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.
Defederation isn't the tool for this. It's a low level tool to prevent bad instances, like spam or illegal content, from infecting the rest of the network.
Admins and moderators already have the tools they need to moderate their communities. Instance members who want to stay inside the bubble of increased moderation also have that choice, if a Blahj user clicks 'Local' then they will only see communities that are completely under the control and moderation of their local admins. If a user, like the one in the OP, behaves badly then their ban will remove them.
It isn't the role of an instance admin to moderate all of federated social media. A user can block a community or instance on their own. They do not require an admin to do that for them.
Federation isn't a moderation tool.
You don't consider bigotry to be worthy of defederation?
Or is it that you don't consider dogwhistles a form of bigotry?
Because that's what Ada was coming to .uk admins about. And, it's what they say they're working on a decision about.
I would say it is absolutely the role of every admin to actively moderate bigotry, period. Now, while I definitely consider dogwhistles just as actionable as direct slurs and hate speech, I can't really expect everyone to agree, but that's what the issue is about, it isn't some random thing like discussing football rules. It goes right to the heat of a major social issue.
I would say that issues of bigotry are more important, and more admin attention worthy than spam, since spam is only going to hurt the instances in any realistic scenario. Dogwhistles hurt people, in the real world.
Like, if it's your opinion that that's not the case, that's whatever, but I hope you understand that it is an issue that is a "low level" problem to a lot of people.
For fuck sake, even assuming it was a bigotry or dog whistling (and admins clearly disagreed with Ada on that), it was ONE user. ONE. Defederating over this is 100% her right but remains a huge overreaction.
It was dog whistling. It's one so common it has its own Wikipedia page. It isn't some hidden secret that only a few people know.
And it isn't about one user. It's about whether or not an instance is going to either stand by its existing policy against bigotry, or is going to expand their awareness of such if they didn't previously know about a specific expression.
Now, as to whether or not is an over reaction, we obviously don't agree, and that's okay. You ain't gotta change your mind about that. Hell, you don't have to change your mind about anything. Tbh, I would have left it at that several comments ago, but I wasn't sure you knew about the general subject matter, so wanted to make sure you did, and leave a thread for others to run across and be able to take into account in the future when this inevitably comes up again.
At this point, if you're done and don't want to continue, no worries; I won't hassle you with anything else. If you're not, that's cool too; disagreements are a great opportunity to examine my own thoughts and beliefs, and you've been overall really great about not crossing any lines. I appreciate that btw :)
Well, the admins clearly disagreed. I didn't read the original exchange so I can't say - but they have right to make their own decision.
In their view they did.
It is about one user and one person throwing her toys out of the pram because she didn't have it her way
Tbh, it doesn't matter if an admin likes the fact or not. Doesn't matter if they agree or not.
A dogwhistle is a well defined thing. It's a word, phrase, or idea used to disguise intent by communication in code with the target audience while trying to bypass the unknowing.
The admins may decide to ignore the fact that dogwhistles exist, but it doesn't matter if they agree with the definition because it is a fact that they exist.
Since the specific dog whistle in question is absolutely, 100% in use by anti trans bigots, it also doesn't matter if the agree or not because it is an established fact. Disagreeing just means they're chosing to ignore facts.
Tbh, at this point, I'm beginning to suspect you aren't here in good faith. If you're running around denying verifiable facts, then that points right to an agenda, and one that's very much at the core of this issue.
Read my post again. In admins view this post did not break their rules. What you think is pretty much irrelevant.
According to one of the users, that was the post in question. While I would definitely not write post like this myself (after surgery and legal change there shouldn't be any distinction - why would there be any), I would make the same decision as the admins if I was in their shoes.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18228639
Yes, if someone disagrees with you they must "not arguing in good faith" 🙄
Can I ask you something? Are you a USian by any chance? As I increasingly find USians have some skewed, warped perception of reality making it pretty much impossible to have a meaningful discussion with them. That also explains how Trump was able to win the election.
This thread is going off topic. Please end it there.
You know, you keep saying the same thing over and over. You never respond to their point, or anyone else's, you just pound away at your pulpit.
That's not engaging in good faith, it's soapboxing