You can find further details on how the survey was conducted here (yes I was drunk the whole time). 158 people responded yes or maybe. Noticed the survey here recently and wanted to share.
That's not a thing, people are allowed to be on multiple instances, if they weren't that would go against the free and open nature of the Fediverse don't you think?
At risk of starting it back up again by oversimplifying, there was a contingent of Hexbear users starting shit over here and claiming blahaj was transphobic because they didn’t believe the admins responded to reports fast enough (ie, while they were asleep in Australia). When the admins polled the blahaj user base on whether or not we wanted to defederate and it became obvious that the majority of users wanted to defederate, Hexbear decided to declare that to “protect their users from transphobia” they would take their ball and leave first defederate from blahaj. Part of this was trying to convince everyone on their way out the door that all the trans users should migrate to Hexbear, because they’re soooo much less transphobic 🙄
It left a really nasty taste in my mouth and I trust very little about anyone that comes here talking positively about Hexbear given how absolutely shit flinging the whole thing was. If you want to view it in more detail the relevant threads are in !main@lemmy.blahaj.zone if you go back far enough.
Ughhhh I hate trans infighting. Why'd they have to be asses.
And geez, that's the dumbest complaint. The blahaj admins clearly try hard to do their jobs. What did they expect them to do, never sleep? Entitled behavior. If they want things done faster, they should have offered to help or find help.
At the risk of an argument, I don't think its entitled to want an extremely secure place that catches transphobia almost instantly. Trans people imo deserve a place that is theirs. A lot of people in the trans community are very suicidal and deal with a lot of pain and isolation IRL, having a community to go to where they don't have to interact with transphobic bullshit, concern trolling, etc. is a good way to make these people feel more connected and find ways to build support (cheers intro begins playing). There's a lot of ways to make sure this happens, for instance, good mod tools, bots catching bad behavior, an aggressively supportive userbase, and massive mod teams.
Also, Hexbear isn't just an instance, we regularly do mutual aid. I've personally helped 3 homeless trans people get housing via hexbear. And of course I really hope blahaj can do similar too. Its always great to have a backup if something implodes, and its even better if its not a corporate controlled community.
Entitled wasn't the right word for me to use. I meant moreso that it's not wholly realistic. I agree with you that trans people deserve a place to not see that stuff, but I've had times where I've removed comments the second it was posted and two days later I'd still be getting reports because of third party readers with slower refresh rates.
Everybody's working hard to get this place modded more efficiently. This community is only about two months old so we're still trying to figure things out. Most of the stuff that I've had to remove on here requires more investigation than your typical auto mod can catch, although we do have an auto blacklist flagging system. I do want to ensure that this is a safe place for trans people to express themselves.
I'm glad that hexbear has been able to help people out with mutual aid. I passionately believe in the concept of mutual aid. We recently had someone who very well could have ended up homeless and in danger but the community pulled together to get them financial help and a place to stay. I hope that similar outcomes can happen for people who are in need in the future. We have a support network and community in the works right now.
Everybody’s working hard to get this place modded more efficiently. This community is only about two months old so we’re still trying to figure things out. Most of the stuff that I’ve had to remove on here requires more investigation than your typical auto mod can catch, although we do have an auto blacklist flagging system. I do want to ensure that this is a safe place for trans people to express themselves.
Yeah my advice would be to just regularly ask if anyone wants to mod, imo. Makes the community more active as a whole because more people get more invested.
I’m glad that hexbear has been able to help people out with mutual aid. I passionately believe in the concept of mutual aid. We recently had someone who very well could have ended up homeless and in danger but the community pulled together to get them financial help and a place to stay.
Yeah I saw that. Was gonna reply myself but looked like the situation was handled. A lot of people really get the concept of mutual aid wrong, some people think its just charity. But no, helping out homeless people means they can also help others in turn. I hooked one of the homeless trans folks I met up with a commune that needed a cook, the people there had missing arms and stuff but had an extra room. So the homeless trans person learned how to cook and everything is going peachy and cute!
I love talking to people all the time so one of the side benefits is I sometimes know people with extra rooms that can help out like this.
I'll give you the elevator pitch version, because it was a whole thing. In short, Blahaj was one of the first instances that hexbear federated with when they enabled federation. But then they encountered the 196 community, which is very anti hexbear/tankies. A huge fight erupted, with dogpiles and harassment. We talked about defederating hexbear, but they defederated from us before we could.
Dang...I did see a lot of tankie shit in the meta thread. That's too bad it happened like that. Always makes me sad when there's infighting among trans people.
as a mod of c/traa on hexbear, yeah if it were me id love to just to link all the trans comms together. having them all split just increases workload and burnout on trans mods of all instances dealing with transphobia and spreads out the trans community too much. this is why we have 23 mods on c/traa, to spread out the annoyance and remove bad content before any vulnerable people see it. we usually remove bad stuff within 5 minutes, no matter the timezone. its also more democratic, less cliquey, and we regularly ask people to mod with no requirement other than being trans/adjacent. in fact, if you asked to mod on c/traa id add you in a heartbeat
there were also some significant issues with dm harassment from 196 users towards trans women, and we're extremely overprotective of our vulnerable users so we're much more likely to pull the plug on federation than other instances if even a few infractions have happened without people being banned/posts removed from that instance.
if it was possible to federate with only the trans communities here, i feel like everyone would agree with it.
That sucks that happened with 196. I blocked it pretty much the day I got Lemmy because I found the content annoying. It seems so out of place on this instance. My experience on here has been good so far.
I agree with you that most people would want to unite if it were only the trans communities on here. The more people, the more support and resources.
Grain of salt: the Hexbear admins fail to mention any “DM harassment of trans women” (from 196 or blahaj) in their defederation announcement, which seems like a huge detail to leave out if you’re defederating over alleged transphobia.
And spinning stuff like that is why I don’t trust people trying to upsell Hexbear 🤷♂️
Grain of salt: the Hexbear admins fail to mention any “DM harassment of trans women” (from 196 or blahaj) in their defederation announcement, which seems like a huge detail to leave out if you’re defederating over alleged transphobia.
Most defederation announcements don't usually assign a cause, a user usually requests it in a thread and then the admins bring it to a vote if it gets enough attention. I personally voted to stay with blahaj but with the addendum that we ban all regular 196 posters and mods. If you search around you can see a handful of people posting personal experiences with harassment from 196 here. Its been a long time but I recall getting sexually harassed as well, though that user did eventually get banned here much later.
Out of the hundred or so very active trans commenters, only 5 voted to stay federated with blahaj, me included. Though some trans people were very hurt by this, so ultimately I was fine with defed, I voted to stay federated mostly for trans unity reasons.
I would say you can check my post history if you want details, but it was a pretty divisive and heated disagreement about whether we would continue to be federated or not with them. There were a lot of reasons though.
i don’t see any rules against defederation evading. i do think it’s kinda weird of OP to post this here though. why not poll blahaj zone? like what is the goal here lol
edit: oops there was a recent parallel blahaj zone poll that i missed, makes a bit more sense
You're right. This instance doesn't actually have rules per se. And their interface is a bit different than others so I'm only mostly sure hexbear is defederated.