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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by ada to c/main

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.

======

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.

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[-] dodgy_bagel 200 points 10 months ago

So everyone involved seems to agree that transphobia is bad, but the dude had an idiotic notion of what constituted transphobia.

I feel that if we are in the business of defederating anyone who fails a purity test then lemmy will be quite small indeed.

[-] ada 109 points 10 months ago

I will defederate from any instance with admins that excuse transphobia. If that makes our part of the Fediverse quite small, that sucks, but it is what it is. I moved here to get away from social media that won't take action on transphobia. I'm not suddenly going to decide it's ok if it means we get more traffic.

[-] FirstMajesticComet 40 points 10 months ago

Not talking back or being snarky but if you feel that way you might seriously want to look into Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, they have very bad track records of letting transphobes and bigots run wild, Lemmy.world is the worst, many of the people they've banned for bigotry have been unbanned or were only given temporary bans to begin with, often times they won't even action users who are engaging in transphobia, even if reported. It's really not great.

I used to believe Beehaw was a bit overly strict but honestly I can see they blocked these instances for good reason, especially Lemmy.world.

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[-] dodgy_bagel 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I understand completely. A space like that needs to exist.

Thank you for the work you put in.

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[-] melmi 161 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This alone doesn't seem like something worth defederating over. It seems like they just got baited hard by Hexbear. Did the comment chain get censored? It doesn't seem like there's much active transphobia here, just ignorance of the issues at worst.

From my cursory read, the only thing that reads as actually transphobic to me is when they say "And getting offended by it really isn’t helping your case here." in response to someone getting mad at being referred to as "they", and that itself was due to technical issues and not transphobia.

Frankly, one angry snapback and a slap fight with Hexbear doesn't seem worth defederating over. I'm all for defederating bigots, but I don't want hapless allies getting caught in the crossfire.

[-] neuracnu 83 points 10 months ago

Frankly, one angry snapback and a slap fight with Hexbear doesn’t seem worth defederating over.

I have to agree.

The bulk of Hexbear's userbase actively chooses to interact with others in the fediverse in antisocial ways, finding any excuse to be offended and generally make argumentative nuisances of themselves. This concerns us because they wrap themselves in trans-colored flags.

I'm tired of Hexbear users stomping around Lemmy being jerks to everyone in the name of being trans. And I don't want us, or this instance, to suffer for it.

[-] spaduf@slrpnk.net 61 points 10 months ago

but I don't want hapless allies getting caught in the crossfire.

Especially not for the sake of hexbear

[-] Gormadt 47 points 10 months ago

But the admin here really likes Hexbear and has expressed the intention of federating with them the moment instance level blocking works

Honestly this whole thing has me window shopping for another instance due to our admin again siding with Hexbear

[-] FirstMajesticComet 28 points 10 months ago

expressed the intention of federating with them the moment instance level blocking works

Ah so I take it they don't believe the spam and hostility concerns about Hexbear users are legitimate, if they did their solution to the problem wouldn't be "just block them lol", it would be to keep Hexbear Censured. Though it might anyway, since the Instance blocking doesn't seem like it'll ever work the way anyone thinks/wants it to:

Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.

Siding with Hexbear is a red flag, considering the ammount of problems they cause from spamming to the pro-genocide propaganda they push out.

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[-] FirstMajesticComet 37 points 10 months ago

Yeah I agree, this definately does seem like a knee jerk reaction which ultimately does more harm than good.

[-] backhdlp 148 points 10 months ago

I love you all and I'm obviously against transphobia or any kind of bigotry, but this is probably where I leave this instance.

[-] spaduf@slrpnk.net 48 points 10 months ago

I left a while ago but I am disappointed to the degree that people over here are willing to carry water for hexbear. They absolutely cannot be trusted to be good faith actors.

[-] Gormadt 30 points 10 months ago

Yeah I'm feeling the same way TBH

I've just got to find a new one that fits for me

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[-] Adramis 113 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If I cut out everyone in my life that is 99% of the time a staunch ally, but still eats at Chick-Fil-A, my life would be very, very empty. No one is ever going to be a perfect ally / comrade, even queer people. I feel like it's especially telling that the person got so heated because they want to be an ally and don't want people to abandon them because they played a single stupid fucking game. Especially because there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, it's easy to death-of-the-author JKR without realizing the direct transphobia in the game. A lot of the direct transphobia in Hogwarts Legacy isn't obvious (like misgendering the token trans in the game files) and most people don't know about it. Does that suck? Yeah. But that doesn't mean those people are transphobes or bad faith actors.

