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5mo ago

An admin of this instance, Nutomic, is a transphobe and has no right to be able to ban trans people from this community.

I'm calling for https://lemmy.ml/u/Beaver@lemmy.ca, the most prolific user of the transgender comm here on lemmy.ml, to be immediately unbanned and nutomic to be removed as admin. It is good and correct to leak the DMs of transphobes.

@dessalines@lemmy.ml @JoeBidet@lemmy.ml @cypherphunks

edit: you can find more info from kristinas post here and beavers post here

edit 2: proof, also beaver was banned from the whole instance modlong

edit 3: For trans people looking for a safer instance, I suggest Hexbear. They have a very active trans user base and are extremely supportive.

137 comments

As the 'head mod' of one of the largest (and certainly safest) trans communities on the fediverse, I absolutely agree.

You can find a post on this issue here https://hexbear.net/post/3129775. To note: nutomic has also had comments removed for defending a defender of pedophilia @theanonymousejoker on lemmy.ml, who is now banned. He's also been banned on Hexbear for transphobia.
- Adding to this, he also defended MasterOfBalls, the fascist admin of the now defunct fascist instance wolfballs, when he was soliciting users to join the fascist instance in a lemmy.ml thread.

God damn, I agree with Marcie.
Nutomic should self-crit and step back
- 💖

Oh god … this happened?!
- [I'm neither transgender nor a tankie, but instead just a rando browsing "all" who has no dog in this fight (aside from a general preference toward egalitarianism and against bigotry). I'm only commenting because this appears to be starting to spill over into issues that are relevant to the Fediverse at large.]
  Nutomic, you were probably pissed off about the leaking, I think most would get that.
  Hell no, not even a little bit! There's no such thing as "leaking" a PM because the recipient has the right to publicize it! It's fucking nuts to send a message to somebody -- especially one that pisses them off -- and then expect them to keep it secret for the sender's benefit. If the sender doesn't like it, his recourse is to not fucking send the message in the first place!
  The notion that the recipient of a PM has any kind of obligation toward the sender is the dumbest fucking thing I've read on this site in a while, and that's saying a lot since I've been reading about Trump and shit. Actually going so far as to ban somebody for a reason so pants-on-head moronic is absolutely beyond the pale.
  By the way, I'm assuming that you (@maegal) are saying things like "I get that leaking personal chats is always a dodgy thing" because you're trying to be charitable to better persuade Nutomic. If you actually believe that nonsense, then you need to get your head screwed on correctly, too.
  (* unless somebody hacks the server to obtain PMs that he wasn't a party to, which I assume is not what we're talking about here.)
  
  I don’t think we’re that far off from each other.
  In saying “always a dodgy thing” I meant something closer to “always potentially” where obviously it depends with transphobic messages being a relevant example.
  That being said, I think this is a scenario where people will naturally differ in their expectations. “Obligation” as you put it is a very strong word and nothing like what I was alluding to. But I think many would subscribe to the idea that direct messages are a relatively protected space. Some less so. All with exceptions and “lines” that probably differ too. I briefly asked someone I consider more ethical than me, and they were probably more inclined to think of DMs as protected than me. Obviously no excuse for abuse, but presumed private.
  I also suspect that there are generational differences here too. Older people whose Internet lives precede facebook’s push toward merging real and online life might have a greater inclination toward expecting privacy online.
  In this particular case, it was clearly devs/mods talking shop, so clearly less of a public discussion. But you never know. Maybe nutomic felt like they could share their more speculative “theories”without worrying about coming off as crazy. Dunno.
  Personally, I’d like a culture where DMs are presumed protected and private. But maybe that’s just me.
- Come over to hexbear. We also have the best emoji game and it's not even close.
- Hexbear is 100% the safest for trans people on the fediverse, I definitely suggest heading there if you want a safer place. Its admin'd by a lot of trans people and has an extremely active trans community with thousands of comments and messages per day
  I'm on lemmy.ml because I like checking all trans spaces on the fediverse, but obviously with a transphobe in charge that makes that harder. Of course, that also means wading through a lot of horseshit from transphobic trolls, which I'm hoping to help with
  
  I ventured out of hexbear once, just to see what other coms I was missing out on due to defederation. I quickly came back once I saw all of the "horseshit" as you mentioned. It just wasn't worth it for my psychological health.
- This is a pretty reasonable opinion
- I swear, petty and vindictive banning is far worse on Lemmy than it ever was on Reddit, and particularly on ML instances.
  If I were to indulge in a bit of armchair psychology, I'd say it is a side effect of venerating authoritarianism.
  
  Maybe it's worse on ML instances. I honestly would start explaining it by looking at how much red-scare crap they go through.
  But generally, I think you're right ... I've seen ban-happy mods too, and not on ML instances.
  I'd say it's people learning how to manage decentralisation/federation. It gives people a greater sense of ownership and power and so you get some power tripping and a new source of drama and identity politics (based on instances). Kinda sad actually.

