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.
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.
ada continues to be the realest MVP
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.
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.
Thank you Ada. I really appreciate having a safe space like this.
This is the way.
Damn. I don’t want to engage with them either now. Are there any better UK instances? I’m getting sick and tired of the Starmer apologetics and general meltery on there anyway.
Unfortunately, there is a sickness in heart of every British person that prevents us from creating anything better. Any attempt to do so will inevitably devolve into “It’s shit. It’s supposed to be shit. Don’t like it? There’s the door.”
Nonsense
Thank you Ada!
Oh man, that’s truly disheartening to see, especially how I noticed a lot more people that are being just unnecessarily mean 😟
Thank you for taking the appropriate steps to deal with 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.
Thank you Ada and mods. It’s too easy to manipulate discussion and voting, which is why safe spaces were created.
Thank you for taking real direct action on issues like this. It keeps our community safe.
slay 💜💅🏻
How did a transphobic comic get positive votes on lemmy?
lemmy
It’s definitely not one homogenous platform, especially when some instances will block the more outspoken political instances who would bombard such posts.
Unfortunately some kinds of transphobia gets upvoted now and then because cis people don’t always understand what we’re going through and what is hurtful or oppressive. Some people just have this stance that others should take things even if they have no understanding of what it’s like to actually be the victim of systemic/societal discrimination.
