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.
@Emperor@feddit.uk and @flamingos@feddit.uk , would it be possible to address the transphobic posts/comments?
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.
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.
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.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.
What law is that? Did the UK just enshrine some sort of right to be transphobic or something?
Here’s our answer, from the article linked in this post: https://lemm.ee/post/62470957
This came after the UK supreme court sitting in London ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex. The action to determine this had been brought by For Women Scotland, a campaign group which brought a case against the Scottish government in which they argued that sex-based protections should only apply to those born female.
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?
While figuring out what degree of transphobic hate you’re going to permit, you’re permitting transphobic hate.
May as well wipe out Rule #1 if none of the admins will be enforcing it.
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?
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.
Those are community rules, and community rules are always subservient to instance rules.
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.
You are fabulous Ada, you are why I switched to this instance
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.
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.
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.
This is the exact justification I give for deporting all of the conservatives to Florida.
Does that include the British ones?
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
ignoring hate, is promoting hate; eff those Admins.
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IMO we need to allow discussion to happen between people who believe “adult human female” = Women and people who believe otherwise.
Else we just create echo chambers.
Ada always demonstrates such incredible skill as an admin it’s like she’s taken classes. It blows my mind consistently.
This is sarcasm right?
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.
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
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