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.
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.
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.
You’re right and have shifted my perspective a bit.
I was thinking this seems a bit extreme, not because it’s an overreaction but because banning the user removes that problem while preserving more content from the rest of the instance. But the goal of the instance prioritizes the safe space nature over volume of content, and they’re not ambiguous about that. It’s not what I’d do myself, but that’s probably part of why it isn’t my instance.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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?