As someone that was there for Nutopic's defense of loli/CSAM I am disappointed this person is still an admin. No amount of bigotry should be tolerated just because the bigot is a "good" dev.
I say good in quotations because we have seen time and again how bias on the side of developers influences the way a platform developes wrt the concerns of oppressed groups. A prime example is one of the Mastadon devs failing to provide POC and other minority groups effective tools to combat bigotry and track offenders.
- When I think of the Lemmy dev team, I'm always reminded of Mao's Combat Liberalism. They should really give that a good read.
- oh i had no idea about this, yikes. and you're absolutely right re: mastodon

How on earth is "Leaked private messages" a reason for banning. Absolutely an abuse of power and Streisand Effect is doing it's thing.

I'm just an occasional lurker here so I'm pretty out of the loop, but wouldn't it make more sense to just migrate to an instance without an openly transphobic admin? Isn't being able to do that supposed to be one of the big advantages of a federated service?
- There's also the issue of Nutomic being a core Lemmy dev. While something can be said about detaching the art from the artist, having alleged* bigots be involved in the long-term planning of a project raises question of whether they'll let those opinions influence the direction of the project. For example, if somebody created a pull request to add pronouns to user profiles and it was rejected, would it be for a valid technical reason or bigotry with plausible deniability.
  I say this because I'm not looking to get instance banned at this time.
- but wouldn’t it make more sense to just migrate to an instance without an openly transphobic admin
  That's really just too passive for me at least, much prefer to occupy a space and make the transphobes leave.
  
  Is that even possible in this case? Seems like you're guaranteed to lose a fight with an admin unless you've got another admin on your side.
- Unfortunately, there's no friction-free way to migrate. On Mastodon, for example, you can migrate between instances by exchanging codes between your old and new accounts and, in time, your posts, comments, memberships, followers, etc will move across automatically. On Lemmy, however, that's not an option and you start from fresh with on the new instance.
  
  You can import/export settings (which includes which communities you follow). Although I've heard some instances have issues and it doesn't include you posts/comments/etc.

@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone @CARCOSA@hexbear.net @kristina@hexbear.net @ruud@lemmy.world @remington@beehaw.org @poVoq@slrpnk.net
- Thanks. Dealt with on our end
- @smorks@lemmy.ca @otter@lemmy.ca
  
  @TheDude@sh.itjust.works @imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works @kersploosh@sh.itjust.works

man "leaked private messages" is such a weak fucking excuse in the face of transphobia. @nutomic@lemmy.ml you realize you're just alienating a huge fucking number of comrades? not just trans people, but all those that rightfully stand with us too.
edit: nutomic you absolutely can come back from this if you don't double down. accept your shit, and work on it. and you know what that would be great to see, there's not enough of that in the world.
if not then @dessalines@lemmy.ml and other core devs, i think you have a tough decision to make. i absolutely do not envy you. though do keep in mind that handling this correctly will solidify even tighter community support behind the Lemmy project.
we need more good comrades behind ActivityPub development :p
- Agreeing with you here, I’m wondering if this can spawn a broader project to try to alter the relationship between the admins, mods and users.
  More and better feedback loops and grassroots organisation and less “admins and mods own this, take it or leave it” culture.
  In the end, I think this comes down to poor admin/mod practice and poor community leadership where many of the users here would just like to make sure things are better.

Removal as an admin isn't far enough. Needs a non-negotiable permaban. Unambiguous transphobia simply shouldn't be tolerated at all.
- Preface: I'm a cis guy, so my opinion may be very well invalid
  I don't understand why there aren't more people arguing for this. Why on earth does a leftist community not instaban someone spewing transphobia, especially so if they're on a position of power?
  
  It's really frustrating how often in IRL leftist spaces there is often still quite a lot of (trans)misogyny, often more carefully presented but still kinda there. The whole rejecting pronoun tags for some contrived technical reason strikes me as in that same vein. Most non-leftist spaces are categorically worse, but it still sucks when your hometown communist party is routinely posting cringe about "bourgeois decadence'.

