lemmy.blahaj.zone defederates feddit.uk

That post explicitly says it's not a place for debate or participation from users of other instances.

I'd like to respect that but I think events like this need debate and discussion because it helps to develop and evolve the culture of lemmy and the fediverse in general.

The post says:

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.

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224 comments

The comment thread started with a person explaining the importance of discussion in winning over allies and avoiding creating an echo chamber. You implied that their suggestion was making trans people less safe.
That does not follow, it isn't an attempt to address their point. It is a non sequitor.
It is simply changing the conversation topic by accusing the person of a harm in order to make them defend themself rather than addressing the topic at hand (i.e. Creating an echo chamber is bad, conversation is good).
You think a single insult buried in a logical argument disqualifies the whole thing.
You're not engaging in a conversation. A conversation requires a good faith effort to understand the other side. Using logical fallacies to discredit the other person is not something done in good faith. It isn't a single insult, it's the rhetorical tactics that you're using.
It's possible that you don't realize what you're doing. Maybe you grew up on social media where this kind of thing can appear acceptable (or, at least, gets upvotes because its outrageous behavior).
Or maybe you're a little older and wiser and know exactly what you're doing, but think that the ends justify the means. So you're just getting some good shots in on the other for your side and ignoring the human being on the other end.
Either way, it's toxic.
- Using logical fallacies to discredit the other person is not something done in good faith.
  I agree, and yet:
  Ah yes, the evergreen 'If you disagree, I'm going to imply that you're transphobic/against trans people' argument.
  Boiled down, what you're saying here is that I'm trying to tell someone they are wrong about something, and that it relates to transphobia.
  But you've framed it such that because it is about transphobia, I can't possibly have a point. Or that the mention of transphobia, is meant to guilt trip you into agreeing with something that doesn't hold water. But that's just an excuse to bring out an emotional retort, when there isn't a logical one.
  Paraphrasing what someone is saying until it feels like nothing but a personal attack, is not something you do in good faith. What you should be doing, is separating out any logic and emotion in what someone is telling you. Discarding or responding to one or the other, or both, as applicable. You got some hateful, purely emotional responses that you can and should dismiss, by mine wasn't one of them.
  Just because someone is trying to inform you of an issue in your behaviour or views, does not allow you to dismiss them out of hand. Unless you are perfect, there is a chance they have a point.
  Telling someone they engage in a behaviour, or hold an opinion, that is transphobic, is never pleasant. But that the person themselves doesn't intend to discriminate, does not make the argument itself evaporate. And that some are too militant to present even a shred of logic, doesn't mean none of the people who confront you on the same subject have a point.
  In fact, by engaging in this fallacy, you failed to follow another piece of your own advice.
  A conversation requires a good faith effort to understand the other side.
  You were so sure this part wasn't happening, you completely failed to start off doing it yourself.
- You implied that their suggestion was making trans people less safe.
  No I didn't. I said so. Because it IS so.
  And I didn't lead with that. I lead with explaining that we can have both safe places, AND discussion. That this isn't a zero sum game.
  Safe spaces are not a bad thing. Echo chambers are only echo chambers if the people inside them don't move in and out as needed. Which at least I do, do.
  Discussion is good, but it cannot be mandatory, as those who cannot, do not want to, or are not ready to engage in it, can be harmed by it.
  Stepping into the ring of rhetoric every day, is not good for you. Especially if you're forced to do so just to be granted validation on your basic right to exist. That there's a place to go in-between battles to recover, is a good thing.
  
  Safe spaces are not a bad thing. Echo chambers are only echo chambers if the people inside them don’t move in and out as needed. Which at least I do, do. Discussion is good, but it cannot be mandatory, as those who cannot, do not want to, or are not ready to engage in it, can be harmed by it.
  Yes, I agree.
  If a Blahj user can't move into an echo chamber (Blahj communities) and out of the echo chamber (the rest of the fediverse) then Blahj is, by this definition, an echo chamber. A single person choosing to remove the option from every Blahj user to leave the echo chamber would be bad.
  An example of such a behavior would be if the single person defederated another instance from Blahj, preventing the Blahj users from being able to choose to access the external discussion.
  A safe space would be, for example, a Blahj community on a Blahj server. This is a good thing, because it gives people the ability to access a safe space. It becomes a bad thing when that safe space is ran by people who want to isolate their users from the greater social media landscape 'for their protection'.
  Users can choose which communities they subscribe to. Blahj users could choose to avoid Feddit.uk or they could choose to read Feddit.uk. Now they can't.
  
  Have you heard about this one weird trick, called having more than one account?
  
  Just because there's a workaround doesn't make it not a problem.
  It's like the Right in the US saying 'Well if you don't want to be deported, you can just leave', while technically true... it doesn't mean that the administration is doing things which are morally defensible.
  
  People who benefit from having an account on blahaj, aren't going to use that same account to go "out in the world" to fight their fight.
  Especially because the worst among the kind of people they deal with, are the type to send death threats to their DMs. If another instance fails to moderate that, or any lesser type of attack, defederation is the only recourse.
  Blahaj is being run exactly the way it should be, to maintain its goals.
  That the admin reaches out to other admins and mods, is simply a courtesy, aimed to maintain as much federation as possible without compromising the mission.
  And before you suggest that blahaj should simply moderate the entire fediverse from their end, that is not actionable advice. Blahaj needs to maintain a moderation surface area that they can actually keep up with, and hence they have to rely on the instances they federate with to match their standards, where applicable.
  
