This was originally posted as a comment response in !asklemmy@lemmy.world.
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. While the 196 moderators, including @moss and their team, did agree with the specific neopronouns policy, they remained unhappy with the broader policy of respect for trans identities. They cited “personal differences” and expressed discontent with instances where Blahaj admins directly removed comments which harassed or openly expressed intent to harass trans identities, feeling that it overstepped their role.*
Yesterday, @moss and the 196 moderation team enacted a major decision without consulting the community. They locked !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone and instructed users to move to !196@lemmy.world.
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: !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone. 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.
*This paragraph has been edited after receiving correction or clarification from @A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world. You can find that discussion here.
**”Remain” being the key word here. Blahaj has openly held the same trans-focused policies as always, and the admin Ada was simply reasserting her position here.
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Drag must be so proud of the wreckage they’ve caused.
I strongly suspect that there are people who specialize in creating massive food fights on Lemmy between groups of opposing people. To what end, I have no idea. It could honestly just be entertainment. It seems like the formula is to pick some tribal affiliation which has a tendency to be defensive towards its members (vegans and trans advocates being two good examples), and then set up a big dramatic conflict where typical common sense is on one side, and the officially accepted “correct” decision, for that tribal grouping, is on the other.
I am sure it happens accidentally sometimes also, but most issues that blow up into big debacles fit precisely into that framework, and it happens much more regularly along those tribal lines than just along normal shit-happens-on-the-internet lines. And the involved parties are generally these sort of comical Batman-villain personalities. It’s rarely just a guy from Minnesota who posts on Lemmy and likes fishing, who also has been posting Pokemon scams, or something random like that.
On Reddit this shit happened periodically, but it was a normal variety of stuff. Unidan, clearly corporate-sponsored posts, admins editing people’s posts, it was just a variety. On Lemmy the thing that’s going wrong is almost always along those preexisting group fault lines. The drama surrounding MBFC bot is the only thing I can think of offhand that didn’t fit that template.
Just another of my ludicrous conspiracy theories.
I’d say it skews towards plausible. There are definitely those types of people here.
At the risk of sounding rudely dismissive (I don’t mean to be), what you are describing absolutely is real and it has been named trolling. :) 100% of these behaviors have been witnessed by people since the dawn of the internet.
While moderation helps, the proven best way to deal with trolls is to treat them like a spam email. Block, report, and delete. If you engage, respond, repost or create meta discussion about the trolling user, they win. Unfortunately, a lot of these lessons we got from Reddit have been utterly forgotten and now we have mythologized a user who did harrasment and suicide encouragement. :(
Yeah, makes sense. I think a big part of the problem, too, is that a lot of Lemmy admins are short-on-time volunteers who can’t really spend time or energy even if they wanted to on the finicky task of detecting and removing the trolls, which means they simply get to run amuck. I think sometimes I create meta discussion with the aim that people become more aware of it, but you may be right that it’s better just to block and then not have to worry about them.
I was alarmed about the idea of doing that for political trolls, because I’d rather be around to see what they’re saying and engage with them for the most part, but now that there’s not much to lose politically I may start doing exactly that.
100%
Blocking is generally the last resort and I totally get how you might want to leave folks unblocked to “keep an eye out”—cuz me too. :P
I just like to bring blocking up frequently because some people with thinner temperament can’t resist leaving a trollish comment alone.
This mess is not causally related to Drag. The mods themselves make a point that Drag did not cause the issue. So while there is an element of embroilment, it’s not appropriate to lay blame on a single bad actor.
In the end, it’s really you which is carrying forward past drama and enabling a troll’s agenda of people not being able to stop feeding the same tired points.
With all due respect, drag is pretty much at the center of this mess. Intentionally or unintentionally. Read through the comments here where it’s explained in detail how they’re involved.
“At the center” is a fair way to put it. I will ammend my statement to be “None of this was caused by Drag.”
I just know how trolls and generally mean people work. Saying their name gives them the power they want. Don’t do it.
Good point.
However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy.
None of us disagreed with this policy, and Drag was not banned over neopronouns. Drag was banned for an egregious level of harassment of another user + encouraging violence from and the suicide of trans people.