I get that we need to have a sharp eye to make sure bad faith actors don't fly under the radar, but false positives do a lot of harm too. I really feel like this came down more to Hexbear doing what Hexbear does and setting the entire thread on fire than it points to transphobia on the programming.dev admin's side. Of course people are going to get stupid when you're getting insulted, flamed, and spammed with stupid-ass emoji. If they're willing to defed from Hexbear and acknowledge the direct transphobia in the game, that would go a long way.

[-] ada 50 points 10 months ago

This isn't that.

This is the lead (cis) admin of a Fediverse instance telling trans people that a Potter game is "the opposite of transphobic" and then arguing with trans folk about it, diminishing the relevance of their pronouns as a side issue, and calling trans folk "insane" for having an issue with the game.

The hexbear pile-on clearly got to them, but that's not an excuse for the other behaviour. I need to know that other admins will deal with transphobia even when it's hard, not that they'll resort to it when they're frustrated.

[-] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 89 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Having read the thread I really don't think the programming.dev admin was being transphobic. I know I'm cis so I'm less likely to see transphobia, and I am more lenient with my judgement, but it really looks like they were at worst abrasive or indifferent towards the sensitivities of the issue at hand, and not outright transphobic.

Taking into account that this type of behavior is common in tech debates and that they have explicitly shown their support for trans people elsewhere, I believe that they are not transphobic, just bothersome to you guys in this debate topic because of how important it is to you to treat it with higher respect than some random topic.

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[-] Deebster@programming.dev 34 points 10 months ago

Image of comic XKCD 2501, Average Familiarity

You're assuming bad faith instead of remembering Hanlon's razor. programming.dev's technical admin is not your enemy.

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[-] amio@kbin.social 81 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That conversation is really hard to follow between the hexbear emote spam (and non-emote spam), deleted comments and personal attacks.

[-] bamboo 31 points 10 months ago

hexbear emote spam

Is that what that is? How does that add anything to the conversation and who is upvoting that

[-] Adramis 44 points 10 months ago

It doesn't and Hexbear trolls.

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[-] RoseTintedGlasses 76 points 10 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

[I got a bot to automatically delete all my comments over 1 month old so you can’t see this comment anymore]

[-] Gormadt 32 points 10 months ago

Do you have a link to this exchange?

Honestly though that comment about Hexbear is pretty on point. Hexbear makes every comment thread they invade a nightmare, and is one of the goals of their instance.

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[-] ToastedPlanet 63 points 10 months ago

This article does a good job at explaining that Hogwarts Legacy is transphobic because some of the profits will be donated to anti-trans causes.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/hogwarts-legacy-release-brings-transphobia-harry-potter-franchise-rcna69628

Rowling herself has implied that her royalty checks are indirect indicators of the popularity of her views on trans rights. She will be profiting off Hogwart’s Legacy, and at least part of that profit will likely go directly into the hands of those responsible for pushing the fight to roll back trans rights, causes Rowling has implied she donates to.

This article explains the antisemitic blood libel conspiracy theory that is a core part of the game's plot.

https://www.gamepur.com/guides/hogwarts-legacys-goblin-uprising-anti-semitic-plot-controversy-explained

Players can choose to align themselves with Ranrok, but the game explicitly paints this as an evil decision, aligning those players with the Dark wizard faction. On top of that, Ranrok and his Dark wizard allies in the Rookwood Gang have a plan to harness the power of this forbidden magic by abducting the player character (who is a teenager) and extracting and using their blood. This latter detail hews uncomfortably close to “blood libel” conspiracy theories which have been leveled at Jewish communities across the world for centuries, in which Jewish people were accused of abducting and murdering Christian children in order to use their blood in sacrilegious rituals.

I spent some time watching videos on the game's plot. I couldn't find a specific line in a cut scene where the villain explicitly says he wants to harvest the protagonist's blood. But he does explicitly set some guys after the protagonist to try to kidnap them. They need the protagonist because they are the only one who can interface with the MacGuffins, ie plot devices. This MacGuffin interfacing seems to be hereditary in nature. Also, the villain's powers, specifically the graphics, definitely seemed blood themed to me.

The game is transphobic and antisemitic. Arguing the game is not those things is transphobic and antisemitic. Whether or not the admin in question knew that is irrelevant.

No one is mandated to educate people about any minority group that they are a part of.

That being said, I wholeheartedly believe that it is in our interest as an LGBTQ+ community to educate people when an opportunity arises. So much hate and bigotry is derived from ignorance. The more we can do to educate people about transphobia the safer we and the people we care about will be irl.

Ada is going out of her way to talk to the admin in question which she does not need to do, but I am glad that she is. She would be perfectly justified in defederating the instance without further discussion. Making a safe space for trans people means defederating from instances that espouse transphobia. By defederating, users on blåhaj zone will not see what this admin's posts or comments, regardless of where the posts or comments are made.

