this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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I think this is an inconsistent move from the Blahaj team. They defederated feddit over one transphobic user who the admins wouldn't deal with. And I agree with that decision. They should make the same decision here. If lemmy.ml won't ban Nutomic, then it's clear they aren't interested in creating a safe environment for trans people.
Regardless of any funding question, I think every instance should be questioning federation with .ml over their acceptance of Nutomic. And that goes double for any instance committed to inclusivity, because they have a responsibility to their users to uphold the values those users expect.
Feddit.uk was defederated because they did not address transphobia on their instance and stopped responding when I asked for clarification of how they will handle similar incidents in the future in light of the transphobic legislation introduced in the UK. If it becomes clear they are acting on transphobia, we will refederate.
lemmy.ml does act on transphobia and despite their admins comments in DM, I have seen no indication that transphobic posts are allowed to remain on their instance from admins or users. If it becomes clear they're not acting on transphobia, we will defederate. Either way, Nutomic will remain banned.
Which is to say, neither scenario is really contingent on the actions of an individual, rather they're contingent on how the admins respond to transphobia.
I don't think it's inconsistent. My understanding is that the bad comments were in private messages and although they don't disown then or apologise for their views, they are not making transphobic comments in threads.
In the feddit case, transphobia discourse was active and unmoderated. I have no doubt that if that was the case for .ml, then blahaj would defederate.
There is no point in federation of you defederate from every instance with bad users. Ban the user, not the instance. In the case of an instance not moderating hateful content, ban the instance.
Just to clarify, the defederation from feddit.uk has more to do with the admins allowing transphobic comments to remain because of the EHRC ruling and then ghosting Ada when asked to clarify their policies around dealing with transphobia. It wasn't just one user.
I still agree with considering lemmy.ml for defederation.
This is a pretty blahaj-centric view of what happened. Their definition of “transphobia” includes “I feel like women with super high testosterone levels competing in women’s sports does get into kind of a legitimate gray area,” “I don’t think dragon is a gender and this person is clearly a malicious troll,” and “dude.”
I don’t think anyone on Lemmy is down with unambiguous transphobia, but blahaj likes to take sort-of-maybe-arguably transphobic or questionable comments and pretend they are Hitler-level hatefulness and then ban anyone who refuses to see it in their 100% un nuanced way.
When did this happen? I mean, they don’t really owe her an explanation, they can run their server the way they want just like she can hers.
If I went to Ada and started demanding she “clarify” her policies on dragon centered trolling she probably wouldn’t spend too much time giving me extensive clarifications on it. Nor should I be able to demand that she needs to.
Those are all quotes that can be used to hurt a trans person in the wrong context and have been used to hurt trans people on that server.
A trans woman has never won a gold medal in the Olympics, gender is inherently subjective and constructed, and people don't like being called some words. Those are all very unambiguous facts. When you start denying basic facts in pursuit of an agenda, people have a right to stop listening to you. You should say sorry if you want them to listen to you again.
Well, maybe, but the frying pan in my kitchen can be used to hurt a person in the wrong context, as can the knives, as can the bottle of olive oil for that matter. That doesn't mean I shouldn't be allowed to use them. What is relevant is whether they are being used to hurt in the context they are actually being used in.
This is my beef with blahaj's moderation. Everything that makes them in any way uncomfortable is a crime against humanity, and if you don't see it 100% the same way as them, then you are a crime against humanity and an awful person, and they'll start wild criticisms of you including trigger-word labels, applying things like "misgendering" to things that are not genders, "transphobia" to issues that have literally nothing to do with any trans person on any level, and so on.
I mean, they can do that if they want, but I think you summarized my reaction to it pretty well with:
Source? That's not what the feddit.uk admins said.
They dont act against transphobia and they literally ghosted ada Source
This is not true though. This was clarified by the feddit.uk admins.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/42943344/18287800
As a feddit.nl user it would help if you included the TLD, there are several servers that call themselves feddit. 😊
I forgot which one it was
I can definitely understand how this may seem as an inconsistency on Ada's part. I've been critical of Ada in the past, but I see this as more of Ada taking a calculated, diplomatic approach.
With the Feddit situation, Feddit is just another random Lemmy instance, so there's no real loss in defederating. But ML is where Lemmy development is centered, and whether Blahaj users like it or not, they do have an intrinsic interest in the development of Lemmy's code. They want Blahaj to be a safe space, which requires moderation tools to be developed, and it's helpful to keep an open connection with the developers in that case so that Blahaj's input and contributions can be considered when these tools are built.
At least, that's just my speculation as to why there's an inconsistency.
I think it would be better for Lemmy's development if everyone defederated lemmy.ml. If Dessalines weren't so busy banning users on other instances for pointing out the Uyghur genocide, he'd have a lot more time to write code.
lemmy. ml currently has a significant number of users and, as far as I can tell the main complaint about it is relating to communist economic beliefs and authoritarian political beliefs.