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.
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.
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
Seems fair, I don’t think this is PTB
I’ve composed a little ditty for my barbershop quartet:
“Hell Yeah!”
I’m afraid it loses something in text.
Good decision by Ada. I’m also quite pleased with how many instance mates stood up in here to defend blahaj’s decision.
PS: It occurs to me we might need a name for our peeps. I.e. like one talks about “lemmings” or “redditors”, we could use something for members of the divisions by zero. Edit
Dbzer0 users. Easiest way to use it for other instances as well
Yes but, counterpoint: Boring.
Beezers.
Some suggestions:
- NaNs
- Infinitesimals
- Zeroids
- ∞s
Mmm naan
Would users of PieFed become PieHeads? 😜
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.
fair for both sides, I don’t see a PTB here.
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.
Dawwww!
Removed by mod
That’s why I chose blahaj zone as my instance. It’s nice not having to justify my existence
Yeah, Ada’s modding may be seen as heavy-handed by some, but that’s largely because it’s a reaction to the fact basically nowhere is safe for people who are trans. Maintaining a truly trans-inclusive space requires active heavy-handed moderation, because going easy or remaining passive just leads to transphobes sneaking in.
She should go harder.
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?
Thank you for facilitating discussions on this. Sorry for my ignorance, but what are PTB/YDI determinations? Not sure what I found on duckduckgo is relevant.
Power Tripping Bastard / You Deserve It
Yes, if you were just looking to report the news, the comm blaze pointed out might better. For the popcorn takes [email protected] might be more appropriate.
We have [email protected] for this kind of conversations
Yeah that’s what prompted my question really, because I wasn’t sure how it fitted the format. I guess if we explicitly make the subject whether the feddit admin(s) deserved the defederation, then I guess it kind of fits the format though. And it’s nice to see such a strong show of support for Ada and Blajah.
OP seems pretty neutral and this is just a “here’s what’s going on in lemmy moderation/administration”.
Then why did they post about it in this community?
100%. If this was an information only style post, they wouldn’t be saying that it should’ve allowed debate… and we have a whole fediverse lore sub specifically for info.
They pointed elsewhere they didn’t understand the purpose of this comm.
Oh, hadn’t considered that it was a misunderstanding. Those seem so rare nowadays.
I wasn’t sure how to take the post, so that’s why I wanted a sense check. But yeah, I assume you are correct.
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.
I went back through the two main threads just now, and see no updates.
With that in mind, I do believe that if the comments haven’t been removed, at least temporarily, the matter has gone on too long. It has been long enough to verify the dogwhistle is in common enough use that even if the person using it didn’t know what it means, a moderator or admin should know and have taken action.
Even with the shitty state of search engines nowadays, it is possible to find out that a specific dogwhistle is known and in use within a few hours. Since it was something that I ran into months ago, it’s easy to confirm with A Wikipedia search
Since the recent UK court ruling is absolutely not applicable to this situation, and they’ve given no other reasoning for a decision being delayed on this matter, I don’t feel it would be reasonable for the comments to still be up. I don’t know if they are. Nobody has linked to them and shouldn’t have because brigading sucks even for this kind of thing, so I don’t know if the comments are still there.
Which, I think that brings us into complete agreement at this time. Rule 1 should have been applied already. If it hasn’t been, then it is implicit support for the comments.
Since the recent UK court ruling is absolutely not applicable to this situation, and they’ve given no other reasoning for a decision being delayed on this matter, I don’t feel it would be reasonable for the comments to still be up.
100% agreed.
Which is a valid viewpoint, obviously.
However, dogwhistles are a difficult thing to moderate. You first have to be aware that they exist (they are), then you have to be aware that a specific phrase is one (they do now), you’d have to verify that the report is one (still up in the air), and then decide what to do about it (still in the air).
Moderation does not have to be instant. Even if you have dozens of moderators or admins, expecting action even within an hour isn’t something to reasonably expect. Now, I haven’t gone back through and checked to see what they’ve decided at this point, if anything, but you and I are still talking about the principle itself, so I don’t know if that matters for this part of this particular discussion. As in, was the delay at the time of the post reasonable.
I agree with you that a comment using that dogwhistle needs to be removed. I agree that if it isn’t, then there’s a problem. The only point I see that we don’t agree on so far is how quickly an admin is expected to step in on a moderation case.
By this point, I would expect at least an update on the matter, some kind of “this is where we are in the process”. But, at the time of the post and the start of this particular conversation, I believe that they were still well within the range of an acceptable time frame for a policy decision on an unfamiliar dogwhistle.
Again, I’m still talking about events as of the time we started this chain. If you want to shift to what would be an acceptable state now we can, but I’ll need to go through both of the posts I’m aware of and update.
You first have to be aware that they exist (they are)
Agreed
then you have to be aware that a specific phrase is one
They were informed, yes. Whether they knew before or not isn’t known, but also irrelevant at this point.
you’d have to verify that the report is one
Negative. They are aware the phrase is a dogwhistle. The user realizing that or not is no longer relevant. Remove and notify of the reason.
and then decide what to do about it
Adhere to rule 1 of their instance.
Moderation does not have to be instant.
When the admin is on, available, responds, then stops responding but continues to make comments/posts… Question answered. They decided against moderating.
I don’t believe anyone said anything about “instant”. What was said was they went unresponsive.
I agree with you that a comment using that dogwhistle needs to be removed
It IS a dogwhistle.
Whether a user realizes that or not is irrelevant to moderation.
As in, was the delay at the time of the post reasonable.
Not remotely relevant at this point.
- Admins were aware
- Admins understand and agree its a dogwhistle
- Admins chose not to address and stopped communicating while continuing to do other things on the instance.
Not “We’re figuring it out”, just… Radio silence.
No, sorry, not relevant at all.
I believe that they were still well within the range of an acceptable time frame for a policy decision on an unfamiliar dogwhistle.
Not without saying as much. And that has nothing to do with their reasoning - they agree its a dog whistle.
A reasoned and balanced analysis. Bravo.
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.