Mods vs. Community: The 196 Migration Meltdown
Mods vs. Community: The 196 Migration Meltdown
This was originally posted as a comment response in !asklemmy@lemmy.world.
Back in December, the instance hosting 196 (lemmy.blahaj.zone) announced that, as part of its mission as a trans-friendly space, harassment based on gender or neopronouns would remain** prohibited—even if the user in question was suspected of being a troll. Users were asked to disengage, block, and report suspected trolling behavior rather than bring harassment into a community already vulnerable to that kind of bullying.
There was a small backlash to the policy from some users. This led to a number of “toe the line” posts that weren’t outright gender-based harassment but strongly signaled an intent to misgender or harass in the future. Blahaj admins promptly removed all offending comments during this wave of dissent.
Important to note: The majority of the Blahaj and 196 users supported the policy, upvoting and praising the admins for creating a safe space for trans individuals.
By January, the backlash had mostly subsided, and the trolls causing issues had moved on. While the 196 moderators, including @moss and their team, did agree with the specific neopronouns policy, they remained unhappy with the broader policy of respect for trans identities. They cited “personal differences” and expressed discontent with instances where Blahaj admins directly removed comments which harassed or openly expressed intent to harass trans identities, feeling that it overstepped their role.*
Yesterday, @moss and the 196 moderation team enacted a major decision without consulting the community. They locked !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone and instructed users to move to !196@lemmy.world.
This move was extremely unpopular. Many users strongly dislike lemmy.world for various reasons (a complicated topic better unpacked elsewhere). The announcement post was met with widespread backlash, and @moss eventually locked it. In response, a few users created a new community on Blahaj: !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone. The new community quickly grew in size and activity, with most users opting to stay on Blahaj rather than migrate to lemmy.world.
It’s clear @moss and the 196 moderators underestimated the community’s attachment to its home on Blahaj. By attempting to uproot the group without input, they alienated much of the community. As a result, most users have moved to the new Blahaj-hosted community, which has already become the more active space.
TL;DR:
@Moss and the 196 mod team tried to move the community to lemmy.world without consulting anyone. The decision was extremely unpopular, leading to backlash and the creation of a new Blahaj-hosted community that most users now prefer.
*This paragraph has been edited after receiving correction or clarification from @A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world. You can find that discussion here.
**”Remain” being the key word here. Blahaj has openly held the same trans-focused policies as always, and the admin Ada was simply reasserting her position here.
As soon as I saw "neopronouns", I instantly knew it was more dragonfucker bullshit. Still shake my head to see milquetoast blahaj admins catering to his transphobic trolling.
Pronouns aren't something people deserve or not based on their behaviour.
That's definitely an opinion that you have made. One that I'm sure many admins at blahaj share.
This kind of thing needs to happen way more often.
Moderators don't "own" the communities they host. They're just taking responsibility for the space. I actually really wish that their effort was rewarded with more of recognition and less of headache, but the answer to that is certainly not to say that they are the "boss" of the users in that community, and the users need to do what they say.
It's especially hilarious for 196 because they weren't actually taking on the moderation responsibility. Ada was. So they just wanted to show up and be the boss without doing anything in particular to help anybody. I hope the new community finds blahaj-native moderators and they find some fulfillment in keeping the space healthy and organized.
Moderators don't "own" the communities they host. They're just taking responsibility for the space.
The problem is that, as encoded, moderators do "lease" the space from admins. There isn't a system built into Lemmy where qualified users can demote moderators. Hell, the Lemmy devs implemented Reddit's ranking based on time seniority.
The only difference between Reddit and Lemmy is that Lemmy admins aren't held to the policy of relative non interference that Reddit holds itself to.
I think the key phrase is "the consent of the governed."
It makes perfect sense to let someone step up who wants to take charge of removing spam, keeping the article titles consistent, that kind of thing. It involves them "taking control" of the community to some extent, even overriding some individual people on some issues sometimes, but that's fine. For as long as what they're implementing is actually what the free people inhabiting the community are mostly in favor of, it's fine.
Once the mods decide that they're now the boss of the community, and the software system gives them controls they can use to override the consensus of the community because all those free people are now in "their" place, it's a problem. Honestly, even the solution of everyone just wandering over to some new place instead is a little bit imperfect. To me it would be better if the people in the community had some more direct control over what's going on with the moderation. But certainly, that's a vital check on the ability of moderators to start running the place like a little kingdom.
There isn't a system built into Lemmy where qualified users can demote moderators.
