comrades, the Protracted People’s War against the liberal hive and haven for bigoted chasers that is lemmy.blahaj.zone has succeeded! blahaj has fallen! or at least fallen off.
really tho, i just checked in on their site to see how its been since defederating. that was only 3 days ago btw! it feels like its been a week lol. their daily user count has fallen by over 1/6th since defed. and while this could be attributed to less traffic during the work week, the posting situation there is abysmal. in the past 24 hours, 78% of the posts came from c/196, making it difficult to tell that their instance is a dedicated queer space. and while they have gained ~30 users since defederation, we have gained over 200! its pretty much just 196 at this point.
while its sad to see a queer space fail, i suspect its for the best. i hope all the anti-capitalists there find their way here, as many already have. especially the trans folk there, its genuinely sad that they feel like they have to accept chasers in their space in order to have a community that accepts them. that is the difference between liberal tolerance and socialist liberation— tolerance allows for objectification and marginalization, while liberation demands dignity and equality. may all the blahaj gender diverse who oppose capitalism find their way to c/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns!!!!
stuff like this are the best “dunks” the 196 reactionaries can manage:
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/2042262
this meme is weak and displays their ignorance. you cant have a conversation with ppl like the OP. they will just bombard you with thought-terminating cliches. gulag gulag! Uyghurs! hologramodor! no food! purges! NKVD KGB Stasi! free Tibet so they can have their wholesome slaves again! Taiwan is a legitimate state!
countless hexbears would be willing and even enthusiastic to have a good faith, respectful, nuanced discussion about these topics with them. but they dont want that. they want to roll in their own shit like a pig with massive balls. the good ones will find us, or other socialist spaces. but for such a small instance, there are too many scratched and soon-to-be scratched liberals for us to do any good with federation.
This is genuinely not what I want to see and I have no idea why Ada is being so stubborn about 196. They are turning their queer space into a chaser meme space, and eliminating all the potential it had.
On the offchance that you're reading this, it's really not too late to fix this Ada you just need to bin off that problematic mod and people here would genuinely make the effort to turn the situation around. People want you to make the right decision and will instantly turn around their opinion if it occurs, you are correct that cooperation is better for both spaces, shit like this is so easily resolved.
Why would ada be reading posts on here. Hexbear defederated from them not the reverse. She thinks scolding the shitty 196 mod a bit is adequate, you don't (I don't either which is why I moved over). In this situation we're going to stay defederated.
Because someone might show it to her I dunno, when your name is dropped somewhere people tend to be like "hey they're talking about you [here]" in chat groups etc. That's why it's an off-chance.
also being a trans friendly space sort of left for the wolves as it were, I can see why there's still worry among some of us.
isn't 196 the bulk of the site? this is pure speculation, but maybe Ada is afraid to rock the boat?
Idk why you would ever allow r/196 to move to your instance. I had to unsub from that place like a year before I even moved to Lemmy. I'm not trans so maybe my perspective is a bit skewed but that place always seemed to fetishize trans people so much, especially mtf. Also the users there seemed very keen on pushing one specific way to be trans as valid. When anyone in the comments would complain about any of this they would be downvoted to hell. I'm of the mind that even if you don't think you're doing anything objectively wrong if people complain that it's hurtful you should try to be accommodating, especially in a trans place/community. I genuinely don't understand why you would allow that kind of community to migrate to your instance if you have a goal of building a safe space for queer people.
On a different note I specifically avoided blahaj when trying to find an instance to settle on cause I saw 196 was there, so I guess I dodged a bullet.
It's telling and damning when even cis users can clearly recognize typical chaser behavior like the fixation on pushing and enforcing certain ideals of transness (that line up with the average chaser's fetishism) as the only valid ones. I'm trans myself and date other trans people exclusively and a core part of making that work is understanding that trans bodies do not and can never fit one singular mold, are usually subject to change, sometimes massively so, and that the only responsible way to treat a trans lover is unwavering support and understanding along that entire process.
oh lord if even cis people can see it, Ada has no excuses.
I think she just hadn't had any exposure to it.
