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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25042034

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.

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[–] TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone 42 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Ada always demonstrates such incredible skill as an admin it's like she's taken classes. It blows my mind consistently.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 hours ago

And even as user. She interacts elsewhere sometimes, and I swear, she's one of the most easy to deal with people on lemmy when there's a disagreement.

Fiendishly unwavering for her community, and trans rights, but absolutely wonderful to talk to. Nothing but respect for Ada from me.

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 34 points 7 hours ago

She shuts down hatred with such sincere grace that it’s impressive. Personally, I admire her restraint most of all.

She frequently deals with idiots and jerks. Hints at condescension or sly insults would be easy, but she effortlessly avoids stooping to such a level. She stays laser-focused on the topic. Behavior like that makes her comments even more powerful.

You deserve to see this @https://fedia.io/u/@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone Thanks for all your hard work!

Edit: that tag is sloppy as hell. I still don’t know what I’m doing lol please don’t hold it against me

[–] DmMacniel@feddit.org 41 points 8 hours ago

ignoring hate, is promoting hate; eff those Admins.

[–] BlackLaZoR@fedia.io 21 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

Defederating because single user on fedia.uk was controversial, and global admins weren't intervening... I recommend keeping away from any social media and living in a concrete bunker with no internet access.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 40 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Defederating is fine.

Different instances have different rules, policies, and procedures. That's a large part of the reason for having different instances. If your instance will not tolerate what is going on on a specific instance, then defederating is the correct tool for the job.

If users disagree with the change or feel they're missing out on something important, they're free to migrate to a space that is more right for them, including hosting their own instance with their own rules and decisions.

[–] wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io 4 points 7 hours ago

This is the exact justification I give for deporting all of the conservatives to Florida.

[–] seathru@lemmy.sdf.org 31 points 7 hours ago

Yeah. If they don't like what is being said on certain instances and/or how the admins handle it, they should start their own!

Oh, wait. That's exactly what happened and this is the system working as intended.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 22 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

It looks like it's not because of the user, but because of how the admins tolerate such behavior. That seems reasonable to me. Just another sign of the horrible transphobia that the UK has become known for.

[–] BlackLaZoR@fedia.io 9 points 7 hours ago (4 children)

Conteoversy aside, what blahaj admin expects is simply infeasible at a large scale. Micromanaging growing social media platform isn't possible beyond certain size of the userbase

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 7 points 2 hours ago

As far as I can tell, she expects that, when contacted with proof that a particular user is being transphobic, that user will get banned. That sounds completely reasonable to me. Any social media which grows to a size where they cannot do that anymore has grown too large.

[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 18 points 7 hours ago

It sounds like you agree that they are right to manage the size of the userbase via defederation so that they can maintain their expectations then?

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 11 points 7 hours ago

This seems like it was a single user, so hardly at scale. What happens if you tolerate at small scale is that it becomes large scale.

I completely agree that moderation is time consuming and hard but that doesn't mean hatred should go unchecked. A simple warning to users that they are in breach of rules does the trick.

[–] Fitik@fedia.io 14 points 7 hours ago

I think it makes sense for them, their goal is specifically to create a safe space for queer folk, it's not a generic instance. The Fediverse gives defederation power, so it makes sense for them to use it, and if their users don't like that "isolation" they can always switch to a different instance. Even tho I agree that it seems to be a bit extreme, but I'm not their user.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

@Emperor@feddit.uk and @flamingos@feddit.uk , would it be possible to address the transphobic posts/comments?

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 50 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

FYI, I won't be able to see any responses to this comment chain from feddit.uk users or admins unless I manually watch it off instance. I'll try and do so, but I won't see pings etc.

In any case, to address Emperor's comment, to avoid defederation and give the feddit.uk time to work it out, all it would have taken was a single response to my messages stating that it's being discussed by the admin team. Instead, despite twice highlighting that this is an issue important enough to defederate over, I got radio silence, whilst Emperor continued to post elsewhere. Even if it were not the intent, it came across as a deliberate choice to ignore my messages.

Federation will be re-enabled if they ultimately address the issue.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 minutes ago

That makes sense, thank you !

[–] oxysis@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 7 hours ago

You are fabulous Ada, you are why I switched to this instance

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 6 points 5 hours ago

To be clear, there were no posts, this is about two comments by one of our users, both of which I personally pushed back on. We're still discussing what to do, but consensus takes time.

[–] Emperor@feddit.uk 26 points 8 hours ago (6 children)

Address the comments or address the defederation?

I was the Admin who was contacted by Ada and that is a mischaracterisation of what I said. Our rules still stand that we won't allow transphobia.

Unfortunately, as the ruling on the interpretation of the law has recently changed, we are going to have to figure out how we approach this and that is going to require a consensus amongst the Admins, and an agreement on our wording going forward.

This is going to take a bit for us to work out (although not too long, we're getting there, I have been active on Lemmy but I don't call the shots, and we need input from all Admins) and if, in the meantime, LBZ feel we aren't moving fast enough and they need to defederate from us then that is obviously their right.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 2 hours ago

I'm familiar with the court case I assume you're referring to, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how it could possibly apply here.

The court declared that, as a matter of law, any other laws that refer to women can only refer to cis women. Or maybe cis women and trans men. Something I think we here can all agree is a grotesque example of judicial activism of a sort we'd normally only expect out of the US. Certainly not a reasonable interpretation of the law as written.

