This was originally posted as a comment response in !asklemmy@lemmy.world.
Back in December, the instance hosting 196 (lemmy.blahaj.zone) announced that, as part of its mission as a trans-friendly space, harassment based on gender or neopronouns would remain** prohibited—even if the user in question was suspected of being a troll. Users were asked to disengage, block, and report suspected trolling behavior rather than bring harassment into a community already vulnerable to that kind of bullying.
There was a small backlash to the policy from some users. This led to a number of “toe the line” posts that weren’t outright gender-based harassment but strongly signaled an intent to misgender or harass in the future. Blahaj admins promptly removed all offending comments during this wave of dissent.
Important to note: The majority of the Blahaj and 196 users supported the policy, upvoting and praising the admins for creating a safe space for trans individuals.
By January, the backlash had mostly subsided, and the trolls causing issues had moved on. While the 196 moderators, including @moss and their team, did agree with the specific neopronouns policy, they remained unhappy with the broader policy of respect for trans identities. They cited “personal differences” and expressed discontent with instances where Blahaj admins directly removed comments which harassed or openly expressed intent to harass trans identities, feeling that it overstepped their role.*
Yesterday, @moss and the 196 moderation team enacted a major decision without consulting the community. They locked !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone and instructed users to move to !196@lemmy.world.
This move was extremely unpopular. Many users strongly dislike lemmy.world for various reasons (a complicated topic better unpacked elsewhere). The announcement post was met with widespread backlash, and @moss eventually locked it. In response, a few users created a new community on Blahaj: !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone. The new community quickly grew in size and activity, with most users opting to stay on Blahaj rather than migrate to lemmy.world.
It’s clear @moss and the 196 moderators underestimated the community’s attachment to its home on Blahaj. By attempting to uproot the group without input, they alienated much of the community. As a result, most users have moved to the new Blahaj-hosted community, which has already become the more active space.
TL;DR:
@Moss and the 196 mod team tried to move the community to lemmy.world without consulting anyone. The decision was extremely unpopular, leading to backlash and the creation of a new Blahaj-hosted community that most users now prefer.
*This paragraph has been edited after receiving correction or clarification from @A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world. You can find that discussion here.
**”Remain” being the key word here. Blahaj has openly held the same trans-focused policies as always, and the admin Ada was simply reasserting her position here.
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However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy.
None of us disagreed with this policy, and Drag was not banned over neopronouns. Drag was banned for an egregious level of harassment of another user + encouraging violence from and the suicide of trans people.
If y’all think that’s acceptable behavior, that’s fine, but keep it the fuck away from us. Half of the mod team is trans, and we don’t need that shit in our lives.
I don’t see drag mentioned in the explanation post on the community this is about; what’s the connection to the situation the OP is about?
However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy.
Not a single mod disagreed with this policy. While I’m sure it wasn’t her intention, Ada’s post certainly made it seem like it, though. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve had to tell people why Drag was banned after she posted it.
can you rephrase your point i think i and others are misunderstanding it bigtime like i personally can’t tell who you are responding to~
I’m not sure what you’re confused about, honestly.
People harassed Drag and that wasn’t okay, but during the backlash you mentioned in your post, many people pointed out that Drag had a legitimate history of “trolling”, the most egregious of which was telling someone repeatedly to kill themselves, along with general calls for violence from and the suicide of trans people. We banned Drag for this.
So when Ada made her post, it looked like she was calling us out for labeling Drag a troll, and indeed that is the narrative a lot of you ran with.
So now that you’ve had a hand in perpetuating this misunderstanding, I’d appreciate it if you set the record straight. Because frankly, I’m sick of people like you labeling me and the other mods as bigots. I’m sick of you guys putting words in our mouths. If you’re going to make a “writeup” about us, then tell them the real reason we wanted to leave LBZ.
?
So I actually agree with everything you wrote here except that “that is the narrative a lot of you ran with.” I didn’t. And I told off everyone who did. I appreciated you banning Drag for the user’s disgusting behavior. You did the right thing. Ada was calling out commenters who were using harassment and misgendering to combat trolls. Most that were mad were upset at Ada. Few to none interpereted that as a diss on you. Certainly not me.
You are getting pretty acerbic about this already so if you do respond please be chill. But I would encourage you to engage with the concept that this wasn’t even about you until you made it that way by locking the community.
In general, this is showing me that you just really never even had a finger on the pulse of your own former community, so I think this has all been for the best.
This kind of thing needs to happen way more often.
Moderators don’t “own” the communities they host. They’re just taking responsibility for the space. I actually really wish that their effort was rewarded with more of recognition and less of headache, but the answer to that is certainly not to say that they are the “boss” of the users in that community, and the users need to do what they say.
It’s especially hilarious for 196 because they weren’t actually taking on the moderation responsibility. Ada was. So they just wanted to show up and be the boss without doing anything in particular to help anybody. I hope the new community finds blahaj-native moderators and they find some fulfillment in keeping the space healthy and organized.
Maybe moderators should be referred to as caretakers in the fediverse… seems to fit the role much better.
This is a really good way to look at it.
Moderators don’t “own” the communities they host. They’re just taking responsibility for the space.