It wouldn't rock the boat though, the vast majority of the users clearly see this mod as being at the center of all these problems. They'd just be gone and it'd be a non-issue among users. The issue here is a complete reluctance to take a decisive and much needed action, worse is that taking no action other than "stern talking to" for this establishes that as the only thing that will ever be done for when it occurs in future. How many stern talkings to until an action? The talking to occurred to avoid taking an action and will occur every other time too because they want to avoid any action. This precedent sets the standard of moderation behaviour, it sets the bar incredibly low and that is where it will permanently remain if a good precedent is not set now.
This is the harsh lesson we learned before TC69 thought was implemented.
What is that? Sorry I'm new and clueless
TransComrade69 was a prominent user and mod in the first year of Hexbear, and along with the other mods and admins took our already hardening mod policy (you may occasionally hear reference to sudden ban without warning as "Rebro thought", after a hardline mod that, themselves, got banned) to new heights by not just instabanning anyone who posted anything that might be construed as transphobia (or indeed any LGBT-phobic post) but anyone who upvoted such a comment, even by accident. Several users and mods fell foul of this and were banned.
They then bullied the entire regular userbase to read Trans Liberation Theory under threat of being considered insufficiently revolutionary. After awhile they left to touch grass and do proper organising as they realised that Hexbear is limited to Agitprop at best and shitposting at worst.
Their actions are widely regarded as good and cool and an example to be emulated. Hence, TC69 thought, copying Maoist rhetoric (Mao Zedong Thought, Xi Jingping Thought, etc). Hexbear has been a Trans-friendly space since.
TransComrade69 was a mod back in the day. She took a strong (0 tolerance) approach to moderating when it came to transphobia, including banning every individual who upvoted a transphobic comment and instituting a Leslie Feinberg reading group. Absolutely based behavior
Have you read The Good Book
I actually enjoyed this book, though i read it in audio form, it's illustrative of not only Leslie's personal political motives, but covers the people who found themselves prominent in the Stonewall Riot and connect their struggles with housing as Queer Marxists to the main body of theory. Even as someone queer and marxist myself, i couldn't help but have my own "OH OF COURSE!" moment reading it. Embedding yourself into the moment of their struggles helps you understand you share the same, allowing us to connect together in a way more meaningful and deeper way, after all An Injury to One Is an Injury to All.
that's my read from the start, either Ada doesnt want to seem to heavy handed or whatever, or genuinely doesnt have the experience to weather potential backlash.
Unfortunately, this is correct. Allowing the r/196 lifeboat in basically doomed her community.
it's her site. She had final word on these things. If you dont want a user revolt out of it you should've had a better moderation culture to begin with. You should also have an admin team larger than yourself and your partner if you onboard such an active subreddit. Maybe x3 as big considering the indecision the current team has.
no more half measures walter
It seems like the main purpose of the site might be 196, or if it wasn't before it has been co-opted into becoming that.
At the beginning Ada had no idea about 196, it was just supposed to be a queer-focused Lemmy instance. After 196 moved there during the blackout it lost all chance of being that due to the "culture" of 196 also coming with it.
Ah yeah that makes sense and lines up with everything I've seen and heard so far. I imagine maintaining the culture of an online space is extremely difficult.
never forget, our culture here has been forged in blood. how many mods and admins have left or at least stepped back from contributing publicly? we even have a tagline from (i think) TC69 that's something to the effect of "YOU SHOULD NOT MODERATE AN ONLINE SPACE UNLESS YOU CAN AFFORD TO DROWN YOURSELF IN BOOZE AND WEED"
i don't doubt it's too much for a single person to keep in line. the thing is, ada could have found people willing to help her moderate. i bet you at least some of the trans people here who were pulling for federation with blahaj to work out would have been happy to pitch in.
Iirc, the tagline is actually that you shouldn't mod an online space if you're not old enough to drown yourself in weed and booze, and it was from someone who got mad at @WhyEssEff@hexbear.net for some reason. Pretty sure they got banned
this is the origin. I was either 17/18 at the time, so
she wasn't angry at her personally
i'm familiar with the poster in question lol
yall are dramatic, we didnt kill and eat the admins.... last i checked
You have it all wrong. When someone quits being an admin, the others devour them and absorb their strength