As posted about recently in !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works and !fediverselore@lemmy.ca it seems that @nutomic@lemmy.ml’s stance on transphobia has not changed and his apology only seems to be that he was sorry he got caught and that someone leaked the DM. This is concerning for an admin of Lemmy.ml and the leader of the project. I don’t think this means we should stop using Lemmy, it’s open-source and even if they embed donation links, they can be stripped out in our fork. But it does make me wonder if we should consider defederating lemmy.ml on that merit. Since if they hold such views on trans issues, it’s very likely they won’t have any desire to act on that type of transphobia being expressed on their instance.
I know that Lemmy.ml has and does handle overt transphobia well, but I can’t speak to their ability to handle less overt or thinly veiled transphobia, and this incident doesn’t inspire much confidence either.
Edit: Since some people haven’t seen the original. I decided to include it here. Warning, it contains transphobia, if you don’t want to see that, don’t open the spoiler.
CW: Transphobic talking points
I’d really like to hear Feedback from Blahaj’s local community on this, I’m not as interested in outside opinions here so please try to refrain from top-level commenting if you aren’t from lemmy.blahaj.zone (I will ignore them if you comment anyway from a remote instance).
Personally, I have a very poor opinion of nutomic. And yes, he has always been/felt transphobic. He has a history of making massive oversteps to attack people that have differing opinions to his, and overall I believe him to be a threat to the trans community. As for whether we should defederate? I really have no clue. It certainly isn’t a bastion for blatant transphobia, and hosts many of the top Lemmy communities, and a very large amount of the active Lemmy userbase. I think the effects of defederation would be immense, and take a lot of time and consideration to understand if it’s overall beneficial to the community. That being said, I’m sure I could be swayed to support either side. I’d be very curious what Ada has to say about this, as I believe I’ll support her opinion on the matter.
That is partially why I opened this thread. A community discussion is something that could be beneficial here in deciding what to do. There could be a lot of fallout from defederation though I don’t feel like it would be particularly bad since most communities on Lemmy.ml are already a thing elsewhere, and have more users there too, and most people who want to be here already have accounts here or would very quickly and easily make accounts here or on an instance that federates with us.
I mean, the two big communities for me are !linux@lemmy.ml and !mechanicalkeyboards@lemmy.ml, though the latter of which isn’t really active anyway so I wouldn’t be sad to see it go. There isn’t a suitable replacement for the Linux community elsewhere, and that’s honestly what I’m most active on, but if we defeferate, I’d probably just cut my losses. Yes, it is easy for people to create new accounts, but the hassle is that you cannot transfer your comments or posts to a new account, so you lose that history (as I’ve had to deal with). But overall, I think most people on ml would just stop seeing posts from our instance and never think about it. It would be a small minority that would even notice, but the majority would be getting less content from diverse voices in the queer community overall. Again, it would just take a lot of consideration.
There isn’t a suitable replacement for the Linux community elsewhere
What about !linux@programming.dev or !linux@sh.itjust.works? Those seem decently active.
but the hassle is that you cannot transfer your comments or posts to a new account
That is a minor drawback. It would be nice if they implemented ownership transfer abilities for posts and comments, though it’ll probably be a while before we see that.
But overall, I think most people on ml would just stop seeing posts from our instance and never think about it. It would be a small minority that would even notice, but the majority would be getting less content from diverse voices in the queer community overall. Again, it would just take a lot of consideration.
I can see how and why this would be a problem and why this should be carefully considered, that can be a poor outcome. I guess the same can be said for any defederation including the feddit.uk one. It all depends I guess on how they handle these issues going forward and also how they handle this subject overall. If a lot of the people there are “I support trans people but I don’t think kids…” (you get the idea) it doesn’t really do much good to federate with them. At least in my opinion.
What about !linux@programming.dev or !linux@sh.itjust.works? Those seem decently active.
The former of the two (which is also the larger of them) has 13% of the userbase, although you’re correct that it does seem fairly active. I suppose that would be a decent place to migrate to if defederation were to happen, although I tend to mostly help out new users, who tend to flock to the larger community. Again, I’d figure it out if it happened, it wouldn’t actually be a problem. The latter of the two I would not consider very active by comparison.