If y’all think that’s acceptable behavior, that’s fine, but keep it the fuck away from us. Half of the mod team is trans, and we don’t need that shit in our lives.
I don’t see drag mentioned in the explanation post on the community this is about; what’s the connection to the situation the OP is about?
However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy.
Not a single mod disagreed with this policy. While I’m sure it wasn’t her intention, Ada’s post certainly made it seem like it, though. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve had to tell people why Drag was banned after she posted it.
can you rephrase your point i think i and others are misunderstanding it bigtime like i personally can’t tell who you are responding to~
I’m not sure what you’re confused about, honestly.
People harassed Drag and that wasn’t okay, but during the backlash you mentioned in your post, many people pointed out that Drag had a legitimate history of “trolling”, the most egregious of which was telling someone repeatedly to kill themselves, along with general calls for violence from and the suicide of trans people. We banned Drag for this.
So when Ada made her post, it looked like she was calling us out for labeling Drag a troll, and indeed that is the narrative a lot of you ran with.
So now that you’ve had a hand in perpetuating this misunderstanding, I’d appreciate it if you set the record straight. Because frankly, I’m sick of people like you labeling me and the other mods as bigots. I’m sick of you guys putting words in our mouths. If you’re going to make a “writeup” about us, then tell them the real reason we wanted to leave LBZ.
?
So I actually agree with everything you wrote here except that “that is the narrative a lot of you ran with.” I didn’t. And I told off everyone who did. I appreciated you banning Drag for the user’s disgusting behavior. You did the right thing. Ada was calling out commenters who were using harassment and misgendering to combat trolls. Most that were mad were upset at Ada. Few to none interpereted that as a diss on you. Certainly not me.
You are getting pretty acerbic about this already so if you do respond please be chill. But I would encourage you to engage with the concept that this wasn’t even about you until you made it that way by locking the community.
In general, this is showing me that you just really never even had a finger on the pulse of your own former community, so I think this has all been for the best.
Op, I have no skin in this but can’t you see that the post you have made contains the narrative you are being told is false?
i made an edit to the language of my post that might have been misleading a small minority, including you and AVBF. feel free to check it out and let me know if it makes more sense.
You literally just told everybody that the mods disagreed with the neopronouns policy that Ada created over the Drag drama. None of us did, and it had nothing to do with why we wanted to move.
I understand that you don’t want to feel like you’re in the wrong, but you are. You are putting words in our mouths and we’re being labeled bigots because of it.
Hey I just wanted to say I empathize with how stressful this situation must be for all of you & i can see that you all had good intentions at heart when doing this. Everybody makes mistakes & I feel bad about how much venom you guys have gotten. Yes the community should have been consulted, but also you’re just people and no one is perfect.
I hope you all are staying healthy & aren’t letting this get to you too much 💜
I see now that you’re making a distinction between the neopronoun policy and the broader principle that trans people are to be treated with dignity in their identity. I apologize for not recognizing this distinction earlier, and I’ll work to communicate more clearly within those terms. (edit: And I have now applied these corrections to the original post.)
the neopronouns policy that Ada created over the Drag drama
This isn’t accurate. Ada has always moderated in this way. The increase in users has amplified challenges, both from trolls and well-meaning participants, and in her “neopronouns aren’t trolling” she reaffirmed her long-standing position in response to these specific issues. While I’m glad to see you agree with the policy, it’s worth noting that this moderation style is not new.
Regarding Moss’ recent post: their specific example of disagreement isn’t about neopronouns but about the broader policy of respecting trans identities—a continuation of the same priorities Ada has upheld. To clarify your earlier reading of my post:
You literally just told everybody that the mods disagreed with the
neopronounspolicy of respect that Adacreated overreasserted in the context of the Drag drama.Again, I genuinely hope this helps. It looks like you are having a fairly significant misunderstanding of the goings-on in the community and instance. I want to thank @hazeebabee@slrpnk.net for their kind words. I have no ill will toward anyone here; I simply believe that addressing this now helps avoid larger misunderstandings down the line, as the community evaluates how leadership aligns with its values and needs.