This is what the post in question looks like if your lemmy account is on blåhaj.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/7199610

Most of the comments are not visible because we are defederated from Hexbear.

I'm really not a fan of how Hexbear users handled this. I am also not a fan of blåhaj being the admin's trans best friend. Despite that, I think this comment from the admin is relevant so I'm linking it here.

https://programming.dev/comment/6173847

I get the sense that this admin is engaging in transphobia and antisemitism because of their ignorance involving the game. I hope that in talking to the admin, Ada will be able to explain the error in the admin's position. Hopefully the admin will correct their position going forward and we can continue to federate with their instance. But I think that in the absence of that hypothetical success it makes sense to defederate.

It took me a bit to think about it, but it's good that we take a proactive position on combating transphobia. Tolerating intolerance for the convenience it might bring, in not having to make multiple accounts or having more perceived allies, really doesn't do us any favors in the long run. If we don't stand up for ourselves we are only giving cover for transphobes to maneuver covertly in our online space. Rowling is a terf. Hogwarts Legacy funds her terf causes. We don't need blåhaj to be connected to instances that fail to understand that. The point is to have an instance that is a safe space for trans people and more broadly LGBTQ+ people.

I'm adding this at the end, because this shouldn't matter, but I think some people think it does. I am trans. I am ethnically jewish.

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[-] leraje 49 points 10 months ago

A shame. It reads (particularly at the top of that thread) like an ignorant Admin and a typical Hexbear user(s).

Please note when I say that that I am not suggesting or implying that the Admin was not in the wrong, but that when the Admin said:

It’s literally the opposite of transphobic. It’s like they tried as hard as they could to negate everything bad JKR has ever said…

That seems more like something someone ignorant of a lot of things would say and not necessarily what someone intent on being awful would say. The response to them, also from a Hexbear user, was:

You’re a transphobic clown that cares more about your Harry Potter treats than trans people. Stop pretending otherwise.

Maybe that's true and maybe it's not. Certainly in the remainder of that thread, the Admin falls pretty short of decent behaviour. However, I think if that first response to the Admin's response had not been so judgemental and had maybe seen it as ignorance rather than malice and level headedly gone on to explain why the Admin is wrong without the (i think we can all agree) standard Hexbear method of engagement, maybe (not definitely, but maybe) the outcome might have been an ally rather than a defederation.

I suspect that I'm going to get responses to that paragraph stating it's not a trans persons responsibility to educate others. I do see that and understand it as I am part of a minority group that has been marginalised, persecuted and wished out of existence for hundreds if not thousands of years. I understand exactly how annoying and exhausting it is to feel like you have to continually explain why it's OK you exist.

But I've also come to realise the difference between ignorance and wilful ignorance and that it's always worth making at least one try with someone. 99% of the time it gets you nowhere, but sometimes it gets you an ally.

I understand the defederation decision and it doesn't affect my choice to be on Blahaj at all. I guess my hope is that the two Admin's can talk it out and that refederation is an available option but that if that doesn't happen, the PD Admin at least learns how they behaved is transphobic and they change their ways.

[-] ada 32 points 10 months ago

We're talking about it now, but due to timezones and travel, I can't say where the talks will lead.

I will also say though, that as as admin that has been actively targeted by a Hexbear pileon, it's not an excuse to erase trans folks pronouns as a side issue, or to call people insane for trying to explain why the Potter IP is harmful to trans folk.

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[-] Rakqoi 45 points 10 months ago

I'm torn about this. Although I agree that the admin of that instance is being pretty transphobic and abrasive, I don't know if it's bad enough to defederate. In addition, I really like some of the communities there (especially the Godot community) and this might be the thing to push me off blahaj.zone...

It's a hard balance to strike, protecting vulnerable people from potentially harmful instances with bad policies, while at the same time, providing a valuable instance that people will want to use. Unfortunately, this will probably push me and some other individuals onto other instances that may have worse moderation and will likely expose us to a lot more bigotry. It's a tough situation, and I honestly don't know what the best option is.

[-] brian@programming.dev 27 points 10 months ago

on that note, does anyone have recommendations for a neutral and controversy free instance but that also isn't so quick to defederate?

I understand instances like this wanting to defederate on principle and I'm sure it helps to curate a better experience for the people looking for that. Personally I'd rather make the choice myself to block communities I don't like and leave defederation on an instance level to just blocking illegal content and poor moderation and the like.

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[-] Smorty 44 points 10 months ago

Does this mean that we can't access the programming.dev communities anymore? I like the Godot community over there.

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[-] Strawberry 31 points 10 months ago

Anyone have screenshots of the conversations? It appears some of the admin in question's messages are deleted

[-] cupcakezealot 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

this is the way i learn that a mid game like hogwarts legacy won best steam deck game? like how... do they know baldur's gate 3 exists?

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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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