Update: In light of the programming.dev update here https://programming.dev/post/8399272, the defederation is no longer going ahead.

However, something more needs to be said. Even here on Blahaj, some of our users took issue with the choice to defederate over this issue.

So I would like to give some background and context.

Blahaj Zone exists, because both Kaity and I left mainstream social media to escape transphobia. Reddit, with its lackluster approach to fighting transphobia, and twitter, with its outright celebration of transphobia pushed us here, to the fediverse, and to create Blahaj Zone and Blahaj Lemmy.

To that end, we will continue to treat transphobia seriously. Our goal is to create a space where gender diverse folk can exist and let our defenses down a little, where we don’t have to worry about getting dragged in to an argument with a transphobe, or a bad faith actor “just asking questions”.

If you are looking for a more reddit like experience, where in the interest of increased engagement, we let low level transphobia slide, and push responsibility for dealing with it on to community mods and individual users, then you will likely not be happy with blahaj going forward. If you choose to stay here, understand that we may defederate again in the future over similar issues.

The choice is yours.

======

It has recently been brought to my attention that the lead admin of programming.dev is engaging in ongoing transphobia.

You can see the conversation in question here https://programming.dev/comment/6131539

For that reason we will be defederating from programming.dev in 48 hours.

There are only three communities on that instance used by small number of our users, so this won’t have a big impact, but if you are one of those users, you will need to use an alt account on another instance if you wish to access the communities.

  • First Majestic Comet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    36·
    6 months ago

    Not talking back or being snarky but if you feel that way you might seriously want to look into Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, they have very bad track records of letting transphobes and bigots run wild, Lemmy.world is the worst, many of the people they’ve banned for bigotry have been unbanned or were only given temporary bans to begin with, often times they won’t even action users who are engaging in transphobia, even if reported. It’s really not great.

    I used to believe Beehaw was a bit overly strict but honestly I can see they blocked these instances for good reason, especially Lemmy.world.

    • GarfGirl [she/her]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      21·
      6 months ago

      Imo shitjustworks is the worst offender because they have a whole “muh free speech” thing going and they also were the choice for where a load of rightwing and rightwing adjacent subreddits decided to migrate to like r/greentext, r/NCD, r/conservative and r/libertarian

      • First Majestic Comet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        11·
        6 months ago

        That is true, sh.just.works does allow some pretty terrible communities. Both of them have atrocious user moderation standards, there was a guy on sh.itjust.works who made terrorist threats, regualarly, he was banned from many other instances but his account on shitjustworks is still standing, even after they reviewed it. Really terrible instance.

        I would say Lemmy.world is still pretty high up there considering they only ban subs that make them look bad, and only temporarily ban transphobic or bigoted users, in many cases they won’t even acknowledge transphobia, instead banning users for homophobia or trolling, one time they even appealed a user who was posting MAP (Pedophile) pride shit and was perma banned for it, they reduced his ban to 7 days after email communication, what kind of instance unbans a person pushing MAP pride shit? That shit is dangerous (Modlog entry for the pedo user they unbanned just in case there was any doubt).

        IMO both of these instances are absolutely atrocious with their moderation policies.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
          11·
          6 months ago

          From what I see, he seems childish more than anything about “MAP Pride”. He argued for jailing people who harm children.

          And he got banned for it. That’s a far, far thing from an instance endorsing “MAP Pride”.

          Find me an instance of someone being Transphobic that isn’t just “ignoring” pronouns in someone’s flair on Lemmy.world, and I’ll ban them myself. And I’ll have a talk with the mods of that community if needed. And yes, I’ll ban for intentional misuse of pronouns, but it’s gotta be pretty blatant and not just flair.

          I’m pretty tired of Reddit mods who get offended and ban anyone who argues with them. If you’re biased, you should recuse yourself. People with power should have a higher bar for their actions than others.

        • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
          6·
          6 months ago

          There’s a reason they’re called sh.itholefor.nazis. The communities are hit/miss but GOOD GOD is the comment quality in the absolute shitter. Lemmy world is also really bad their admins will flat out perm ban you for being socialist. Those instances are a blight on the federation.

              • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
                1·
                6 months ago

                I’m as shitty as the people around me. Notice how I haven’t really had issues on any of the other instances? I don’t go around looking to start fights, I just have strong principles and refuse to back down for anything. Yes that’s going to be bad optics in some circumstances, that makes it really easy for them to find a good excuse to throw the hammer. Back in the day when I did care about optics people would just flat out make up a reason bordering defamation to get rid of me and everyone would buy it so as far as i’m concerned I’d rather it be for an honest reason than a made-up one. If you want to see an example of LW banning socialists just look at the rest of the mod log and you’ll notice a trend.

                I got banned from hexbear because I pushed one of the admins on their pro-crypto stance (my take is that crypo is nazi shit) and they didn’t like I was talking back to them, everything else you see in the modlog is basically post-hoc justification. Lemmy world did it because I wouldn’t stop calling fascists on their shit. Those are the real reasons why i’m banned from those instances.

        • Antik 👾@lemmy.world
          6·
          6 months ago

          Proof on the “MAP pride shit”? Jarfil wasn’t posting CP, he was saying those people needed help. And while it’s hard to agree with this because those that act on it deserve a bullet for all I care but you want to make it look like posting CP is ok on Lemmy World.
          Guess who was the first instance to federate rqd2.net and brought their MAP support forums to light?

          Here is the list of instances we block on Lemmy World and the reasons why: https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.world

          That’s the main reason why we have fediseer, to keep those bigots and pedos out.

          We do take action when we see transphobia. But if the whole discussion about a this game has made anything clear it’s that there are concepts and dogwhistles that might go unnoticed to cis male folk like me because I don’t live that life.

          But go ahead and defederate from Lemmy World.

    • Antik 👾@lemmy.world
      4·
      6 months ago

      often times they won’t even action users who are engaging in transphobia, even if reported. It’s really not great.

      As I said in my other reply. I don’t live that life so we might not get all the cues but if anyone on our team sees transphobia it will be removed.

      • First Majestic Comet@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        5·
        6 months ago

        I think a bigger problem is that like Reddit or Facebook Lemmy.world lets these people continue to post and participate there, most only get temporary bans, I distinctly remember a person who used the R-slur multiple times and was blatantly transphobic, yet last I checked he only got temp banned, and otherwise are completely welcome back even after such atrocious behavior.

        One user I can refer to is Mojave, but he certainly isn’t the only case, there are plenty more like him. I remember he had quite the abusive spree in !egg_irl@lemmy.blahaj.zone, if memory serves he made quite a few transphobic attacks, unfortunately it doesn’t show up in the modlog because they purged him rather than removing (he also apparently had some very bad behavior in !transfem@lemmy.blahaj.zone but I’m not there and don’t remember it).

        • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          3·
          6 months ago

          In defense of temp bans: sometimes people will learn from their past mistakes so starting with a temp ban is a decent idea rather than just jumping to a permanent one.

          Of course on Lemmy you don’t get notifications when you get banned, so it’s not as effective of a tool as it could be. Hell you don’t even get notifications of a comment being removed.

          Edit: Banning in general on Lemmy is broken IMO. If you’re from a different instance and you get banned you see no difference in your day to day interaction in the other instance. You can still post and comment, it’s just on the other instance you are banned from the people on that instance don’t see that content. Couple that with the lack of notifications when you get banned or your comments get removed and people won’t know that their behavior is unacceptable and they won’t change.