Is there any particular reason you can’t just call them dragonfucker?
because dragon says… oh who’re we kidding?
he/she/ it doesn’t matter 🐲??? You just misgendered Drag, so I’m not sure what you’re on about.
(I mean, Drag did say “they” was acceptable at one point, but I’m still not sure what you’re on about)
Referring to someone by their chosen name isn’t misgendering someone.
just call them dragonfucker
And I still don’t know what you’re on about. Unless you didn’t understand that Drag is short for Dragonfucker
I give up.
For context, Drag’s neopronoun is person-independent and is expected to be used in lieu of I/you/they.
Drag is also a troll though, so take that however you will.
I see. Yeah, that’s not happening.
It’s quite amazing the hoops they’ve got the mods and admins jumping through to play along.
The whole thing has frog people website vibes.
This kind of thing needs to happen way more often.
Moderators don’t “own” the communities they host. They’re just taking responsibility for the space. I actually really wish that their effort was rewarded with more of recognition and less of headache, but the answer to that is certainly not to say that they are the “boss” of the users in that community, and the users need to do what they say.
It’s especially hilarious for 196 because they weren’t actually taking on the moderation responsibility. Ada was. So they just wanted to show up and be the boss without doing anything in particular to help anybody. I hope the new community finds blahaj-native moderators and they find some fulfillment in keeping the space healthy and organized.
Moderators don’t “own” the communities they host. They’re just taking responsibility for the space.
The problem is that, as encoded, moderators do “lease” the space from admins. There isn’t a system built into Lemmy where qualified users can demote moderators. Hell, the Lemmy devs implemented Reddit’s ranking based on time seniority.
The only difference between Reddit and Lemmy is that Lemmy admins aren’t held to the policy of relative non interference that Reddit holds itself to.
There isn’t a system built into Lemmy where qualified users can demote moderators.
As much as I agree that there is a very large degree of similarity between Lemmy and Reddit, there is though: community members can appeal to an admin, and there is also the “owner” level even above that, if not the same. You really wouldn’t even want to go above that, bc if someone pays for a machine then to some degree it really truly is “theirs”, unless you go down a few levels and do what the 196 members did: just flat walk out and go elsewhere:-).
Also, PieFed has some really interesting ideas for democratization of moderation where instead of the purely binary “remove” vs. “allow”, power is placed into the hands of individual community members to tweak the settings to get the kind of experience that they want. e.g. posts below a voting threshold can be automatically collapsed, or even hidden altogether, thus allowing the entirety of a community to make that decision for someone, if they want, or the user can not use that feature and preserve the ability to read the content - again, unlike a mod decision that must either preserve the content in its entirety or else remove it altogether, without capability to provide such nuances. Additionally, there are other factors such as labels that can be placed onto user accounts (“new user <2 weeks old”, “has >10x more downvotes than upvotes”, “posts but never comments or votes so looks like an unregistered bot account”, etc.), plus you can define your own emoji labels to help remind you not to engage or something.
I don’t know if or when we’ll ever see such on Lemmy, which was written by authoritarians for their own purposes, and we are merely allowed to use their software. If we want differently though, we’ll need to create it. As K/Mbin, PieFed, and Sublinks are doing!:-)
Yeah. It would be nice if features you discussed were able to be implemented on Lemmy. However, as you described it and I’ve been told outright by the devs, adding flexibility to how modding works is not in the plans.
Yup. Fortunately most of what I’ve said is already in PieFed. Notably, PieFed is lacking in some of the foundationals - like when a post is deleted the notification for it remains, and these kinds of things can be quite frustrating, plus the search feature is not good. However, while I would not recommend it to a brand new member of the Fediverse, I am using it as a daily driver myself, who knows how to fall back to Lemmy to compensate for its shortcomings. So there is hope for the Threadiverse, regardless of Lemmy on its own.:-)
I think the key phrase is “the consent of the governed.”
It makes perfect sense to let someone step up who wants to take charge of removing spam, keeping the article titles consistent, that kind of thing. It involves them “taking control” of the community to some extent, even overriding some individual people on some issues sometimes, but that’s fine. For as long as what they’re implementing is actually what the free people inhabiting the community are mostly in favor of, it’s fine.
