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.
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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.
You can always make another account (on another instance) to view content from defederated instances.
I’m not all that sad to see them go, honestly. I think proactively taking action against instances who tolerate or perpetuate transphobia is a good thing for an instance made to be safe for trans people.
The admin could just as easily respond to all of this, there’s no way he isn’t aware, but he has thus far chosen not to.Edit: misunderstood that there was only one lead admin of the programming.dev instance.
We have been talking about it internally currently (+ was talking with ada). I’m planning to do a post tomorrow
Ah, I see your comment explaining how the administration of the instance is set up. I thought there was one lead admin, but my knowledge on that comes entirely from the thread on the transfem community. Pardon my ignorance on that point. I’m glad to hear that you’re in talks internally and with Ada. No one likes defederation, but I do understand why in this situation, some kind of action was warranted. Hopefully everything can be sorted out.