Apologies, I just woke and can’t quite sort all the details. But I’m on the side of anyone who promotes acceptance. I’m against anyone who is a bigot. I support safe and welcoming communities.
- good vibe 💗

♫ EXCISE THE VULGAR MATERIALIST ♫
♫ FOR THE STRUGGLE OF THE CLASS ♫
♫ EXCISE THE VULGAR MATERIALIST ♫
♫ HE REFUSES TO CLEAN HIS ASS ♫

Not that I disagree with anything in this post but I would like to point out that Nutomic is, IIRC, the literal creator and dev of Lemmy itself.
- afaik dessalines is the creator, nutomic is a co-creator and second largest contributor
  
  Though to be fair, there's a good chance that your pleas are not heeded here and that the admins do close ranks (I'm hoping some form of correction occurs, becuase it's pretty obviously a petty and personal ban). Point being, you and this community may want to (if you/they aren't already) think about what you want to do should they ignore you here.
  Also, in the proof you provided ... it's important to note that they banned beaver from the whole instance. You'll see bans from a whole bunch of communities as well as a general in the modlog: https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=9782557
  
  It seems a strange distinction to say one person is a creator and another is the co-creator. Kind of by definition, that makes both people co-creators.
- They're a core dev, yes, but not the creator AFAIU, that's dessalines who started the project. Nutomic joined pretty early though and is a major contributor to the project yes. I think they've been happy to counter each other's behaviour whenever it made sense in the past.
- I thought it was Dessalines
- He can be the president dude. If you're a Transphobe little removed, you deserve what's coming to you.
  
  edit: assumed this was a different word, gah. Leaving for context.
  removed
  I'm guessing what you said here, but you should think about if using such words as insults might hurt bystanders.
- We don't need their software.
  Sublinks, crafted using Java Spring Boot, stands as a state-of-the-art link aggregation platform, reminiscent yet advanced compared to Lemmy & Kbin.
  It features a Lemmy compatible API, allowing for seamless integration and migration for existing Lemmy users.
  https://demo.sublinks.org/
  
  Im all but convinced sublinks is a grift trying to capitalize on the failures of reddit and wants to poach as much of the users from lemmy (especially lemmy.world) as possible. Their reasoning for creating this clone is extremely flimsy, "not enough mod tools" and before submitting any patches or attempts to improve lemmy they want to reinvent the whole system from scratch. Their stated reason for that "they don't want to learn rust" also is very weird considering that it would be less effort to learn rust (especially if you already have a professional coding background) and submit patches to lemmy.
  Instead they reinvent the wheel with the notable difference being that they are using a license that would allow a corporation to monetize the content whereas the lemmy license disallows this for it and any derivatives of it. Which is what I think is the real reason for the rewrite.
  Also they have stated that while they will have lemmy compatibility in the beginning they will move away from it later which just sounds like a classic embrace, extend and extinguish move.
  Edit: not poach users from lemmy.world but rather move the lemmy.world userbase to its platform where they can monetize it. It's funny that you already have to basically submit a job application there (complete with resume of you past jobs lol) if you want to be a mod, although probably unrelated.
  
  I hope Sublinks will come out soon, but it's not there yet.
  https://joinmbin.org/ and https://piefed.social/ are more complete alternatives

This fuck should be kicked from the dev team as well as being removed as an admin. That'd be downright polite compared to what all transphobes deserve:

I just think it's sort of interesting that this particular event is what has clued some people into the fact that a not insignificant portion of the online leftist community views LGBT issues in the context of this geopolitical campism. These are the same attitudes which cause some in the community to routinely look past other notable anti-LGBT groups on the international stage, simply because they stand in opposition to bigger bads. These attitudes have never been hidden, and I have always thought they were expressed and supported with a startling lack of nuance and consideration for the people who are actually injured by them.
- I think you are close to getting it but not quite.
  the online leftist community views LGBT issues in the context of this geopolitical campism
  Most of the online left oppose, say, Russia's LGBT laws. Do we think its grounds for invading Russia? No, bombs do not discriminate against queers, transgender people will be drafted and forced to detransition, supply lines for necessary medicine for trans people are disrupted, if that is the cause of war there will be pogroms, etc.
  Nutomic and ilk like him are ultimately not very ideological and not very well read. They like a corner of a pretty picture but do not see the whole, these people should not be given any position over others.
- I think I know what you're trying to point to, but I do not think this is an honest portrayal.
  I saw episode one of a docuseries called Deaf And... earlier today, the episode is titled "Deaf Identity". And one of the interviewees, Dr. Aaron Kelstone, professor of performing arts at NTID, said something that I find relevant to this topic.
  People come here [to NTID] and find out what a Deaf identity is, then come to realize, "Oh, that's not the only thing I am." For your entire life, the focus is on your hearing. But now you can explore– “I’m also straight,” or “I’m gay,” or “I’m...” There is so much more to who you are. You discover so much more in your identity, whereas before you felt so limited. Everything is about “I can’t hear.” But now, it's not just that anymore– you are Deaf and all those other things.
  Or in other words, it is audism, just this constant background oppression that pervades the lives of the Deaf people who are denied the opportunity to spend time in spaces around fellow Deaf people, that prevents many of them from forming a strong and cohesive identity outside of just being the "Deaf Island" in the "Sea of Hearies". So these Deaf people need to solve the most pressing issue(s) in their lives, before they can solve the other issues that they face. And for myself it has been similar, from the "I'm not a bisexual trans girl, it's just not possible, I'm just confused because I'm autistic and fatherless" of my teen years to the "consumption of animal products is profoundly wrong, but I cannot stop doing it until I can reliably buy and prepare my own meals" of today.
  And I think on some level if we "personify" different countries, we can say a very similar thing about LGBT+ life in these countries that are being plundered by imperialism. That because of this constant deprivation that these countries face, that the actual infrastructure needed for a successful LGBT+ rights movement cannot form in these countries. This does not mean that their bigotry should be excused or left entirely unopposed, but that it should be seen in its proper context. And the proper context for Lemmy is that this is a FOSS Reddit clone and Nutomic could simply stop being an ass whenever he wants. And as long as he continues to be an ass, his actions should have consequences.
  
