There’s a post about it.

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.

  • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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    22 hours ago

    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.

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      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.

      • flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        11 hours ago

        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 removed 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 removed, 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 removed about Ada and kindly fuck off.

        • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          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.

          • flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 hour ago

            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.

            • Skiluros@sh.itjust.works
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              20 minutes ago

              But the people of YPTB disagree.

              That’s not true. The first post by HAL-5700X is at +29 / - 56, so about a third agree.

              Kolanaki’s following statement:

              Defederating an entire instance over the actions of a single user instead of simply banning that user along with creating a post to bring it up but not actually discuss it is just the kind of extreme reaction I expect from Ada.

              is at +33 / -29 and that’s without the text that prompted the defederation being revealed in this thread.

              https://sh.itjust.works/post/36737764/18213591

              If the text was available, chances are the reaction might have been very different.

              Even FauxLiving’s posts stating the following (exert, not the full post) is at +18 / - 30.

              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).

              A large minority of YPTB aren’t aligned with your opinion.

              • flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                2 minutes ago

                I can cherry pick shit too!

                Like db0 saying “Good decision by Ada” which is up 61, down 2! Or Noel_Skum, “How are people still struggling with the basic concept that the person who runs Blahaj can do what they want with Blahaj?” Up 54, down 1! Or pixeltree, “That’s why I chose blahaj zone as my instance. It’s nice not having to justify my existence” Or southsamurai! Or LWD! Or me!

                Fuck off out of here with that disingenuous garbage.

              • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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                16 minutes ago

                🔥

                Also, just want to mark it down that we can still rely on up vote down vote numbers. Enjoy it while it lasts once threat actors arrive, it is gonna be reddit astroturf

                • Skiluros@sh.itjust.works
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                  4 minutes ago

                  Not sure what you are referring to.

                  I am pointing out that there is a decent amount of pushback, but in voting and comments. The framing that the whole (or even an overwhelming majority) of YPTB is aligned with a single view is factually incorrect.

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
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        17 hours ago

        You can read that in a lot of ways

        True, but context and content matters, and when the posters are all deemed YDI then we start to look like the place people come to whinge when their actions have consequences.

      • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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        19 hours ago

        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.

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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        21 hours ago

        Look at this guygal with nuanced takes

        JFC… Ban him, he is dangerous!!!

        Reported for abuse, shit lord.