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.
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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.
I don’t know how fair that is, because things got just as bad over here when we were federated with Hexbear. They’re really active and really argumentative, so slap fights will happen and be hard to moderate.
Maybe things are bad in general over there, but this seems like a pretty poor indicator imo. It’s hard to have a respectful discussion when you’re being dogpiled by Hexbear users.
I’m not subscribed to any programming.dev communities, but I’ve seen programming.dev names pop up quite a bit in threads and they’ve been nothing but respectful.
That’s a very fair point.
When we federated with hexbear I was on team “let’s give them the benefit of the doubt”. That lasted 12 hours.
In the time we were federated with Hexbear I blocked more people then I had in years
Hexbear showed their character and they should stay defederated and more instances should defederate them for their continued poor behavior as a community
I’m just sitting here really confused at the choice to defederate based on a single chat.
Most folks at programming.dev, myself included, are there because it’s related to their profession. That’s what drew us there.
It baffles me to think that the entire instance has been judged and deemed unworthy because of a single comment chain that had disagreements.
You can block users you don’t want to interact with. Some instances breed a potentially nasty sentiment or attitude, and when there are too many users from that instance to block, that’s when I’d consider defederation. But a single conversation thread, involving a single person?
I’ve got no say in how another instance is ran. Just makes me a little sad about a much more fragmented future of Lemmy.
Fellow programming.dev user here,
I think it’s worth checking out her comments here. I don’t think you understand why Ada made the decision. The decision is not about deeming our instance unworthy. It is about not wanting to be federated with instances with transphobic admins. It’s very different than somethingike thinking everyone on our instance is transphobic.
I haven’t seen the removed comments so I can’t judge for myself whether they’re transphobic (and it’s not relevant to the talk you and I are having).
I might be missing something, but I believe an admin being potentially transphobic only matters if they do not moderate transphobic content that leaks out to other instances. I don’t think I’ve seen transphobic content leak out of programming.dev.
That said, I’ve read some of Adas comments on the intention behind defederation, and blahaj. What I’ve learned is that Blahaj wans set up as a safe space, so 0 tolerance is understandable, and is well within their rights to establish and enforce.
Coming from someone who is just looking to Lemmy as a reddit alternative, it’s simultaneously cool that communities can do this, and a little unfortunate that with Lemmy being as small as it is (compared to reddit), we are defederating over single comment threads. Again, blahaj was intended to be a safe space and has no obligation to be a part of the “reddit replacement” I’m looking for, so if they deem it necessary then good on them.
Agreed. I hope our two instances can find a way to stay federated but I hold no anger if we can’t.