That is a minor drawback. It would be nice if they implemented ownership transfer abilities for posts and comments, though it’ll probably be a while before we see that.
Yes, this is one of the grievances I had when migrating here from lemmy.world, as I have some very detailed and helpful comments I wish were easier for me to find. I’d love to see that as a feature in the future, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
I can see how and why this would be a problem and why this should be carefully considered, that can be a poor outcome. I guess the same can be said for any defederation including the feddit.uk one. It all depends I guess on how they handle these issues going forward and also how they handle this subject overall. If a lot of the people there are “I support trans people but I don’t think kids…” (you get the idea) it doesn’t really do much good to federate with them. At least in my opinion.
Yes, I agree here. What I suppose I’m basically trying to say is that defederation is an extreme option, so it has to be considered carefully. If the community on ml starts to reflect transphobic views, then absolutely that would warrant defederation. But if it’s a single admin, and it’s otherwise being moderated to remove transphobic content, then I do think it’s really difficult to determine without a lot more consideration. In most other situations, banning a single transphobic user may be sufficient. It all depends on how his views are reflected in the moderation and the content of the community as a whole. If it’s resulting in transphobia, then it becomes a much more clear case. I don’t have enough information to know if that is in fact the case.
yeah. i mean isn’t this what downvotes and bans are for? instead of defederation?
Blahaj.zone doesn’t enable downvotes. As for bans. Sure. If it’s a handful of one-off users. But if this speaks to the larger instance culture on .ml that’s where defederation is considered, and because it’s one of the lead admins, it speaks to their ability and willingness to keep their instance safe.
Personally, I would make the argument that Lemmy.ml, as the flagship server, has a culture far less impacted by the admin/developers views then any other instance.
I’m not wedded to that though. Consider it more a theory then a statement of fact.
There are also plenty of other reasons to defed from them as well, I made a post here a few days ago recaping that as well as links to some documentation of it
lemmy.blahah.zone does not allow downvotes. And the concern is moreso that some transphobic content wouldn’t be moderated (based on nutomic’s views), hence the burden of moderation would come down to our instance’s admins, and that simply shouldn’t be their responsibility. Defederation is for situations in which the instance in question is harmful to the community in the instance defederating. And if transphobia is not properly moderated, and transphobic views are allowed to spread, then that is actively harmful to lemmy.blahaj.zone.
gotcha. i figured all posts could be up/downvoted. kinda still new here.
gotcha. thanks!
Although I don’t agree with nutomic’s stance (nor do I have any previous experience with them) the tone and language isn’t rude. It’s important to take that into consideration. There’s a difference between discussing opinions and just mindlessly slinging insults.
Regardless of the tone, the opinions he is discussing and the ways that he represents his views are inherently transphobic. He and his views are a threat to us at Blahaj Lemmy, being a space for queer folks (many of us are trans). He is also the lead developer of Lemmy, and the head admin of lemmy.ml. A statement does not have to be framed as a direct insult to be hateful and harmful, and the fact that these views of his have been persistent, along with his influence, means that he as a user is dangerous. Hence why he has been banned from this instance. The question being discussed is really if his views are reflected into the community and moderation at lemmy.ml, because that is the point at which the instance is harmful enough to defederate from. If lemmy.ml is a place where transphobia is allowed to propagate, then that is immensely harmful for us. We need to protect ourselves against transphobia.
All I ask is that it not be ignored completely. I’m not close enough to the situation to make any decisions.
I can promise that it is not being ignored here. It is being considered fully for the transphobic garbage that it is, which is why Nutomic is banned instance-wide since 9 months ago when his DM leaked.
lol I didn’t realize that he’d already gotten himself banned. Never mind.
The solution is to organically marginalize .ml by supporting other activitypub projects. Then we get past the whole issue of major communities being hosted there, or them being a necessity institution.
Honestly, yes. I definitely agree that this is the way to go.
What statement about transgender people are we talking about?
Sigh, if you must know, here is the context:
CW: Transphobic talking points
I thought more people had seen this since it’s older and pinned in MeanwhileOnGrad.
allowing biological men to compete
I don’t go to this school, but this line seems irredeemably constructed.
