TL;DR: We tried to move the community because of moderatorial concerns, but fumbled how we went about doing so.
First and Foremost:
We'd like to formally apologize for springing this on you all out of nowhere, and for taking so long to respond to the backlash. With retrospect, we understand that we should have notified you all beforehand to create an opportunity to give us feedback. We understand that a lot of respect and trust was lost, and we expect it'll take a lot of work and a lot of time before we can earn it back, but we would be grateful if y’all gave us that chance.
What happened, and why?
The primary issue that incited this was because we don't fully agree with the admin's moderation policies. By and large they do a great job and align with us on mod actions, but there have been several cases where we strongly disagreed, and our choices were overruled.
For example, 2 months ago, Kolanaki reached out to us via email and said they were banned from 196 for “playing the victim” and asked us why we banned him, but we didn’t. Moss talked to them and realized that the ban was unjust after reviewing the comment he was banned for. If he had never contacted us, we wouldn't have known about the ban, and they would have still thought we banned them.
There were a few similar events in a short time frame, leading to a few posts/comments in the community about the heavier modding policies. It's possible some posts/comments were misunderstood by Ada, or she interpreted things differently than we would have, but it led to some bans that we felt were indeed heavy-handed, and would not violate our rules in even the most uncharitable of interpretations. We have found that this is an ongoing trend when it comes to moderation of our community from the Admins. We oppose this because it leads to many users who otherwise mean well ending up alienated and removed for reasons that are frankly completely unfair. This is, in our opinion, counter to what we set out to build in our community.
It was made clear to us that it was their instance, and that we didn’t have a say in who would be banned and what would be removed. This is, of course, perfectly valid. It’s their instance, therefore it's up to them to decide what goes, but we no longer wanted to be the ones seen as accountable for moderation actions we have no control over. For this reason, we wanted to transfer out of lemmy.blahaj.zone. As much as we wanted to stay in the LGBTQ instance, we couldn't come to an agreement with Ada, so we talked to her about transferring out and got her blessing.
How we messed up
The most major failing on our part is, of course, that we didn’t announce the migration beforehand. Besides that, we also didn’t explain why we made the choices we made and only gave very vague answers. We avoided sharing the justification for our actions because we didn’t want to cause drama and/or exacerbate the situation, but this lack of substantiating our actions only caused the situation to worsen.
Going forward (if we may), we won't make the same mistakes again. From now on, we will attempt to be as transparent as possible.
FAQ
Why we chose lemmy.world
Many people have been asking about why we moved to lemmy.world. It already hosts the majority of large communities and besides this uncomfortable level of centralization, it has also been somewhat controversial as of late. Despite that, we still chose lemmy.world due to the following reasons:
- Moss's communication with the admins, and their agreement to let us moderate the community as we see fit. Ruud, after looking over our rules, agreed to abstain from taking admin action to curate or otherwise moderate our community, unless absolutely necessary.
- The instance is large enough to support traffic without performance issues (other instances like lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, and lemmy.dbzer0.com would have been fine too), and the instance has a certain degree of guaranteed longevity.
- Moss was given a list that was kindly made by the lemmy.world people as a part of our transfer detailing those who are banned on Blahaj.zone, but not on Lemmy.world, making moderation discrepancies much easier to clean up post-transfer.
- Our agreement with Ruud predated the now-rescinded policy changes
- It was, to the best of our knowledge, the most federated-with instance. We have come to understand that this is not necessarily the case.
Why not have another team take over the original 196?
This is a similar situation with what happened over on Reddit. 196 mods didn't agree with admins and were eventually replaced (difference here is that we were not forced out, but chose to leave). As Lemmy was a large gathering spot for people fleeing Reddit, we felt it was better to try to keep the community together and move together. Having another team take over splits the community. The more fragmentation there is, the less longevity and volume of community each skew will have.
What about the possibility of more trolls, neoliberals, bad actors, sealions, and transphobes on Lemmy.world?
Another huge issue was that the mods and the community were not on the same page regarding lemmy.world, their admins, and their policies. We understand the concern about trolls/bad-actors/transphobes, but we feel well-equipped to handle these issues. In addition, we've been in contact with the lemmy.world admins for a while now, and they've assured us that they'd allow us to moderate our community however we saw fit. All this being said, we still failed to communicate that to the community before taking action, which has undermined any assurances that we have given after the fact. We cannot apologize enough for that.
What about the people who are using instances that are defederated from lemmy.world (e.g. Beehaw)
This is an unfortunate issue that we were not aware of at the time of transfer. We're not sure what the solution is, but want to make our community as accessible as possible. Community solutions are welcome.
Did you migrate because of X? (addressing speculation)
- We didn’t migrate due to anything related to neopronouns
- We didn’t migrate due to us supposedly not wanting to use blahaj.zone lemmy accounts
- We didn’t migrate due to us having friends who were banned from lemmy.blahaj.zone
- We didn’t migrate due to us wanting to make the space less queer/leftist/etc
- We didn’t migrate due to us getting secretly ousted by the Blahaj admin team
What now?
