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.
I’m coming from a small brazillian instance and we’re also getting attacks on the brazillian trans community, on our case is the medical association, dictating that doctors couldn’t treat trans kids.
I asked my admin to support you and to de federate them until they change their policy, hope other instances join too.
Sounds like the right move. Thank you.
Thank you for taking real direct action on issues like this. It keeps our community safe.
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.
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.
Can you please link to specific offenses?
No. I won’t start a brigade against a specific user, even a transphobic one. And ultimately, the defederation is due to the feddit.uk admins approach to transphobia rather than the specifics of the posts.
just curious; did something happen recently because posts from the instance suddenly started appearing on my tl again? didn’t see any other post so i didn’t know if it was a bug or something :)
Yeah, they did a post up clarifying their stance
https://feddit.uk/post/29902751 / https://lemmyverse.link/feddit.uk/post/29902751
yay! ok just making sure :)
Truth be told, I didn’t want to kick off more drama by making a big announcement about it. I respect the stance they’ve taken and the work they’ve put in to it! So we’ve reconnected :)
trans women are not women
Wasn’t this a recent court ruling in the UK? Which isn’t great.
I don’t know all of the terminology, but the entire argument over it just seems so stupid, how does letting trans people exist bother you in any way?
I believe the court ruling was the legal meaning only. When a legal text says “female” it implies biological female (as sex, not gender) which is understandable. Same for medication notices etc…
I’ve not checked though but the main source of fight is whether we’re talking about sex or gender. There are two sides, the ones that assume “female”/“women” refer to sex by default and the ones that assume it refers to gender by default.
The legal meaning of the equalities act is the issue people have AFAIK
Yes, but the best thing is that it’s not, like they are claiming, law. It is merely an interpretation. It doesn’t stop us from doing anything we were doing previously though ultimately a lot of transphobes and business will inteprate it that way, sadly. Plus there is some whisperings of it meaning certain legal things but it isn’t that yet. The Equality Act needs to be updated anyway and if it was this would make the supreme court’s ruling null and void.
Even if it does mean new laws most of us will probably break them anyway as unjust laws are not worth paying any attention to.
For a positive perspective on it the equality act doesn’t stop you including more groups than it specifies. So society can advance without needing the government to keep up, as long as enough of society agrees that can allow putting pressure on businesses when they don’t keep up.
Good point! Thank you!
I think if you want your users to avoid stuff like this you shouldn’t put in a spotlight like you did here.
Thanks for your opinion, @knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de. Note that nobody asked, and Ada specifically stated in the post that this is not the place for you to chime in with your enlightened thoughts about our instance.
“enlightened”
You’re welcome
This is called transparency, not putting it in a spotlight. We don’t close our eyes from the world, we just don’t want to be confronted with hate and discrimination everywhere and have nobody do anything about it. So if drastic actions like this have to be taken to achieve this, it’s good to be informed about that.
Sentiment here seems to be appreciation for the actions taken, so why do you think you can speak for us on this behalf?
I spoke for myself, because i found something weird in the post, what makes you think i spoke for you?
I apologize for sounding so confrontative, but I didn’t think it was fair of you to judge Ada like this when you’re not affected by this.
You’re not a lbz user. The user you’re replying to is. This impacts her, not you.
Yes.
I want the community to have a choice. Federation lets people have that choice.
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.
Censorship lmao. I get where you’re coming from, but pulling a ostrich with your head in the sand is not a productive way to go about it.
Is it censorship for someone to kick you out of their house for being an asshole?
Hey sounds like you should use feddit.uk as your main and share your opinion there where it will be received.
Go fuck yourself as well. Kindly.
I’m only being a little snarky. Just because they’re defederated doesn’t mean you can’t go there if you agree with their opinions. Censorship would be “you’re under arrest”, not “I’m walking away”.
Looking at your account history it’s mostly just you raging and swearing at people. Take a look yourself.
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.
If Lemmy were a centralized platform, then sure. It is not, therefore no single instance can be reasonably accused of censorship. If you feel censored by your instance, then you’re free to make as many new accounts on other instances as you want and avoid the offending instance.
This isn’t censorship, this is a community of people deciding they don’t want to hear the same bullshit they hear everywhere else on the internet in their own home.
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.
ada continues to be the realest MVP
thanks ada uwu
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.
