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.
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.
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..."
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.
Yeah. The problem is, they report people for using they/them. And it’s successful.
Yes, because it's still misgendering. If we allow ourselves to misgender someone because they're an asshole, then what the hell makes us better than open transphobes? Please explain to me how misgendering drag is different from misgendering my good friend using neopronouns who isn't a troll? How can you misgender drag, just to turn around and tell me that you respect me? If drag can somehow lose the respect to be gendered properly, what does that mean for me? At what point am I considered too much of an asshole to be given the basic human courtesy of having my pronouns respected?
I'll admit, the neopronoun thing in general is where I stop taking someone seriously.
Gender neutral pronouns are fine, and I fully support using them, but deciding words that have been used to refer to a person, or group, of non specific gender for generations are now offensive is very presumptuous.
Even if it's done in good faith, you're trying to change language by command, and that's just not how that works.
I don't get them either, but that's the important part, just because you don't understand them doesn't mean it gives you a free pass to ignore/invalidate them.
I myself consider it/it's pronouns to be extremely weird, but does that mean I misgender the people who use them? No, obviously not, because that is rude.
Even if it's silly, using neopronouns is much less of a hassle than people think it is. Drag's are extremely simple at that too.
But they are making a mockery of pronouns for the purpose of trolling. And I have no intention to support that.
Is drag doing that? Or are you just trying to find a flimsy excuse to misgender someone? Because you still have yet to tell me why specifically Drag deserves to get drag's pronouns disrespected. And being an asshole should not be a reason as stated before
https://feddit.org/post/7025680/4264325
I definitely think so, and they're incredibly good at it, too. The mods and admins are well and truly dancing to their tune.
I am going to be honest here, I have no idea how to explain to you that using the same tactics as transphobes just because of an annoying user is wrong. You're clearly not interested in understanding, and from what I can tell are just looking for an excuse to be an asshole transphobe yourself
Drag is playing you like a fiddle, and you're too busy fighting to see it.
At this point, I'm just going to stand back and watch, I've tried to help.
THANK FUCK
Transphobia like you apparently enjoy spreading is the last thing we need, so thank you for removing yourself from the situation, much appreciated
Go ahead and check my comment history and see if there’s a trend in misgendering. If I were so vigorously against trans folk, I’d probably be far more vocal about it than just addressing this particular individual. Seems you’re looking for an excuse to paint me as transphobe.
My problem is with trolls and trolls alone.
And this particular one has embedded themselves within a very protected category of people for this reason and this reason alone- the absolute shit show it causes.
I could spend all day listing their offenses, but maybe you should do the work yourself and check their modlog.
They have suggested people commit suicide.
Sorry that trans people aren't "UWU soft beans~" all the time or whatever, you don't just get a free pass to insult people when they're being assholes
Which got drag a deserved ban.
Drag getting misgendered doesn't have anything to do with that. Drag can be a troll, get banned and correctly gendered. Both things can be true at the same time.
This is exactly what they want. So I’m not going to give them more of it. I’m done arguing about that troll.
Take any other Internet discussion rule, like doxing for instance. Are you also trying to dox trolls because they are trolls?
Seems counterproductive to assess everyone's behavior and then misgender them based on that. Just correctly gender everyone and call it a day.
I’ll always correctly gender genuine people. Not trolls that make a mockery of transgenderism.
Are there actually people other than the dragon using neopronouns on this site? I thought it was just one person with a bunch of alts.
I've seen a few using "fae"
Yeah, a few. Some use more out there ones too. Not my place to judge though obviously
It’s not misgendering when they’re a troll. I have no problem with transgender folk whatsoever, and my record (comment history) will show that. I have a problem with trolls. And I believe “drag” is cis, trolling as gender diverse- for the purpose to mock people in plain sight.
And it’s for the purpose of conversations like this.
you are the problem. right here. people like you who feel like they have to be guerilla saviors in trans spaces and throw around judgement and abuse without a single thought as to how much damage you are causing by doing exactly what the trolls want. you are the problem.
DOWNVOTE. REPORT. BLOCK. how many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man????
The whole thing is wild
Pronouns and trolling don't have anything to do with each other.
Implying that people "deserve" their pronouns and that they can lose them when they misbehave is exactly what trans people want to avoid.
A detailed post on the topic: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20091173
If someone is using pronouns to troll? Yeah. They absolutely do have something to do with one another.
Once again asking you at what point someone deserves to be misgendered? If it's because of troll behavior? Congratulations, you are literally telling me basic human decency depends on if someone perceives me as a troll or not.
I'd just like to say it's not for you to arbitrarily decide how language works. There is already an accepted standard for referring to someone who doesn't fit the gender binary, and any reasonable person would consider referring to someone as "they" to be perfectly acceptable.
As I said in my other comment, I'm just going to watch the drama from now on, I suspect there will be a lot of it.
It's mostly over to be honest: https://lemm.ee/post/53201859
Lol, lmao. In German we don't have they/them so xir/xer, no pronouns or neopronouns get used. Xir/xer are neopronouns too btw. Your argument is based on your own made up reality. Neopronouns are real and accepted. Maybe even in your own made up language some day
Are we speaking German right now?
Oh. You think I actually believe they’re non-binary. There’s the problem. See, I think they’re just making fun of pronouns.
Treading you with basic human decency depends on whether or not you’re capable of it yourself.
Everything you say just goes back to "Drag doesn't deserve to have drag's pronouns respected". You have yet to define what it takes to have their pronouns respected by you, always just quoting some incredibly vague troll or asshole reason.
How long is it going to take until you understand that your insistence on misgendering someone is only making you out to be a hypocrite and a transphobe at best.
By all means, tell me, do you respect my existence as an agender person because the only thing I'm seeing here is you telling me there's some vague definition of valid trans-ness that I have no idea if I've managed to reach, or am even capable of reaching. And that alone should tell you enough about your behavior.
There is no winning with you, only a vague attempt at justifying transphobia, and considering you have yet to ever reply to Blaze, who's also giving you very valid reasons, tells me a lot.
It’s not transphobia when I don’t believe they’re trans. They’re a troll.