This is baffling. How can you be so bad at communism that you think trans rights are something the bourgeoisie are pushing
Yeah. All transphobe considerations apart (and that’s something!), this is a terrible “marxist” take.
Lemmy.today maybe too
Lemmy.today has already been defederated from blahaj.zone because they had some nasty spam and transphobia problems.
I never really liked his ideas, trans-related or not, but why the hell was he saying all of that just for a (presumably) message about a Firefox plugin???
This looks like a fight trying to be picked, not something to defederate over.
Admin Ping for @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone to weigh in on this issue with her thoughts and opinions on the matter.
Nutomic was banned from this instance approximately 9 months ago when I first become aware of his stance. However, it’s not something I plan on defederating over unless it becomes clear that the instance as a whole is not acting on transphobic content or unless it becomes clear that the community strongly believes that we should defederate.
Yeah that’s why I decided to make the thread sooner rather than later. I wanted to get the community’s opinions on it and see what they think. I do think there is the risk of Nutomic and others refusing to action transphobic rhetoric similar to his own if it seems “respectful” and “logical”.
If that starts happening, we will defederate. But he doesn’t seem to be standing in the way of the rest of the instance staff from dealing with it as far as I can tell.
Yes. There should be no handwringing over this. If admins/mods for an instance are bigoted, fash, or other such things then they deserve to get defederated as they will allow many bad things and spread their hate. It is best to isolate them as they want to spread their hate and convert more people, that’s their entire goal.
Personally, I don’t think his shitty views necessarily translate into .ml moderation policy and action, which to me would be the problem that defederation is meant to solve.
That said, I wouldn’t mind defed-ing from them in general, as most of my unpleasant interactions in the fediverse have been with .ml users.
Ultimately, I’ll back Ada on what she thinks and decides. She’s very level headed and strict with other instances as far as blahaj zones mission statement is concerned, and I trust her completely.
Yeah I’m really starting to regret making my Lemmy account with this server. At the time it was just the biggest one and I didn’t know anything about the type of communities they hosted. I tend to stay out of politics, I’m just here for the funny memes man
You can export your settings and communities in settings, and import them on another server.
That’s like me and .world
There’s some dedicated Lemmy migration software, which copies your old subscriptions and probably other settings to your new account. At least, I remember using when I switched from .world to .dbzer0 quite some time ago. So you don’t have to hesitate from looking for a different instance to register on.
I’d really hate to lose !linux@lemmy.ml honestly, it’s the largest community for Linux stuff, and a big part of what I spend my time on Lemmy doing. While the stuff Nutomic has said is awful, I’d also really like to see instances of moderation on lemmy.ml that are problematic/transphobic before making the call to defederate.
!linux@programming.dev is within striking distance of beating !linux@lemmy.ml in MAUs
Comm Subscriber count is misleading and can easily be full of dead accounts
That’s fair, and you’re right that it’s possible, but as well it’s possible all those accounts come online in a 3-4 month rotation.
The more important point for me though is whether or not there are transphobic moderation instances. I know they can be really abrasive, I’ve seen the PTB threads, but none of that seems to have been major instances of transphobia that I can tell. I’m all for defederation in those cases when admins refuse to moderate transphobic dogwhistles and the like, I was super supportive of the feddit.uk defed for example. But one admin on a team of many saying something transphobic that’s a personal view doesn’t quite reach that threshold for me. Especially on a larger instance where I think we have to consider the ramifications of fracturing the community a lot more in my opinion.
Nutomic is a transphobe, but the rest of the admin/mods I haven’t noticed any issue on. And if that was the only reason to consider defederation, id be right there with you. But Nutomics bigoted stance is really just one of other major issues with .ml. here’s a post I made a few days ago recaping those issues: https://lemmy.world/post/29072279
They do indeed have a history of problematic moderation in general, though I’m not sure about how much they let thinly veiled transphobia slip there. There’s not much of it to begin with and can be difficult to spot at first.
I’d really hate to lose !linux@lemmy.ml honestly
I pointed out in the other comment two alternatives to the Linux comm. !linux@programming.dev and !linux@sh.itjust.works, both have decent activity and could be more active if more users started posting.
They both have tens of thousands of less users. As for the moderation, I know they can be bad at that, and difficult to appeal to, but I’ve yet to see anything transphobic.
