate having a safe space like this.
If instances aren’t willing to moderate themselves when it comes to transphobia they should get the boot. I hope more instances defederate feddit.uk over this. Might make them change course and rethink if they should maybe moderate better.
Transphobia has no place on anything I use. I may not be one of the folks on your instance, but I still appreciate the good work.
hard mode: uk stop being transphobic for two seconds.
As a denizen of terf island myself, all I can say is; fucking good! Our enemies hide behind statements like “just asking questions”, but there’s no room for debate when it comes to people’s rights and look where that thinking has gotten us.
The time for debate is over. I want my rights back.
I’m not a blåhaj user, but I really hope the feddit.uk mindset on this doesn’t spread to other instances.
Why do divisive people have to care so much about letting people do what they want if it doesn’t affect them? What someone wants to do with their body does NOT affect you, but your open derogatory statements about them DOES affect them!
This has always been my stance. If it doesn’t affect me, then I am always on the side of people’s rights. Automatically. Even if it does affect me, I’m still more likely to be in favor of people’s rights. Especially if the people in question are losing rights. I simply don’t understand people who think loss of rights stops at people they don’t like. It just doesn’t work that way. A loss of ANY right against ANYONE is a personal loss of rights.
For instance, I’m not LGBTQ+. But I will fight like hell for their rights. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because I know what happens when the LGBTQ+ people are gone. These are innocent people who just want to live their life and are under constant threat from physical and legal harm. The fact that Christians get so up in arms about even seeing two men kiss, or holding hands pisses me off on a level I can’t describe. Especially when you consider the huge proportion of child molestation in the church. And it is very common that that child molestation was against a child of the same sex as the adult.
I’m not saying there’s a causation there, but there’s definitely correlation. And that correlation isn’t homosexuality of the abuser. The correlation is power. Teaching, clergy, Hollywood, right wing, left wing, it happens on both sides, on all levels, and of moderates as well. But the one thing that always unifies EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. is power. 100%, every single time.
However, Republicans tend to have power/Dom fantasies at a FAR higher rate than Democrats. And again, I’m not saying that’s a causation, but it is a correlation.
Power fantasies are insanely dangerous, even if the person is a “lowly” cook. It’s potentially civilization ending if the person has the power of the US military. And I’ve yet to ever hear a Democrat fantasize about being president. Honestly even thinking about it… Fuck that. I can’t handle that kind of responsibility. But I guess if trump “can” do it, then I could as well.
I agree 100% about the dangers of the power tripping fantasy. The best leaders are the ones who were picked to be in a position of power for their views on the world, not for the power they wanted to be granted to begin with.
Take Pope Francis (RIP): he came from a less wealthy part of the world, had an extremely open mindset on letting people of all varieties be whomever they wanted to be, and ended up being a genuinely good role model for people to follow (and I’m not even Christian lol).
And you have power tripping assholes, many of whom are Catholics, who hate being inclusive and refuse to follow their religion’s literal leader
Some people will endlessly bicker about the most stupid shit. Like, who the fuck even cares if someone wants to be a woman or a man? That’s like the least problematic thing nowadays.
Unfortunately even moreso in our region of origin, buddy.
The assumption that enforcing these viewpoints on everyone is “for the greater good” is a flawed one, as people who do not share their beliefs WILL NOT share the “greater good” to begin with. I will not enforce my beliefs on anyone else without their willingness.
I will never get why most arabs hate gays. Why? They’re clearly fine with shattering the rules of their religion, and cherrypicking sharia; so why not just be consistent and not hate gays? Their existence affects literally no one.
Though, we’re more prone to arguing about ridiculous stuff rather than, you know… actually fixing our problems and corruption lmao
Yeah I think step one is solving the massive blatant corruption on an international level that every country has haha
You don’t get it bro, we need to kill those gays and trans people. then we can get democracy and development!
/s something something poes lawedit: forgot to mention, i’m grateful there are sane arabs on lemmy, who actually have sensible political/social takes. it drives you insane to live here sometimes lol. Great to have you here :D
Not an Arab but I really appreciate just how “human” most of Lemmy is. There are of course a lot of insane people still but I don’t usually come away from Lemmy with the same general malaise that I did on reddit.
The real answer is:
They
are too dense to realizehaven’t realized that what they’re doing IS bigoted BECAUSE they’ve been so deeply in that culture for so long that it’s a much deeper question than they realize, and then get caught in the insidious (oh god I’m about to use the term 😭) neo liberal mindset of letting all the hatred and blatant manipulation fly free, unable to consider the problems or times in which they would not allow that stance to themselves, likely because they’ve never had to and may never have to experience anything like it.Or, they literally are just bigoted and being shitty bigots.
Thank you for taking real direct action on issues like this. It keeps our community safe.
Terf island strikes again!
Blahaj user and former Brit here … well done Ada for consistency and transparency regarding this.
The whole “let it play out” attitude really says it all, it shows cowardice and a lack of leadership … kind of like the current prime minister.