Well, we're not sure. We could go back on our decision and stay on blahaj.zone, continue on lemmy.world, do both, or try something else. Truth be told, we don't know what to do. For now, we will leave the comments open to civil community discourse, and choose our course of action from there.
Sincerely, Qaz, Rmbp, Greembow, A_Very_big_Fan, Peachy, and Moss.
To start off, I just want to note that I'm not replying in anger here. I want to note that I am providing feedback - by your own request btw - for why I think the questions are unanswered, and why I think resignation of all the mods is appropriate. I'm not angry with you as a person, and I do consider what was done to be a blunder with good intentions. Unfortunately, a pretty big one, and what it says to me is either that the concerns of the community are not understood or not being provided consideration.
For the record, I do think you are considering them, because you are talking to people. I would absolutely not say that of the entire mod team though.
No, I'm saying you're still not on the same page because you still have a complete misconception of the issues at hand, which continues in the reply.
Yeah this isn't really about federation (which can be messy).
So, two issues. The first is discovery - if its on LBZ, its visible to .world on all, yes. It is not discoverable on local though since its on a different instance. So thats one item - being on local is more likely to attract the average .world user.
Two, and more important, different instance means different rules. Yes, that is why the mod team was looking to move, but lets look at that instance in particular for a moment. Keeping this aside, which is a symptom, but lets hit a few more of those symptoms for a moment. For example, admins jumping in on c/vegan and wreaking havoc. This may be a mea culpa announcement, but lets look at some of the things they did (and not the content, that is irrelevant here) as noted in their own post:
The result of all this?
Lets review that censorship one for a second:
Boy oh boy, that bolded part - by .world by the way, they bolded and I'm quoting as is - you may notice there is some similar terminology to that recent post.
Ok, lets get the next sentence in there:
Now, lets compare that sentence to the one that comes immediately before. "Do no harm" vs "imminent physical harm". There is a wide window between "no harm" and "imminent physical harm". As someone who went through clear trauma as you mentioned (which I am always sorry to hear, and I hope you've had the support you needed in the meantime, but I digress) - there is a lot in that window that fits into blatantly transphobic, racist, sexist, fascist support, etc. behavior but not "imminent physical harm". And when we put that alongside "Controversial topics can and should be discussed" (emphasis mine this time), that is a huge can of worms.
This is why I spoke about assurances - an assurance to you is not an assurance to the community. I'll get to that in a bit though.
One of the more prominent mods and posters on .world recently posted up some Matt Walsh bs - and just to note, I check the modlogs somewhat often. I have other accounts and mod some niche communities with a small number of subscribers. So, on that note, I'd ask if you've seen the .world modlogs all that much. I say that because in my opinion, there is a strong center-right lean in the moderation across the board, and that is fostered by the administration - see two linked announcements. You can see even more of this with moderation actions by admins in the more recent Luigi-inspired post. "Uncivil" and "Bad faith" are two good examples of reasons often used for this sort of moderation.
This is why I can't comprehend why anyone would ever consider .world for 196. This is why I bring up assurances - what you're told, and what has been done by admins without any repercussions are not in agreement. So why, without an assurance to the community, would the community believe that its going to be handled as a space that is safe for them?
Unfortunately I have to join an unexpected conference call, so I'll have to wrap up this up later. Some items I intend to mention tie back to whats here so its not a complete thought, but figured I may as well share in the meantime. I'll edit the rest in later, unless in the meantime you mention you'd prefer a separate comment.
Couple of issues there. For one thing, if the assurances are being given to the mod team only, then they aren't being given to the community. They are being given to the mods.
Second, no one knows what those "assurances" are. I'm not talking about posting someone else's DMs, I'm saying that recognizing people may take issue enough to even warrant that chat should be enough to know that this information would be needed. So there should have been enough thought to document what was discussed, have everyone involved know that it would be published, and do it.
Third, how do those "assurances" line up with the history of .world admins? What guarantees are being provided that they won't interject at their leisure? Why would 196 be considered unique to them, since they have done exactly what everyone is concerned about?
Plenty were missed, but lets push that aside here - why are you the only one responding to the majority of comments? Why was one mod posting, then (aside from some snarky replies) not replying to people who were concerned?
I don't expect you to reply to every comment. I expect the mod team, especially after this massive faceplant, to reply.
I have a friend who transitioned some years back. When we talk about things before transitioning, we use her previous name, because that is who she was at the time, and that is her preference.
So I went out one night with her to meet her new friend, and long story short - phrased things in a way that was completely appropriate for my friend and how she preferred, but was not for her friend. Something for which I still feel like an asshole for, though her friend understands why and we are friends as well.
Anyway, point being - this is what is ok for you. Engaging, letting them explain. Should the entire community need to? Because you'd be forcing them to. As an alternative, for example, you could let that person immediately know why, and engage with them privately instead before restoring (or restoring with an edit, whatever the case may be).
Ran out of space! Will have to do a second reply, sorry....