But that ruling is just about interpretations of existing laws on things like gender discrimination. Gender discrimination law literally doesn't even come into the conversation here, because we're not discriminating or allowing anyone on the basis of gender, only on the basis of their behaviour. The court ruling didn't change your right to moderate based on behaviour in any way.

I have no idea if UK law permits moderation on the basis of political beliefs, but I have to assume it does. Certainly, the Supreme Court's ruling in For Women Scotland doesn't change that either way.

[–] frazorth@feddit.uk 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

We can hold ourselves to a higher standard though?

Just because the government have become a bunch of pricks, doesn't mean that we have to. However without context, or being in control I have no idea what is expected here.

If a user of server A posts on a comment on server B, doesn't the admin on server B remove the comment, or is the request "your user, you admin them"?

What is being expected of you here?

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 5 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

The issue is this rule in c/unitedkingdom and c/uk_politics:

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.

We've never had anything like the current wave of transphobia, not even those pogroms back in July, so we've never had to work out the exact line between 'disappointing' and 'horrible'. Working out that line needs discussion with all the admins, which unfortunately takes time.

Regardless of what the government says or does, transphobia is not and will never be allowed here.

[–] frazorth@feddit.uk 2 points 56 minutes ago

I would be fine if the instance took a blanket policy of

  • No racism
  • No sexism
  • No homophobia

As long as we could also flag to remove all those unconstructive comments where folks from Blahaj who come in and blanket slag off the population of the UK for the actions of a few.

None of the parties that got meaningful votes ran with any anti-trans policies, they were all very much pro, it's mostly come from a small group of American funded activists.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 3 points 2 hours ago

Those are community rules, and community rules are always subservient to instance rules.

[–] recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca 22 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Our rules still stand that we won't allow transphobia.

Unfortunately, as the ruling on the interpretation of the law has recently changed, we are going to have to figure out how we approach this and that is going to require a consensus amongst the Admins, and an agreement on our wording going forward.

I don't get it. Why the self-contradiction?
No matter how many times I read this I still don't understand what's happening on your end.

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I think they are trying to work out how to do so within legal confines. A legal battle can be costly for someone without millions and billions. Ultimately, these governments will not succeed with backward-facing tactics. Hold trust in the ultimate goodness of the larger population. This is just extinction burst of dying ideations.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

What law is that? Did the UK just enshrine some sort of right to be transphobic or something?

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 hours ago

Kinda, yeah.

It's about the recent ruling that defines who is and isn't a woman legally.

While it doesn't seem like something that should impact a lemmy instance choosing to protect trans people via moderation of hate speech in disguise (That's what a dogwhistle is in this context), I think that the admins are saying they're taking an overabundance of caution until they've had a chance to figure out how the change does effect the instance.

On the surface, what it means is that trans women aren't covered by equality laws for women, they would need their own, separate laws to cover them. So it does enshrine a lack of protection under the law, up to a point.

Now, I'm not sure what kind of legal liability the admins are worried about, because uk laws are not exactly something I'm generally aware of. There may be laws there that allow legal action against a forum for censorship for all I know, and if trans women are no longer "protected", then removing such comments might open them up for lawsuits. But that's just a hypothetical, because afaik, that isn't something that's actionable there, and nobody from feddit.uk has said that's what they're worried about, it's just an off-the-cuff hypothetical

Which is emperor or the other since pass admins run across this, it might help cool down the drama if you do specify what kind of legal issues are the concern

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 2 points 6 hours ago

You'd have to ask admin. https://feddit.uk/comment/16920756

Unfortunately, as the ruling on the interpretation of the law has recently changed, we are going to have to figure out how we approach this and that is going to require a consensus amongst the Admins, and an agreement on our wording going forward.

This is going to take a bit for us to work out (although not too long, we're getting there, I have been active on Lemmy but I don't call the shots, and we need input from all Admins) and if, in the meantime, LBZ feel we aren't moving fast enough and they need to defederate from us then that is obviously their right.

[–] Umbrias@beehaw.org 26 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

i am not familiar with uk law so why exactly would an incorrect ruling by uk courts change moderator and admin rules on your lemmy instance? why is it even relevant?

[–] ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I'm not from the UK and had to look this up. I'm thinking it's this ruling from the UK Supreme Court.

The Equality Act of 2010 outlines protections against discrimination based on sex. The Scottish government made a ruling that hiring a transwoman counted as hiring a woman for the purposes of government boards requiring a certain number of members be women. It was challenged and the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Equality Act defines sex as biological sex at birth and cannot be changed. Therefore, hiring a transwoman does not count as hiring a woman, but hiring a man.

I have no idea why this ruling would mean a Lemmy admin can't remove transphobic comments. The US Supreme Court has ruled many times that saying slurs is protected speech but that doesn't mean websites can't moderate it.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 9 points 7 hours ago

So, are you actively discussing how to handle that? Werr you at the time that there were no replies to Ads? Or is that something that is now happening as there is a spotlight?

I don't see how the legal definition of a woman in UK courts for the purpose of female only spaces would have an effect on how you seal with transphobia. Even in a UK defined 'female' only space, transphobia can still be moderated in real life, never mind online. It's just simple courtesy and respect.

Did you reply to Ada's continued messages or ignore them as they state? You say that Ada's account mischaracterises what happened, yet offer no proof or specifics, while knowing Ada can't see this.

Your post seems mostly reasonable but doesn't address the reasons for defederarion, really, in my view.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 8 hours ago

Alright, this comments already provides additional context, hopefully you all can figure out a way to handle this soon that will satisfy Blahaj's admin teams and users.

FYI @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone