Instance admin updates + Blahaj

Hey everyone. Some of you may have seen the recent announcement with blahaj to defederate with the instance. Ive been handling things privately and wanted to do an announcement to catch you all up on the results of that

#1: Background knowledge

Realized that not everyone knows how the instance is structured so figured I would do a little section in the front to go over that (especially for visitors reading this from other instances)

We currently have 8 admins in the instance. Of those 2 people are currently lead admins (snowe and I). Majority of admins are part of the community team but not all of them (people are split between infrastructure, development, and community). I was planning out a team page similar to what lemmy.world has to go over this with a bit more detail and that should be coming in the future. Main thing though is its intentionally structured so one person doesnt solely have power (hence the two leads). If one person ends up messing up theres the other lead and the rest of the admin team to talk with them about it and help them do better in the future.

#2: What happened?

There was a thread in lemmy.ml about the hogwarts legacy game winning a steam award. For reference for the following images + description, snowe is the other lead admin for the instance apart from me and the other people are various other users

There was a conversation that ended up essentially devolving into a slap fight within this post (ive purged the entire conversation so people dont stumble onto it in the future but ill post images here with them for archiving reasons and to explain it)

^ These comments were what initially started it. Essentially it was an argument about the hogwarts legacy game being or being not transphobic

^ Later in the argument

^ One branch that ended up getting started due to the frontend snowe uses on mobile not showing pronouns (how most instances handle it currently is its appended to the end of the display name but some frontends choose to ignore the display name and just do the username instead)

(edit: changed the word triggered to started to make it more clear what definition of triggered I used. Forgot that tends to not be common usage)

There are other branches but it is a very large amount to screenshot and dont want this to completely flood this post. Everything should be available in the modlogs still if you want to dig a bit deeper or I can send other screenshots in the replies on this post if youre interested in what was said for certain parts

#3 Aftermath

Due to the argument above blahaj chose to defederate with programming.dev which was going to take effect 48 hours after their announcement on it. (This is due to the person in the conversation being one of our lead admins which is ultimately understandable as they represent the instance)

snowe has sent a message apologizing to ada (the lead admin for blahaj). I dont know the contents of what was said but if they want the two of them can choose to publicize it.

One of our admins should not have escalated the situation and participated in this slap fight so on behalf of the admin team here were sorry about that

Internally we have a guidebook for admins to follow for the various aspects of the instance (moderation, applications, etc.). Ive refined this guidebook with a couple new rules for admins that should be taking effect in the future

admins will be required to have two accounts, one for admin activities and one for non admin activities. This is how some admins have already been interacting in the fediverse and basically makes it so comments done on the non-admin account should not be taken as that admin speaking on behalf of the instance. Generally the admin account will be things done relating to admin duties (e.g. my posts here in meta) while the non-admin account is other various conversations. Admins can be as anonymous as they want with the non-admin account similar to how our users here can be as anonymous as they want with their accounts
im adding in some guidelines for tone while chatting for the admins so comments made that are on behalf of the instance should be respectful and not devolve to slap fights

Like I said before in #2 ive also purged the entire conversation to avoid people stumbling onto it and seeing a slap fight with an admin that has since apologized. As the community exists on lemmy.ml I cant fully do this due to how federation works in lemmy but the mods in the community have been doing the same which should federate.

This should not have happened in the first place and we as an admin team will be better going forward

I hope the blahaj instance sees our actions and chooses to reverse the defederation decision but at the end of the day its their instance and they can choose whoever they want to federate with (note federation is done directionally. I will still leave our direction of federation open)

Edit: Blahaj stopped their defederation (shown in an edit on their announcement) so the two instances will still be federated both directions going forward

Another edit: its a work day, its midnight here, and some comments here are also devolving into slapfights. Ive locked the post since this has already taken up most of my free time to try to handle and moderate this. My dms are always open if you want to dm me regarding the situation

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90 comments

From the screenshots, it looks like snowe wasn't being aggressive at all. And getting hate for using "they" is excessive. It's a shorter way of saying "that person". Blahaj (a blue shark from IKEA? I don't get it) shouldn't be this touchy about stuff. It's like a C programmer getting offended about being called a programmer.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- I'm in agreement here, and given Blahaj's trigger-happy nature when it comes to defederation, I'm not sure I care all that much.
  I've seen them defederate so many other instances for "wrong-think" and I don't think Snowe should feel like he's in the wrong here.
  It's only a matter of time before they defederate from my own instance, tucson.social, because I don't think 100% like them. I apparently support trans genocide because... checks notes... I don't think that doxxing far right reactionaries/extremists is an effective tactic for garnering sympathy and building a movement.
  Yup, that's it. Apparently that opinion makes you a Nazi sympathizer in these circles.
  
  I haven't been outted as a wrong thinker yet, but I did have a conversation with another Jew (I'm a Jew for context) and apparently I'm wrong for not thinking the goblins from Harry Potter are antisemitic.
  
  I caught that. This whole thing is absolutely childish and ridiculous.
  