  The kind of people you're talking about are not going to be affected by Blahj defederating feddit.uk. If a person is looking to commit harassment then they're going to make a new account and no amount of defederation will prevent this (unless Blahj, like Beehaw, goes private) because it is trivial to make an accounts on non-blocked instances.
  They don't need to moderate the entire fediverse, they only need to moderate their communities.
  In this situation, what is the goal here? What purpose is served, from the point of view of a Blahj users if another user, who isn't a Blahj user and isn't commenting in Blahj communities is banned from a non-Blahj instance? Users can already block instances, communities and individuals on their own. Users can already choose to only see local Blahj communities if they want to ensure that they're in a safe space and the Blahj admins have full control over the Blahj communities.
  The Blahj admin's opinion doesn't matter when the topic is a non-blahj user, in a non-blahj community. They're certainly free to block whoever they want, or not; and federate with who they want to or not.
  But, in the context of "Are they power tripping or not", choosing to defederate an instance simply because an admin brushed them off puts it squarely in the "power tripping" pile. It wasn't that feddit.uk was suddenly the source of a lot of transphobic attacks, or that they allow bigotry... it was that feddit.uk has different moderation practices then Blahj and refused to change them. It's petty and power tripping.
  
  I'm not going to continue paraphrasing things I've already said until you get it.
  You are under several misconceptions about what is good for the users of blahaj and the fediverse at large.
  Blahaj would absolutely go private given no other option, but for now they are able to work with most of the mods and admins of the fediverse, so they don't need to. They can have their cake, and eat at least some of it, too.
  For blahaj to ask other instances "hey, will you uphold this standard, if not, we don't have the bandwidth to be doing it for you on our end, so if you aren't, we need to know so we can make a decision on whether to federate" is not a fucking power trip.
  It's a completely reasonable moderation practice, and they aren't interested in letting things get out of hand before they cut a given line. What's wrong with that?
  
  You moderate a community, you have to know that if a user is being disruptive you don't need the admins of their instance in order to secure your community from their disruption.
  There is zero reason to involve the admin of another instance unless you need to handle things like networking or technical issues (like a spam attack coming from an instance).
  For blahaj to ask other instances “hey, will you uphold this standard, if not, we don’t have the bandwidth to be doing it for you on our end, so if you aren’t, we need to know so we can make a decision on whether to federate” is not a fucking power trip.
  Blahj moderators do not need to moderate non-Blahj instances. There is no bandwidth issue. The Blahj team only needs to moderate the Blahj community.
  The user in question wasn't posting in a Blahj community and so it doesn't affect Blahj users unless they choose to go into Feddit.uk communities.
  That's how the federated social media system works.
  A user can choose to never see anything but local communities. If a user chooses to visit non-Blahj communities then they read what is in that community, based on that community's rules. A user can block any disturbing user, community or instances. The user gets to choose these things for themselves.
  Users can moderate their feeds. Moderators can moderate their communities.
  None of this requires a server admin. Defederation is an admin function, not a moderation function.
  What the admin has done is to tell Blahj users that they can no longer read the communities that they've chosen to subscribe to and the communities on Feddit.uk are now deprived of their members (who choose to subscribe and participate) from the Blahj instance.
  It doesn't serve anybody's interests except for the instance administrator. The administrator who said that they did it because they asked another instance to ban a user and change their instance rules and the Feddit.uk admins refused. This is entirely an issue between administrators that one administrator has chosen to escalate.
  
  This one makes the least sense so far.
  Users can moderate their feeds.
  That, right there, is the issue.
  You don't seem to understand, that they shouldn't have to. Curate? Yes. Moderate? Absolutely not.
  Moderation is just like discussion. I quote your agreement with my earlier argument:
  Safe spaces are not a bad thing. Echo chambers are only echo chambers if the people inside them don’t move in and out as needed. Which at least I do, do. Discussion is good, but it cannot be mandatory, as those who cannot, do not want to, or are not ready to engage in it, can be harmed by it.
  Yes, I agree.
  Moderation is work done by the few to protect the many. If every one of us has to block every instance, user, or community, individually, that means we all get to see all of them. And thereby, be hurt by them.
  Such personal moderation cannot be mandatory, as those who cannot, do not want to, or are not ready to engage in it, can be harmed by it.
  None of this requires a server admin. Defederation is an admin function, not a moderation function.
  That is a personal preference. Defederation along with community purging, hiding, and user bans are all moderation tools. Which ones are used and how extensively, is something each admin and mod can decide for themselves. In the same way, each user can decide for themselves how they want them to be used, and choose an instance accordingly.
  That you, personally, want to make each such decision for yourself, is an exceedingly personal preference. One that any user on blahaj that shares it, is free to adhere to by signing up for an account on an instance that aligns with that preference.
  You are assuming the users of blahaj ALL share it with you, in a thread full of people telling you, they do not.
  You are literally trying to do the thing you are accusing blahaj of, applying a fediverse-wide standard that cannot be violated by anyone. In your case, it is that there are things admins should not decide over, for their users.
  What, exactly, is preventing instances who differ on the matter from co-existing?
  
  You don’t seem to understand, that they shouldn’t have to. Curate? Yes. Moderate? No.
  Yes, semantics.
  Users choose to Curate which communities they go into. They do this with full access to the rules of the community and the ability to instantly opt out of that community or instance should it become distasteful to them. Moderation of those communities is up to the owner of the community and is operated under the rules of the instance admins. Users choose to read and subscribe to these communities and if they're not happy with the moderation then they can choose to curate those communities out of their feed.
  What, exactly, is preventing instances who differ on the matter from co-existing?
  Administrators who defederate over differences in moderation choices rather than moderate their own communities and let their users choose what communities they want to see.

224 comments