If so, was it polled somewhere?
They’re abrasive enough that they couldn’t even get along with lemmy.blahaj.zone, a dedicated LGBT friendly instance ran by several trans women, out of accusations of said admins being transphobic
I’m transfemme, and I was repeatedly misgendered as a “guy” and a “dude” by a user I warned the admins was transphobic. They ignored the problem completely.
Also can’t forget them getting offended over /c/196 because they have a “no tankies” rule, which apparently is a slur for them
196 is by far the main community on blåhaj, and their banner basically says “no hexbears.”
Also, trans hexbear users gave examples where they were bothered by chasers in 196, and felt not enough mod action was taken to control chasers there. I’m sympathetic to Ada, blåhaj’s admin, I think she really means well and I get that she might not want to rock the boat when the community in question is most of her site. But I don’t think hexbear’s reasons for defederating are that absurd.
I’m sympathetic to Ada, blåhaj’s admin, I think she really means well and I get that she might not want to rock the boat when the community in question is most of her site. But I don’t think hexbear’s reasons for defederating are that absurd.
This accusation always confuses me. Blahaj zone was around for half a year before the reddit migration, long before 196 was on lemmy and we did fine without them. They’re here not because they wield crazy power, but because they’re a queer lead community, with a strong queer user base. That means they have a home with us, because creating spaces for communities like that is the reason Blahaj Lemmy exists in the first place
The truth is, the hexbear admins asked me to talk to the 196 mod team and ask them to remove the “no tankies” rule, because hexbear users wanted to be part of 196. I told them to talk to the mods of the community directly, because I’m not going to force political opinions on a queer, trans fem lead community.
The 196 mods rejected the hexbear request, and like that, the hexbear narrative changed, and suddenly their users no longer wanted to join 196, claiming that it is transphobic and unsafe. So either they don’t believe what they are saying about safety, or they do believe it but were fine with that state of affairs before the 196 mods denied their request.
Either way, part of their narrative change involved painting 196 as being both harmful and unassailable, with blahaj admins being unable to act out of fear of loss of the community.
From my perspective, the biggest harm to trans people in all of this isn’t a trans fem lead community with politics that run counter to hexbear, but rather, the ongoing demonising and dogpiling of specific trans folk and trans communities by the hexbear community.
I think she really means well and I get that she might not want to rock the boat
This is also an interesting part of the ongoing narrative. It’s not a co-incidence that I’m being painted as naïve; well meaning but ultimately ill equipped to deal with moderating a large community. It allows people to attack me without attacking me.
The truth is though, I’ve been moderating online spaces and building and developing communities online and offline for nearly 30 years. I’ve managed tiny communities, and communities with hundreds of thousands of users.
You can disagree with my choices, but the narrative that they are naïve and ill informed is simply a tool to trigger an emotional response in people, to develop sympathy for the hexbear claims, to undermine my perceived competence, without them having to outright demonise me.
It’s a cheap tactic, and and a cheap tactic typically used to undermine women in positions of responsibility at that.