  I will call out that the initial commentor was kind enough to edit their message when I asked they they let a Jew call out antisemitism or not
- The IKEA shark is a mascot/icon for LGBTQ+ spawned from memes.
  https://www.newsweek.com/how-ikea-shark-became-trans-icon-1753400
  
  Thanks. That seems so random 😅
  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- Shit I default to they usually until I get corrected
  It's more inclusive than just making assumptions plus working in a customer facing position I got in the habit of gender neutral terms and holiday agnostic seasonal greetings
  
  Exactly. I barely look at usernames, because they are not worth remembering. "they" is my default.
  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
  
  Off topic question though, why do you have a creative commons link in your comments?
  As someone who does a lot of 3D printing and modeling I'm pretty familiar with the "Attribution, non-commercial, share-alike" one but I've never seen someone tag all their comments as it before
- Snowe even proved they can't see the pronouns. Seems like the other person chose to continue to be mad for no reason.
- it looks like snowe wasn't being aggressive at all
  name-calling is universally considered to be aggressive. "ignorant troll" definitely counts
  And getting hate for using "they" is excessive.
  it is an extremely common transphobic tactic to de-gender people whose pronouns are easily visible as a plausibly deniable way of attacking them. considering all of us have our pronouns in our names on hexbear, we're going to assume that anyone 'they'ing us is doing it on purpose, which is an entirely reasonable assumption.
  and all this argument started because this admin wanted to defend the latest shovelware trash game by the dev of Cars 3: Driven to Win, which is about putting down the revolt of the race of greedy hook-nosed bankers in a setting written by one of the world's most open and notorious transphobes
  in short: nah this sucks and defederation from queer instances makes sense
  
  Here's how your comment appears in Boost via programming.dev. No pronouns visible.
  If you're going to participate outside your own instance, you have to accept that others don't see your instance's unique changes.
  
  That much is fine. But a normal person would stop at that and apologize and move on, not double down on it by going "getting offended by that really isn't helping your case here."
  An admin being like this is understandably a very bad look for the instance.
  
  Yeah, this whole argument seems to be about assuming a bunch of hostility because someone was unaware of things they had no reason to be aware of.
  
  If you're going to participate using third-party apps that remove basic lemmy features, you have to accept that people will be confused by your ignorance of those features. Pronouns are not a "unique change" by Hexbear, here's what my comment looks like via programming.dev without a third party app
  
  Lemmy is not the only "player" on the fediverse.
  Kbin doesnt show pronouns either. That or I cant find it.
  
  I agree with the others that the admin shouldn't have doubled down, but as someone using kbin.social via my phone's browser I don't see pronouns either.
  This conflict is actually the first time that I became aware that some instances show pronouns, which I love. But that being said, as an enby I tend to default to they/them pronouns when dealing with the unknown, so I get it.
  
  it takes 10 seconds tops to check the profile.
  
  Do you check every profile you respond to?
  Oh wait, a hexbear user.
  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
  
  Oh wait, a hexbear user.
  And you call us the trolls.
  
  legitimately, yes, i do, to make sure i am gendering them correctly. especially if i had a client that didn't display pronouns.
  
  most people don't. and I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to.
  
  you don't think it's reasonable to expect people to check somebody's profile for literally less than 10 fucking seconds to make sure they aren't made really uncomfortable? really?
  
  To everyone attempting to reply to the above comment in good faith, remember that the only way to productively engage with a hexbear is to not engage at all. Trying to do so is what started this whole kerfuffle in the first place.
  Don't feed the trolls.
  Edit: Note the bait below, and note how I'm not wasting my time engaging with it.
  
  you're the one poisoning the well, how is that not troll-adjacent at best?
  
  If you want people to reply to you in good faith you have to engage in good faith. If you're going to make passive-aggressive comments like this, don't be surprised when we make fun of you for it.
  Edit: Note the bait below, and note how I'm not wasting my time engaging with it.
  Making smarmy little edits such as this is, in fact, engaging.
  
  I’ll never get over the fact that the sheer reality of our existence has melted some people’s brains because they can’t prove us wrong about anything, we’re truly the spectre haunting online libs
  
  Same. Block and move on.
  
  Getting twisted about gender neutral language as a tool of oppression is dumb as hell. I consider gender neutral language to be preferable and more egalitarian and wish English would just drop gendered pronouns like Persian did and like we dropped gendered nouns compared to most other Indo European languages. I find this nonsense position to be oppressive myself.
  Edit: As an aside, originally our mother language for indo-european speakers actually had to do with whether something had a spirit or not, not its gender as we understand it now. Then it switched to male and female instead of soul or no soul as religious concepts evolved. There's no reason we shouldn't do the same as our concepts around gender continue to evolve.
- It's two things, really; a hexbear user baiting someone to say something controversial, and Ada and Katy making the wrong decision, because they're human after all.
  Maybe they had a reason to believe snowe was a bad actor due to something they said. Shit happens when you're in a bad internet argument. At the end of the day, at least everything got sorted out.

90 comments