As much as I agree that there is a very large degree of similarity between Lemmy and Reddit, there is though: community members can appeal to an admin, and there is also the "owner" level even above that, if not the same. You really wouldn't even want to go above that, bc if someone pays for a machine then to some degree it really truly is "theirs", unless you go down a few levels and do what the 196 members did: just flat walk out and go elsewhere:-).
Also, PieFed has some really interesting ideas for democratization of moderation where instead of the purely binary "remove" vs. "allow", power is placed into the hands of individual community members to tweak the settings to get the kind of experience that they want. e.g. posts below a voting threshold can be automatically collapsed, or even hidden altogether, thus allowing the entirety of a community to make that decision for someone, if they want, or the user can not use that feature and preserve the ability to read the content - again, unlike a mod decision that must either preserve the content in its entirety or else remove it altogether, without capability to provide such nuances. Additionally, there are other factors such as labels that can be placed onto user accounts ("new user <2 weeks old", "has >10x more downvotes than upvotes", "posts but never comments or votes so looks like an unregistered bot account", etc.), plus you can define your own emoji labels to help remind you not to engage or something.
I don't know if or when we'll ever see such on Lemmy, which was written by authoritarians for their own purposes, and we are merely allowed to use their software. If we want differently though, we'll need to create it. As K/Mbin, PieFed, and Sublinks are doing!:-)
For anyone thinking "it's their community, they can do what they want with it. Start your own if you disagree":
A lot of users (including myself) believe that a community fundamentally belongs to said community. It's not so much "you need to ask for permission to do X" but more like "is this what the community itself wants?"
Of course, not everything can be solved by community consensus, but to me, a community is nothing without the members. And if the members want X, Y or Z, provided it's within instance rules, moderators should help facilitate that.
I don't remember who said it, but the "community members are not cattle that you can just move around" seemed fit
Precisely. Add to this that 196 has history that precedes both Lemmy and Blahaj zone. The 196 community is a group of humans with their own wills and values, irreverent to any mod or leader.
196 chose Blahaj and Ada. The mod team should have respected that.
They certainly don't seem to see it that way, from this comment:
we aren’t stealing your community. the people who built and facilitated this community are the people who are migrating this community.
We were so aggrieved by the lack of communication that we decided to proceed with our incredibly drastic reaction without communicating to anyone ...
However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy.
None of us disagreed with this policy, and Drag was not banned over neopronouns. Drag was banned for an egregious level of harassment of another user + encouraging violence from and the suicide of trans people.
If y'all think that's acceptable behavior, that's fine, but keep it the fuck away from us. Half of the mod team is trans, and we don't need that shit in our lives.
I don't see drag mentioned in the explanation post on the community this is about; what's the connection to the situation the OP is about?
However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy.
Not a single mod disagreed with this policy. While I'm sure it wasn't her intention, Ada's post certainly made it seem like it, though. You wouldn't believe how many times I've had to tell people why Drag was banned after she posted it.
hey there, just wanted to add that while the majority of this post is relatively accurate, my team and I never did and never will have any issue with transgender identities. Being both nonbinary and medically transfeminine myself, the idea that I would take any action based out of hate for my fellow trans people is appalling. If you would like a more accurate idea of why we took the actions we did, and why we reversed them, please see this post.
Absolutely agree. You and your team do not have issue with transgender identities—yet you do take issue with Ada’s policies surrounding dignity in transgender identities.
If you feel any of my post is inappropriately targeted at your personal beliefs rather than your attitudes towards policy, you may absolutely let me know or suggest a better wording. I never intend to skew the truth, but I also feel a duty to my fellow community members to accurately portray why your team does not align with 196’s wills and needs.
Great write up, very clear! Fediverse for the win here 😎
Lemmy is eating itself. ….. pure teen drama
disagree, i see no loss of value or community here. a mod team that doesn’t represent the will of its community was ousted. that’s the story.
i guess if “democracy” is pure teen drama to you, then sure.
Viva la onehundredninetysix!
And now !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone seems to have been unlocked.
too bad there’s already a better one 😸😼
People now want the mods to step down. Mods disagree
Now if only Blahaj would use this opportunity to reconcile with hexbear. Probably won't tho
Blahaj is a trans instance and its users probably don't want to be told that Russia and China are great. That would be pretty invalidating to queer identities.
Hexbear is also a very trans instance, do their queer identities not count?
/c/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns@hexbear.net
Like???
Second drama arc