The problem is that, as encoded, moderators do “lease” the space from admins. There isn’t a system built into Lemmy where qualified users can demote moderators. Hell, the Lemmy devs implemented Reddit’s ranking based on time seniority.
The only difference between Reddit and Lemmy is that Lemmy admins aren’t held to the policy of relative non interference that Reddit holds itself to.
I think the key phrase is “the consent of the governed.”
It makes perfect sense to let someone step up who wants to take charge of removing spam, keeping the article titles consistent, that kind of thing. It involves them “taking control” of the community to some extent, even overriding some individual people on some issues sometimes, but that’s fine. For as long as what they’re implementing is actually what the free people inhabiting the community are mostly in favor of, it’s fine.
Once the mods decide that they’re now the boss of the community, and the software system gives them controls they can use to override the consensus of the community because all those free people are now in “their” place, it’s a problem. Honestly, even the solution of everyone just wandering over to some new place instead is a little bit imperfect. To me it would be better if the people in the community had some more direct control over what’s going on with the moderation. But certainly, that’s a vital check on the ability of moderators to start running the place like a little kingdom.
they are the “boss” of the users in that community
Mods surely act like it, that’s reddit modding culture at its core.
Back in my day when the forums were the backbone of online discussion modding was a janitorial job. Spammers, off topic, bad faith behavior got modded.
Reddit style modding is censorship of content and tone so that community is discussing topic with facts and tone that mod approves.
With that said most of fedi subs are modded properly but step into any higher traffic sub lime news and politics and then you are facing censorship.
Why would mods think that they can decide where shit posters gonna do their art… Do they think they own the artisté?
hey there, just wanted to add that while the majority of this post is relatively accurate, my team and I never did and never will have any issue with transgender identities. Being both nonbinary and medically transfeminine myself, the idea that I would take any action based out of hate for my fellow trans people is appalling. If you would like a more accurate idea of why we took the actions we did, and why we reversed them, please see this post.
Absolutely agree. You and your team do not have issue with transgender identities—yet you do take issue with Ada’s policies surrounding dignity in transgender identities.
If you feel any of my post is inappropriately targeted at your personal beliefs rather than your attitudes towards policy, you may absolutely let me know or suggest a better wording. I never intend to skew the truth, but I also feel a duty to my fellow community members to accurately portray why your team does not align with 196’s wills and needs.
Your post does contain the line “they remained unhappy with the broader policy of respect for trans identities”, which to me reads as being at least pretty similar to having “issue with transgender identities.” But I’m an outsider to all this and may be missing context.
that key word there—policy—is so important and not to be ignored
Could you elaborate? Because I’m confused by what you could mean here. What is the broader policy that they disagree with? You say they “did agree with the specific neopronouns policy”, so it seems like you are saying they agree that “harassment based on gender or neopronouns [should] remain prohibited—even if the user in question was suspected of being a troll”? If the broader policy is a policy of “respect for trans identities”, it seems like the only thing about the policy they have a problem with is its respect for trans identities.
For anyone thinking “it’s their community, they can do what they want with it. Start your own if you disagree”:
A lot of users (including myself) believe that a community fundamentally belongs to said community. It’s not so much “you need to ask for permission to do X” but more like “is this what the community itself wants?”
Of course, not everything can be solved by community consensus, but to me, a community is nothing without the members. And if the members want X, Y or Z, provided it’s within instance rules, moderators should help facilitate that.
Now if only Blahaj would use this opportunity to reconcile with hexbear. Probably won’t tho
Second drama arc
Blahaj is a trans instance and its users probably don’t want to be told that Russia and China are great. That would be pretty invalidating to queer identities.
Hexbear is also a very trans instance, do their queer identities not count?
/c/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns@hexbear.net
Like???
Hexbear users are allowed to have loose boundaries around queerphobia directed at themselves, but they can’t expect every other queer person to be as comfortable supporting queerphobic governments.
So they should defederate from pro-US instances too, right? Certainly .world would have to go.
How is world pro US?
They sure seem to support the US in the new Cold War. I’m really happy to see they’re as anti-Israel as the rest of the lemmyverse, don’t get me wrong! But when it comes to every other conflict they just side with whatever is in the US’s geopolitical interests. Maybe I’m being too harsh on them, though. 🤷♀️
Is that because they support the US, or because the US is typically on the side of the country being invaded, at least lately?
I’m new to the conversation, but may I ask what the number “196” means in this context? Does it signify something important to the transgender community?
A group of room-mates once created a subreddit called r/195, after the number of their apartment. The sub became too popular for the room-mates to moderate, and they closed it down. Then someone created r/196 as its successor.
Originally there were some guys living in a dorm somewhere in room 195. They started posting good quality shitposts on r*ddit on r/195. The subr*ddit started to grow, and they didn’t want to deal with moderating a lot of people so they closed the sub. Followers of the subr*ddit started r/196 as a response. Than the apicalipse happened, and at the time r/196 was at its peak it was recreated here as well by the r*ddit refugees.
So it’s a random room number plus one.
As soon as I saw “neopronouns”, I instantly knew it was more dragonfucker bullshit. Still shake my head to see milquetoast blahaj admins catering to his transphobic trolling.
Pronouns aren’t something people deserve or not based on their behaviour.
That’s definitely an opinion that you have made. One that I’m sure many admins at blahaj share.
