This was originally posted as a comment response in [email protected].
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 [email protected] and instructed users to move to [email protected].
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: [email protected]. 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 @[email protected]. 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.
Drag must be so proud of the wreckage they’ve caused.
It’s honestly quite impressive, they’ve got the mods and admins jumping though all kinds of hoops and sounding like absolute fools to avoid misgendering this individual.
🫡
Right? And they can’t even keep their lie consistent. When pressed to admit that dragons historically have been gendered, they claim to be a “dragon rider” not a dragon, which implies that they are not a dragon, but human. But then they say they are not a man, woman, etc… which means, a different unknown species altogether?
Now add to that rhetoric fact that they sidestep and dodge any question that holds up a mirror to the idea that “drag” isn’t even a pronoun.
They just made some random shit up, and now they hide within the protections of trans rights, while making a complete mockery of it.
And now they’re claiming that all the accusations of trolling is causing them stress. While ignorantly sharing screenshots proving that they themselves are the ones that but into conversations that they could have just ignored.
Hands down the most successful trolling I’ve ever seen.
It is the eternal failure of systems. There has to be a system, because you can’t just have everyone doing whatever they feel. But the instant there’s a system, there will be holes in the system, and there will be someone saying “Well, obviously this person is just having fun making us all look stupid, but the rules say that we have to let them stay and ban people who call them the wrong thing…”
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.
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.
I’d say it skews towards plausible. There are definitely those types of people here.
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.
Just say dragonfucker, you sound like a fool doing the neopronoun thing.
They/them are genderless pronouns that can be applied to anyone, use them and stop feeding the troll.
Yeah. The problem is, they report people for using they/them. And it’s successful.