Hey everyone. Some of you may have seen the recent announcement with blahaj to defederate with the instance. Ive been handling things privately and wanted to do an announcement to catch you all up on the results of that
#1: Background knowledge
Realized that not everyone knows how the instance is structured so figured I would do a little section in the front to go over that (especially for visitors reading this from other instances)
We currently have 8 admins in the instance. Of those 2 people are currently lead admins (snowe and I). Majority of admins are part of the community team but not all of them (people are split between infrastructure, development, and community). I was planning out a team page similar to what lemmy.world has to go over this with a bit more detail and that should be coming in the future. Main thing though is its intentionally structured so one person doesnt solely have power (hence the two leads). If one person ends up messing up theres the other lead and the rest of the admin team to talk with them about it and help them do better in the future.
#2: What happened?
There was a thread in lemmy.ml about the hogwarts legacy game winning a steam award. For reference for the following images + description, snowe is the other lead admin for the instance apart from me and the other people are various other users
There was a conversation that ended up essentially devolving into a slap fight within this post (ive purged the entire conversation so people dont stumble onto it in the future but ill post images here with them for archiving reasons and to explain it)
^ These comments were what initially started it. Essentially it was an argument about the hogwarts legacy game being or being not transphobic
^ Later in the argument
^ One branch that ended up getting started due to the frontend snowe uses on mobile not showing pronouns (how most instances handle it currently is its appended to the end of the display name but some frontends choose to ignore the display name and just do the username instead)
(edit: changed the word triggered to started to make it more clear what definition of triggered I used. Forgot that tends to not be common usage)
There are other branches but it is a very large amount to screenshot and dont want this to completely flood this post. Everything should be available in the modlogs still if you want to dig a bit deeper or I can send other screenshots in the replies on this post if youre interested in what was said for certain parts
#3 Aftermath
Due to the argument above blahaj chose to defederate with programming.dev which was going to take effect 48 hours after their announcement on it. (This is due to the person in the conversation being one of our lead admins which is ultimately understandable as they represent the instance)
snowe has sent a message apologizing to ada (the lead admin for blahaj). I dont know the contents of what was said but if they want the two of them can choose to publicize it.
One of our admins should not have escalated the situation and participated in this slap fight so on behalf of the admin team here were sorry about that
Internally we have a guidebook for admins to follow for the various aspects of the instance (moderation, applications, etc.). Ive refined this guidebook with a couple new rules for admins that should be taking effect in the future
- admins will be required to have two accounts, one for admin activities and one for non admin activities. This is how some admins have already been interacting in the fediverse and basically makes it so comments done on the non-admin account should not be taken as that admin speaking on behalf of the instance. Generally the admin account will be things done relating to admin duties (e.g. my posts here in meta) while the non-admin account is other various conversations. Admins can be as anonymous as they want with the non-admin account similar to how our users here can be as anonymous as they want with their accounts
- im adding in some guidelines for tone while chatting for the admins so comments made that are on behalf of the instance should be respectful and not devolve to slap fights
Like I said before in #2 ive also purged the entire conversation to avoid people stumbling onto it and seeing a slap fight with an admin that has since apologized. As the community exists on lemmy.ml I cant fully do this due to how federation works in lemmy but the mods in the community have been doing the same which should federate.
This should not have happened in the first place and we as an admin team will be better going forward
I hope the blahaj instance sees our actions and chooses to reverse the defederation decision but at the end of the day its their instance and they can choose whoever they want to federate with (note federation is done directionally. I will still leave our direction of federation open)
Edit: Blahaj stopped their defederation (shown in an edit on their announcement) so the two instances will still be federated both directions going forward
Another edit: its a work day, its midnight here, and some comments here are also devolving into slapfights. Ive locked the post since this has already taken up most of my free time to try to handle and moderate this. My dms are always open if you want to dm me regarding the situation
Instances getting de-federated over such trivial things is going to be the death of lemmy.
It's not just the trivial things themselves -- it's also the idea that admins will have to police their users for trivial missteps, under threat of defederation, so no one will want to run a server.
I honestly admire the transparency of the updates on the p.d meta community. Thanks for sharing the background, despite the situation not being ideal
That instance is quite liberal (heh) with its defederation so this isn't entirely unusual.
Tbh though this one makes more sense than the other instances they've defederated given that theirs is centered around trying to be trans-positive.
Even weirder how they defederated Hexbear then though; that conversation is with Hexbear users who they clearly agree with.
Even weirder how they defederated Hexbear then though; that conversation is with Hexbear users who they clearly agree with.
They are friendly to chasers and really heckin' mad about tankies, so they won't get along with HB even if both parties rightfully hate Rowling.