  I would largely agree with your premise if I believed that Nutomic will face any consequences at all. I will be happy to be proven wrong about this apparent double standard.

Would Nutomic say something back?

I suggest lemm.ee. Extremely chill, no politics (on an instance level anyways), few blocked instances except the troll ones, stable, ^also ^no ^stupid ^hexbear ^emojis.
It's just great.
- +1 for lemm.ee. The person who runs that instance also seems really cool and I donate monthly.
- -1 for lemm.ee I love my hexbear account
- +1 for lemm.ee
  I have no bias at all, obviously

Honestly, just get out of .Ml and let it fade the way hexbear has
- Hexbear hasn't really faded, their trans megathread hits 2-3k comments regularly, so it is very relevant to trans affairs on lemmy. They have an extremely active trans community and are very supportive of them, going so far as defederating from problematic instances that have a lot of people that harass trans people on them.
  Its a more strict community that doesn't fuck with the wider fediverse on purpose, they care about their queer users. And 66% of hexbear is queer, by the way, and about half are trans.
  
  Wasn't there a whole drama with hexbear, like tankies brigading and such? Or am I mixing this all up with some other instance?
- Fading away is when they're still the big lemmy boogyman and are one of the most active instances
- It is not them who should fade away
  It is ye
  Yer ilk has single-handedly redditized the spirit of true Lemmy, you {redacted}, may you burn in hell!
- I wouldn't call hexbear faded in the slightest. You may have them hidden/blocked/whatever to that effect
  
  Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and Lemmy.Ml have about as many MAU between the three of them as lemm.ee does on its own. Lemmy.world is about five times lemm.ee.

Don't mind me just enjoying the drama hehehehehhe

He technically functionally has the right. Just move instances and leave him in the dust.
- Sure, I can do that, but I would prefer every place on fediverse to be trans accepting and not admin'd by transphobes. 🤷‍♀️
  
  Yeah well you're not in control of that guy's servers. He can do what he wants. Why stay? Staying defeats the point of the fediverse. Why give him the time of day?
- As a non-trans (IE, not having direct personal stakes as others would) ... two salient issues here for me are:
  Ensuring consistency between admin actions and instance rules and culture
  Creating a culture of and expectations around reasonably holding admins/mods to account for their conduct. Overzealous and personal admin/mod actions are a cancer for group-based social media platforms like this. Simply moving is one possible course of action, but a damaging one. Creating feedback loops between users and mods, IMO, is a better way to go, and so trying for that here is worthwhile.
  
  I'm not saying it doesn't suck. I'm saying you can't police this guy's server. He does that. You literally physically cannot. Moving away isn't damaging to you. It's damaging to him. These instances live off the community just like Reddit.
- That's not a right, that's a privilege, and one that is accorded by this community. Hence, this post, and hopefully revoked ASAP, it seems.
  
  No, it's a right called ownership. The shit is his. Just leave him in the dust. Don't give him the power.

You understand what the ml in lemmy.ml stands for right? You're enemies by ideology.
The admins of other instances can't help you stop tagging random ppl.
Get off lemmy.ml. that's your solution.
- The first rule of lemmy . ml:
  Bigotry, transphobia, racism, nationalism, and chauvinism are not allowed.
- Found the guy who still believes the Nazis were socialists
- You understand what the ml in lemmy.ml stands for right? You’re enemies by ideology.
  I'm an ml 😎
  The admins of other instances can’t help you stop tagging random ppl.
  They can defed, which I wholly suggest if nutomic isn't removed.
  
  I think everyone should defed from ml without this happening lol.
  
  Lol my benign posts are being deleted... Gg
- How are marxists and trans people enemies ideologically? Is that what you're saying?
- You're enemies by ideology
  As Marx and Lenin said in Chapter 7 of "Marxu no Leninu kotaku tokadimasai": "uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu transphobia is based uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu"
  Just in case, /s
  
  what did I just read??

137 comments