Once the mods decide that they’re now the boss of the community, and the software system gives them controls they can use to override the consensus of the community because all those free people are now in “their” place, it’s a problem. Honestly, even the solution of everyone just wandering over to some new place instead is a little bit imperfect. To me it would be better if the people in the community had some more direct control over what’s going on with the moderation. But certainly, that’s a vital check on the ability of moderators to start running the place like a little kingdom.
I agree with the idea you provided, but that isn’t how moderation is implemented into the codebase.
Yeah. Slashdot had a wonderful system which randomly assigned the then-version of moderation duties in very small allotments, periodically, to users who had been around for a while and had popular content. So most of the moderation was done democratically by the users, but in a way that was highly resistant to people trying to game the system to abuse moderation powers.
The system was so different that it’s hard to compare or say how well it would work now, but I thought it was a really good idea.
As I recall, a lot of that was in up votes and down votes, with Slashdot only giving out a limited amount per person per day and capping the max at +/- 5.
I don’t think it would work for a Reddit clone. There would also need to be a way to provide a way to validate users who should vote on a sub, since you wouldn’t want someone to make a million accounts to drown out the rest of the users in a sub.
Slashdot had way more users and issues with attempted abuse than Lemmy does currently. It’s easy to forget, but it was a pretty big platform, they had to get their tech way in advance of the cup-and-string “functional I guess” moderation that Lemmy currently offers. I think that was the exact thinking behind limiting it to people who were creating content, and having the selection process be a little opaque, and having a lot of randomness and a small amount of power at a time.
I’m not talking about votes, there was something up beyond that. I honestly don’t even remember the details, but everyone had a certain number of votes per day, and then certain users would get randomly selected to get something like 3 moderation actions very occasionally. I don’t even remember the details, but I’m pretty sure it was a step above just being able to vote which everyone could do.
https://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml
The first round of moderation seems tied to up votes and down votes, you just needed to provide a reason why instead of just clicking a button.
The second round of moderation was tied to how people voted in the first round.
So, most of the public facing moderation activities were really focused on up voting and down voting, with some of the down voting triggering other mod action.
they are the “boss” of the users in that community
Mods surely act like it, that’s reddit modding culture at its core.
Back in my day when the forums were the backbone of online discussion modding was a janitorial job. Spammers, off topic, bad faith behavior got modded.
Reddit style modding is censorship of content and tone so that community is discussing topic with facts and tone that mod approves.
With that said most of fedi subs are modded properly but step into any higher traffic sub lime news and politics and then you are facing censorship.
Agreed!
Edit: Oh, I got so irritated that UM had replied that I didn’t even see he hadn’t replied to me, and got annoyed that I thought he was messaging me from a new account after me telling him I was blocking him.
Whatever. I’m blocking this new account, also. I suspect that the placement of his reply right where I will see it, on the topic of free speech, accidentally from a new account which I haven’t blocked, is not accidental. But I’ll let the moderators decide if that constitutes harassment or not.
Yeah. On Usenet, when spam first started becoming an issue, there were people who were arguing against deleting it, because they didn’t want to step into the territory of having someone standing over the community removing messages. They would rather have the spam than have someone doing that to other people’s content.
On the modern internet, that’s not the answer, as anyone who has tried to use an unmoderated forum will tell you. But obviously also, the answer is also not for the moderators to be the boss of the users, who have to obey them.
Maybe moderators should be referred to as caretakers in the fediverse… seems to fit the role much better.
Half caretakers half bouncers
This is a really good way to look at it.
Board of Trustees
Great write up, very clear! Fediverse for the win here 😎
For anyone thinking “it’s their community, they can do what they want with it. Start your own if you disagree”:
A lot of users (including myself) believe that a community fundamentally belongs to said community. It’s not so much “you need to ask for permission to do X” but more like “is this what the community itself wants?”
Of course, not everything can be solved by community consensus, but to me, a community is nothing without the members. And if the members want X, Y or Z, provided it’s within instance rules, moderators should help facilitate that.