Nah they defeded us. IIRC it was over drama with chasers and vaushites in /c/196.
There were a bunch of defederations around that time, but I think blahaj was on their side. Granted, whoever did it it was a mutual feeling.
Did it? Blahaj doesn't seem to be in our blocked instances list
Hexbear uses a whitelist so they have to be on the allowed instances list.
No idea lol. As far as I know it's a default part of lemmy and the default defed is by blacklist.
From the screenshots, it looks like snowe wasn't being aggressive at all. And getting hate for using "they" is excessive. It's a shorter way of saying "that person". Blahaj (a blue shark from IKEA? I don't get it) shouldn't be this touchy about stuff. It's like a C programmer getting offended about being called a programmer.
it looks like snowe wasn't being aggressive at all
name-calling is universally considered to be aggressive. "ignorant troll" definitely counts
And getting hate for using "they" is excessive.
it is an extremely common transphobic tactic to de-gender people whose pronouns are easily visible as a plausibly deniable way of attacking them. considering all of us have our pronouns in our names on hexbear, we're going to assume that anyone 'they'ing us is doing it on purpose, which is an entirely reasonable assumption.
and all this argument started because this admin wanted to defend the latest shovelware trash game by the dev of Cars 3: Driven to Win, which is about putting down the revolt of the race of greedy hook-nosed bankers in a setting written by one of the world's most open and notorious transphobes
in short: nah this sucks and defederation from queer instances makes sense
Here's how your comment appears in Boost via programming.dev. No pronouns visible.
If you're going to participate outside your own instance, you have to accept that others don't see your instance's unique changes.
That much is fine. But a normal person would stop at that and apologize and move on, not double down on it by going "getting offended by that really isn't helping your case here."
An admin being like this is understandably a very bad look for the instance.
If you're going to participate using third-party apps that remove basic lemmy features, you have to accept that people will be confused by your ignorance of those features. Pronouns are not a "unique change" by Hexbear, here's what my comment looks like via programming.dev without a third party app
legitimately, yes, i do, to make sure i am gendering them correctly. especially if i had a client that didn't display pronouns.
most people don't. and I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to.
you don't think it's reasonable to expect people to check somebody's profile for literally less than 10 fucking seconds to make sure they aren't made really uncomfortable? really?
To everyone attempting to reply to the above comment in good faith, remember that the only way to productively engage with a hexbear is to not engage at all. Trying to do so is what started this whole kerfuffle in the first place.
Don't feed the trolls.
Edit: Note the bait below, and note how I'm not wasting my time engaging with it.
you're the one poisoning the well, how is that not troll-adjacent at best?
I’ll never get over the fact that the sheer reality of our existence has melted some people’s brains because they can’t prove us wrong about anything, we’re truly the spectre haunting online libs
If you want people to reply to you in good faith you have to engage in good faith. If you're going to make passive-aggressive comments like this, don't be surprised when we make fun of you for it.
Edit: Note the bait below, and note how I'm not wasting my time engaging with it.
Making smarmy little edits such as this is, in fact, engaging.
The IKEA shark is a mascot/icon for LGBTQ+ spawned from memes.
https://www.newsweek.com/how-ikea-shark-became-trans-icon-1753400
How do I always miss the drama on this instance? Moments like this make me realize I'm not as terminally online as I thought.
I think it would be reasonable to defederate from blahaj.zone. A majority of the toxic, negative, and aggressive comments I see on Lemmy seem to come from users of either blahaj or hexbear. The admin very intentionally curates a cult-like community by posting provocative posts and then banning everyone who expresses even slight disagreement. They have engaged in and doubled down on false accusations of CP against the lemmynsfw admins, which demonstrates that they are a risk for other instances be federated with. I normally very strongly oppose dedederation, but I think blahaj is a great example of when it makes sense. This is because the admin seems intent on starting drama rather than working with other instances to resolve conflict. It almost feels like some form of religious extremism lol
I of course block the instance from my account to avoid seeing posts from there, but toxic users are still visible on comments.
I generally agree they're very dramatic but defederation isn't necessary. If you'd like you can block it at a user level, there's no reason for bad blood between instances and users getting caught in the crossfire.
I'm glad everything worked out in the end. I hope snowe learned a couple of lessons from this. One about how to interact and respect the lived experiences of marginalized peoples, but also a lesson about not engaging with hexbear trolls in the first place.
respect marginalized people!
by calling them all trolls
dog come the fuck on, how do you get this close and then shit the bed so hard
I'm surprised mods and admins don't have the option to choose not to distinguish their posts and comments.
There is a distinguish option that adds a shield but its a bit redundant since it marks you with the flairs anyways
Only way to really get around it for now is the multiple accounts