They both have tens of thousands of less users.
Subscriber wise they are vastly different in size, MAUs aren’t as drastic. Which is largely what matters.
Defederate, and I would have said the same if you asked me yesterday.
I’m not on my blahaj account, but I can copy/paste there if you’d prefer. Just seemed pointless when I use the same user name to switch over.
But I’m mainly giving some background to the whole matter, rather than primarily “voting” about defederation.
It’s interesting that nutomic wants to get all het up after asking for donations to lemmy development.
That’s largely why they’ve been so active in comments lately. They can’t seem to keep from expecting people to pay them as individuals the develop lemmy, while also not being willing to at least be clear about where they stand.
And that’s what the donation requests are about. They’re not bringing in enough to develop full time. And that’s an important thing, having full time developers on a project like this. What they don’t seem to get is that they’re not just asking us to pay for full time developers, they’re asking us to pay them. They aren’t figureheads or managers, so it isn’t some kind of collective where you can point to other members of the dev team and say “well, maybe those two are unpleasant, but at least the rest aren’t bigoted”
Which, afaik, dessalines has never publicly been bigoted. He can be a smug asshole sometimes, but so can I, so there’s only so much complaining I can do there. But nutomic is a different issue, and this screen shot perfectly encapsulates how.
Donations would go into both of their pockets for their work, and they do deserve to be paid for that. Even jerks get to make a living. But we all get the choice as to whether or not we’re a customer or not. Me? My double digit yearly open source budget is going to people that at least have the sense to have never shot their mouths off with bigoted bullshit. Lemmy is an amazing thing, and the world needs it. I just can’t directly support a bigot. I can’t, and won’t do it.
I wouldn’t hire on someone to fix my roof if they had a damn maga hat on, why would I give money to someone that is not only just as much of a bigot, but is also hyper authoritarian? I know hiring someone vs contributing to a project isn’t a 1:1 equivalency, but the principle is.
Donations to then also fund .ml. And if anyone wants to donate like that, it’s none of my business. It’s just important that it be known that you can’t donate granularly. You donate, .ml gets some operating costs covered, dessalines gets a chunk, and nutomic gets a chunk.
And that’s where this comes from. The discussion in the screen shot is fallout from that. Nutomic still holds the same views they always have, but wants people to ignore that when donating. Which is fine!
As far as defederation goes, all I can say is that, while I have had unpleasant runins with both of them, I’ve never been permanently banned from .ml, or any of its communities. Individual communities there can, and do, enforce anti-bigotry rules with no interference from admins. But, there are no specific instance rules regarding transphobia in particular.
Again, this is pretty much just added background for anyone that hasn’t the time to go digging for the context of the screen shots.
Lemmy.ml doesn’t tolerate transphobia regardless of nutomic’s views and probably has a bigger trans userbase than even blahaj. Stop stirring drama.
There’s plenty of other things the other admins and mods do that is worthy of consideration of defederation
^ pretty much sums up my thoughts on .ML
There’s certainly nice folks and great communities over there, but the bad faith arguments, “russia/china can do no wrong” propaganda (i had to block Yogthos to have literally anything show up in my All feed, JFC the spam posting), and outright hostile moderation, it just isn’t worth engaging with.
How about you butt out of server discussions unless you’re a user of that server?
I agree, it’s one thing to ask a question, it’s another thing to make assertions like this. The latter of which is very inappropriate and disrespectful since this is a local discussion on Blahaj policies.
Did you contact their mods or admins? They should have an opportunity to administer appropriate action first. Then, if they are ok with this bullshit, de-fed.
Meanwhile, may I endorse a cool shirt that people might want to wear this summer:
That is their admin, and also one of the lead developers of Lemmy.
The other comment that identified them as an admin disappointed me but this one makes me sad.
Nutomic is one of the head admins on Lemmy.ml, there are others as well but he’s one of the two in charge of the whole place.
Well, in that case, fuck 'em.
Other reasons here as well to consider defederation
Isn’t lemmy already?
Yep, bad views don’t just stop at one particular thing. Flagship instances often go this way sadly, and thus should be defederated from unless they significantly improve.
Would be so good to see