I don’t remember who said it, but the “community members are not cattle that you can just move around” seemed fit
Precisely. Add to this that 196 has history that precedes both Lemmy and Blahaj zone. The 196 community is a group of humans with their own wills and values, irreverent to any mod or leader.
196 chose Blahaj and Ada. The mod team should have respected that.
They certainly don’t seem to see it that way, from this comment:
we aren’t stealing your community. the people who built and facilitated this community are the people who are migrating this community.
lmao sure enough
that comment was posted while !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone was still locked. it’s now unlocked.
at the time i think the mods hadn’t realized how deeply they stepped in it and thought it was simply a matter of misunderstanding that could be corrected. i think they are starting to catch up now.
These are some great points. To be honest, before reading this conversation I was in the group of: “it’s their community, they can do what they want with it. Start your own if you disagree”
After reading about all the 196 stuff, I’m definitely rethinking my views. Thank you!
“it’s their community, they can do what they want with it. Start your own if you disagree”
That is exactly what happened, to be fair. But nobody truly owns the community, it’s made of individuals who choose to gather there.
I go back and forth with my thoughts on this. I mean, if someone actually started the community, I sorta think it’s theirs. But if you just have a bunch of mods, and the original founder is gone, then I think it’s the community.
I have very small communities that I mod. And as of now, I am in charge of what goes there and what doesn’t because no one posts. If it grew, I’d still like to think I was in charge (under instance admin of course)
I mean are the posters of an instance in charge of the instance or is the admin who set it up?
A community is a collection of individuals, and nobody can own one. You can own and control the space where they gather, but the “community” fundamentally cannot be owned. Although it’s somewhat confusing when the term on Lemmy is community as well.
We saw something similar on Reddit, where bad moderation would empty out a sub, often almost overnight.
Viva la onehundredninetysix!
I’m new to the conversation, but may I ask what the number “196” means in this context? Does it signify something important to the transgender community?
A group of room-mates once created a subreddit called r/195, after the number of their apartment. The sub became too popular for the room-mates to moderate, and they closed it down. Then someone created r/196 as its successor.
Thank you!
Originally there were some guys living in a dorm somewhere in room 195. They started posting good quality shitposts on r*ddit on r/195. The subr*ddit started to grow, and they didn’t want to deal with moderating a lot of people so they closed the sub. Followers of the subr*ddit started r/196 as a response. Than the apicalipse happened, and at the time r/196 was at its peak it was recreated here as well by the r*ddit refugees.
So it’s a random room number plus one.
haha, awesome. Thanks!
https://lemmy.world/comment/14578021
The fact that it is a very pro-queer/trans space is something of a coincidence to its origin as far as I am aware.
I think I read a comment before that said it was a dorm room number of those that started the group back before lemmy. Not sure what platform it was originally on but it was also on Reddit
Thanks!
And now !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone seems to have been unlocked.
too bad there’s already a better one 😸😼
People now want the mods to step down. Mods disagree
Let them be kings of an empty castle, I say.
Why would mods think that they can decide where shit posters gonna do their art… Do they think they own the artisté?
Lemmy is eating itself. …… pure teen drama
disagree, i see no loss of value or community here. a mod team that doesn’t represent the will of its community was ousted. that’s the story.
i guess if “democracy” is pure teen drama to you, then sure.
It’s pretty teen drama, but mostly because the mods are acting like dramatic teenagers.
I was impressed with how seemlessly the switch to c/oneninetysix went, Lemmy’s still small enough that my feed was just suddenly full of the new sub instead of the old one
Everyone remembers how to switch from Reddit to here
Now if only Blahaj would use this opportunity to reconcile with hexbear. Probably won’t tho
Hexbear would have to completely change who they are before that would be worthwhile.
Second drama arc
Blahaj is a trans instance and its users probably don’t want to be told that Russia and China are great. That would be pretty invalidating to queer identities.
Hexbear is also a very trans instance, do their queer identities not count?
/c/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns@hexbear.net
Like???
Hexbear users are allowed to have loose boundaries around queerphobia directed at themselves, but they can’t expect every other queer person to be as comfortable supporting queerphobic governments.
So they should defederate from pro-US instances too, right? Certainly .world would have to go.
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