Update: In light of the programming.dev update here https://programming.dev/post/8399272, the defederation is no longer going ahead.
However, something more needs to be said. Even here on Blahaj, some of our users took issue with the choice to defederate over this issue.
So I would like to give some background and context.
Blahaj Zone exists, because both Kaity and I left mainstream social media to escape transphobia. Reddit, with its lackluster approach to fighting transphobia, and twitter, with its outright celebration of transphobia pushed us here, to the fediverse, and to create Blahaj Zone and Blahaj Lemmy.
To that end, we will continue to treat transphobia seriously. Our goal is to create a space where gender diverse folk can exist and let our defenses down a little, where we don’t have to worry about getting dragged in to an argument with a transphobe, or a bad faith actor “just asking questions”.
If you are looking for a more reddit like experience, where in the interest of increased engagement, we let low level transphobia slide, and push responsibility for dealing with it on to community mods and individual users, then you will likely not be happy with blahaj going forward. If you choose to stay here, understand that we may defederate again in the future over similar issues.
The choice is yours.
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It has recently been brought to my attention that the lead admin of programming.dev is engaging in ongoing transphobia.
You can see the conversation in question here https://programming.dev/comment/6131539
For that reason we will be defederating from programming.dev in 48 hours.
There are only three communities on that instance used by small number of our users, so this won’t have a big impact, but if you are one of those users, you will need to use an alt account on another instance if you wish to access the communities.
I have been managing communities online and offline for decades. I am also a member of the minority group impacted by this issue.
You do not have the same lived experience or familiarity with the issue at hand
When I tell you that I’m acting in an informed and considered way, I hope you respect that.
I am also in talks with an admin from programming.dev to try and resolve this.
I appreciate that your comment was made in good will, but implying that I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m somehow failing to understand the topic at hand is not helping anything
So, I’m not the person you’re replying too, nor am I a member of this minority group, but I do consider myself an ally. I do not personally know how offensive what was said is so I won’t comment saying “it’s not that bad” or anything of the sort.
But this is a thing I’ve seen in leftest communities where we don’t know when to use the carrot vs when to use the stick. I’ll admit I’ve said things in hindsight I feel awful about. But I’ve corrected that behavior because my friends knowing my good intentions lead me to be a better person. Here and like other similar communites however instead of talking to people in good faith to try to correct their behavior instead choose to punish and ostrisize them.
I don’t know what your admin team’s chat with the programming.dev admin team looks like, but I hope it can be resolved. I’ll be very disapoinyed with my admins if it can’t and will leave in solidarity.