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Back in December, the instance hosting 196 (lemmy.blahaj.zone) announced that, as part of its mission as a trans-friendly space, harassment based on gender or neopronouns would remain prohibited—even if the user in question was suspected of being a troll. Users were asked to disengage, block, and report suspected trolling behavior rather than bring harassment into a community already vulnerable to that kind of bullying.
There was a small backlash to the policy from some users. This led to a number of “toe the line” posts that weren’t outright gender-based harassment but strongly signaled an intent to misgender or harass in the future. Blahaj admins promptly removed all offending comments during this wave of dissent.
Important to note: The majority of the Blahaj and 196 users supported the policy, upvoting and praising the admins for creating a safe space for trans individuals.
By January, the backlash had mostly subsided, and the trolls causing issues had moved on. However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy. They cited “personal differences” and felt Blahaj admins had overstepped by removing comments themselves rather than allowing 196 mods to address users who openly expressed intent to harass others.
Yesterday, @moss and the 196 moderation team enacted a major decision without consulting the community. They locked [email protected] and instructed users to move to [email protected].
This move was extremely unpopular. Many users strongly dislike lemmy.world for various reasons (a complicated topic better unpacked elsewhere). The announcement post was met with widespread backlash, and @moss eventually locked it. In response, a few users created a new community on Blahaj: [email protected]. The new community quickly grew in size and activity, with most users opting to stay on Blahaj rather than migrate to lemmy.world.
It’s clear @moss and the 196 moderators underestimated the community’s attachment to its home on Blahaj. By attempting to uproot the group without input, they alienated much of the community. As a result, most users have moved to the new Blahaj-hosted community, which has already become the more active space.
TL;DR:
@Moss and the 196 mod team tried to move the community to lemmy.world without consulting anyone. The decision was extremely unpopular, leading to backlash and the creation of a new Blahaj-hosted community that most users now prefer.
Fantastic write up. Reminds me of a post on Hobby Drama.
Oof. Rookie mistake. Even if people aren't against a move most people won't follow you to the new site simply because of laziness. It kills communities.
There really should be a life shattering reason to move a community to a new site.
Yup. Clearly, “the admin is going to generally protect trans identities on her instance” didn’t ring as “life shattering” to too many. 😸
Anyone who has spent time in LGBTQ spaces knows the blanket inclusivity policies empower trolls and kill communities.
It's better we move to .world befor the mods ruin blahaj too.
Hi! Have spent time in LGBTQ spaces; have never seen any such thing.
You have a disturbing modlog so I do hope you stay over there on .world. I sure won’t miss you.
Hi, this literally already happened on the 196 on reddit.
You also have a disturbing modlog if that's where you want to take this.
I don't care if you miss me troll.
This comment would probably make for a good crosspost to [email protected]
on it!
edit: https://lemmy.cafe/post/12094663 thanks again for the suggestion
Great write-up, thanks. I love a good shit-show. 🍿
Sounds to me like the OG mods could have said “we don’t like how the admin runs things here, we are leaving as mods and starting a new 196 on .world with hookers and blackjack, you guys do what you want here.”
Which everyone would think is fine, but that would mean they'd be mods of an empty community, and thus have no power, and that of course made them upset.
I genuinely would have had no problem with that, and I think most others would agree with me.
I guess they decided to forget the hookers ...... and the blackjack.
Ahh forget the whole thing
They stated pretty directly it wasn't about the Dragonfucker incident, nor did it involve policies on neopronouns. Drag wasn't even banned for anything to do with neopronouns.
I think the move to lemmy.world was a mistake, but I believe them when they say it has nothing to do with the neopronouns policy.
Yeah I think the above comment is inappropriately tying the issue to a topic they specifically said wasn't the motivation
It's the prevailing narrative though, so I guess it may as well be the truth.
"the misinformation is popular, despite those involved disregarding it. so I shall believe it."
?
That seems to be the gist of what is happening en masse, yes. Regardless of what the true events may be, this is how everyone is going to end up remembering it.
Their words are available on the topic and ada could easily refute them.
Exactly. But why would anyone who is justifiably upset and willing to believe whatever account of events is more convenient bother to dig for evidence to the contrary?
We already have this being created out of this very thread, in a community that is meant to chronicle the history of Lemmy, so "by the victors" and all. It's not the hill I'm willing to die on, at least.
I'll admit: I took your original comment to indicate enjoyed consumption and propagation of mis truth. Your comment here seems to be more of an acknowledgement of the danger of misinformation.
Now I don't know what to do lol
Oh sorry, I think my tone made my stance sound ambiguous, apologies for that! To clarify, I am against misinformation and I think it's unfortunate when it occurs, but I can say drama in a meme community ranks fairly low on my list of priority areas so I'm just letting the dust settle where it may.
When I finished grad school during the last Trump administration, the concept of "Post-Truth" was a major (pessimistic) part of the academic zeitgeist at the time, and I think given the current state of events I guess I find myself falling back on old cynicism like I used to back then.
Correct. Nevertheless the neopronouns incident was something of a catalyst; all the “differences” had to do with trans issues in some way, and it would be amiss of me not to point out the biggest moment that made 196 come out in support of Ada and Blahaj.
Their other “differences” are also bogus in my opinion.
Anyone who is angry they can't whip out queerphobia when they're annoyed at someone who uses neopronouns doesn't understand why it's not OK to say racist shit about Clarance Thomas, misogynistic shit about JK Rowling, or transphobic shit about Keffals.
Just a huge red flag that respecting other people's humanity is contingent on benefiting them.
Exactly. It's fine to attack their horrid personalities, terrible actions and all-round aweful nature, but we don't attack people based on things they can't control.
They chose to be fucking terrible, and we can attack that, it's really pretty simple, and easy too.
Thanks for the writeup ... there should be some kind of news service for stuff like this. Everyone notices weird changes on lemmy but not everyone is in tune to every detail, every personality, every major user or mod, every instance, every community and everything they're doing.
All I saw were the changes and activities but I had no clue who, what, where or why .... which meant you didn't know who supports what or for what reason.
[email protected]
I was watching that community over the past day or two and didn't see any news about any of this until now .... things were happening on Lemmy, lots of new posts from 196 everywhere and noise about a controversy there and no info for those who don't know until this post was made
fediverselore is good .... it's just a bit slow in the uptake
It usually waits for the dust to settle.
[email protected] might be more what you're looking for
I wonder if Blahaj admins will kick out all the mods who locked 196 and replace them with the mods who created oneninetysix.
No and no. Ada stated that she will not oust the mod team, and she is currently the mod of onehundredninetysix, though is trying to find someone else to take it over as she has no interest in being mod.
Nope. You might be unaware, but the .world community is not brand new and has been around for more than a year. So it already had plenty of subscribers and activity before this incident.
[email protected] is brand new and is already popping off. That is undeniably significant.
If you don’t see posts that’s a federation issue on your end. Try subscribing from your instance to help it along.
Deleted it since I found out I was putting out missinfo. The one on .world has more subscriber but the one on blahaj has more daily activity
yep, that is accurate and thx 4 taking accountability :3