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.

  • brian@programming.dev
    27·
    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.

    • Ategon@programming.dev
      18·
      10 months ago

      There typically will always be some form of controversy, tends to be just how the admins handle that

      I try to keep this instance federated with instances as much as reasonable (the only lemmy instances we really defederate with are burggit and rqd2 since their instance rules break our instance rules, lolicon+DMCA ignoring for the first and very questionable communities in the second (zoophilia, MAP)) and were dealing with the situation in this post internally currently to solve the situation here with blahaj. Should make a post in meta probably tomorrow

      I can give some recommendations of some instances with admins ive had positive experiences with (im one of the programming.dev leads though if that affects my stances on this)

      • startrek.website - I dont talk with these admins much but the instance tends to be pretty positively viewed across lemmy
      • slrpnk.net - one of the other niche instances. Admins seem relatively chill and I dont have anything negative regarding them. Active in helping stop spam accounts (defeds with hexbear + lemmygrad)
      • lemmings.world - has been pretty active in making tooling to help out a bunch of admins + the fediverse in general. Made uptime badges that some instances use, a linking system so you can link to something that sends people to the copy of it on their own instance, and a gui for fediseer which a bunch of admins use to keep track of defederations + endorsements (defeds with hexbear + rqd2)
    • hakase@lemm.eeEnglish
      13·
      10 months ago

      I chose lemm.ee because of how rarely it defederates, and I’m not aware of any major controversy with it. Blahaj is still federated, as is hexbear, lemmygrad, and beehaw. For those who want to curate their own instance experience, I’m not currently aware of a better home (though if anyone knows of one, definitely let me know, of course!).

        • hakase@lemm.eeEnglish
          15·
          10 months ago

          ?? I was suggesting it for the user above, who specifically mentioned wanting instances that weren’t quick to defederate.

          • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            3·
            10 months ago

            I had a very similar comment in this thread and while being tired AF I replied to your suggestion

            Maybe I thought it was a reply to my comment? IDK. I was tired AF.

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        I have an alt there, but there have been some availability issues lately. Is it better now?

        • hakase@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          10 months ago

          The server was upgraded this past week actually, and I haven’t had any problems since.

      • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
        1·
        10 months ago

        ee is one of my favorite instances because their users will occasional wander into a lemmygrad thread and get shocked as shit.