edit: As I’m seeing a lot of worry about the impact this will/could have on the community, please be assured we have the same mod team, and will be holding the community to the same standards. the same things that were always allowed will continue to be allowed and the same things that got things removed before will continue to get things removed before. Lemmy.world admins have agreed to allow us to run our community on our terms.
It is my pleasure to announce that effective immediately, we are transferring our community to Lemmy.world! This has been a few months in the making, so my entire mod team is already on board.
FAQ:
Why?
That’s a complicated question with a long answer! The primary difference is moderatorial and ideologial differences between my team and Ada’s excellent team of admins. We are on good terms with Ada and her team, and have gotten her consent to do this. In addition to this, we have had ongoing issues with federation and moderation that has caused a subpar experience for many people on other instances.
How does this work?
Currently, as there is not an easy way to transfer an entire community (trust me, we checked), we are locking the community as mod-only, and moving our focus to the 196 on lemmy.world. For you guys, functionally nothing has changed.
What about the posts?
Well, we tried to transfer them, but there was no real way to do so without absolutely destroying lemmy.world’s federation. For this reason, we are simply archiving this community as mod-only. Everything is staying up, you just won’t be able to post new content. Comments are still enabled, so we will continue to check our modlogs for some time after the transfer has settled.
As for the posts on lemmy.world’s 196, we’re leaving those up too. From this point onwards, all posts made to that community are beholden to the rules you are all used to, but anything pre-existing is getting grandfathered in.

IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY OTHER QUESTIONS, PLEASE PUT THEM IN THE COMMENTS OF THIS POST, AND I’LL DO MY BEST TO ANSWER THEM.
Once again, here’s the link to our new apartment of awesome. (universal: !196@lemmy.world)

142 points
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I strongly disagree with this decision and the reasoning behind it. Blahaj is, in my opinion, the best place for this community specifically because of the strong moderation and policies of Ada and other admins here.

Lemmy.world is also the worst instance I can think of outside of the big three tankie instances. It contributes further to the centralization of Lemmy as a whole (since 196 has been one of the most active communities on the entire platform). In my opinion, the .world crowd’s liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.

I’d have rather seen Blahaj defederate from .world than 196 move there, even if it meant less content and engagement. At least the cultural values of the community wouldn’t have been compromised.

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46 points

Yeah, here come the shitlibs and sealions, I guess.

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10 points

Genuinely clueless here: what are sealions in this context?

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22 points

It’s a term in online parlance that makes reference to a comic, and it means someone who intrudes into someone else’s space and derails their conversations under the pretext of civil disagreement.

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15 points

People who argue in bad faith while trying to maintain an aura of civility. The whole “I’m just asking questions” bs that tries to win by baiting you into getting angry.

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35 points

Weren’t .world admins also banning references to jury nullification and jokes about Luigi Mangioni killing more CEO’s?

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12 points

Hard agree, 100%. If they want to jump ship, fine, but scorched earthing the old 196 is bullshit.

So I made !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone

We’ll see how it goes!

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10 points

Agreed, this is an awful decision

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-13 points

In my opinion, the .world crowd’s liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.

I haven’t noticed this, personally. But even if that’s true, the way I see it, having more explicitly left-leaning communities can only help remedy that issue.

At least the cultural values of the community wouldn’t have been compromised.

The only thing that’s changing is our location. Our moderation policies are staying the same and I don’t expect any significant changes in the types of users coming into this community. And if we do get an influx of bad actors or trolls, we’ll do what we’ve always done and remove them.

The only difference for you guys is going to be what’s written after the @ symbol.

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37 points

The only thing that’s changing is our location. Our moderation policies are staying the same

That’s pretty rich, since the .world admins just very recently made a statement where they proudly wanted to force every mod to change their policies. Including the statement that mods would be forced to follow their new rules.

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-7 points

They rescinded that statement, which I think is a good sign. We gave them feedback and they listened.

The policy was obviously flawed, but I think the spirit of the post was valid. Instances like .ml have major censorship problems, and if they want to be the opposite of them then that’s great.

I haven’t interacted with the LW admins much, but I’m confident that they’ll be more flexible than LBZ if they do end up taking issue with our mod actions. But I don’t think it’ll come to that anyways.

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28 points

In my opinion, the .world crowd’s liberal and pro-colonialist/capitalist tendencies are a terrible fit for this community.

I haven’t noticed this, personally.

This is a pretty alarming sign for where lemmy.world/c/196 is headed tbh and it leads me to believe that what you’re calling “heavy-handed” moderation on Ada’s part is actually just her being able to notice shit that you don’t.

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7 points
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I dislike most big .world communities and the centralization of Lemmy, but I’m glad you guys feel confident in your ability to cultivate the same community in a larger and less curated space.

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120 points

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119 points

To be honest, I think a big part of the 196 identity is that it comes from blahaj. Maybe the move will prove me wrong, but I can’t imagine the energy will be the same.

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-17 points
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We did want to stay in LBZ, but Ada wasn’t willing to compromise with us. Which is her right, and we respect it.

I don’t think the energy will be any different, though.

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70 points

Compromise on what? What’s the issue?

The post doesn’t really say anything spesific

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-6 points

Heavy-handed moderation, mostly. Don’t get me wrong, we do love Ada and appreciate her work, but sometimes we’ll see people getting banned or comments getting removed for relatively mild takes. We also often disagreed about the severity of the actions, like ban lengths being way too long considering the reason, or people getting banned over something that really should just be a removal.

To put it bluntly, (and I mean no disrespect, but) her mod actions often felt very vibes-based. Like her feelings heavily influenced her decisions. We want the rules to be enforced in a more objective fashion.

So we asked her to let us handle 196 if the content in question wasn’t explicitly trans/queerphobic or illegal, etc… She disagreed, and we respect her view, so we brought up the idea of moving and she gave us her blessing.

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3 points

I’ll hope it still stays a similar space 🤞

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-4 points

I don’t think this is entirely accurate, there were multiple factors at play

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106 points

I’m gonna be honest, my first response to reading this headline & image, as well as the small snippet of the body visible from my app’s home page, was “huh, bit early for an April Fool’s Day joke”. It would have been surprising enough if the move has been anywhere, but LW is the last non-tankie instance I would have expected, given the modding/admin drama they’ve been through recently.

I’m guessing LW was chosen because there’s a pre-existing (if inactive) community there already?

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-17 points
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I’m not familiar with this drama. Lemmy.world was chosen because they have the resources to support another major community, their rules (as far as I am aware) align with ours, and they agreed to let us moderate our community by our rules with minimal interference.

surprising

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107 points

Instead of making a unilateral decision on behalf of all of the members of this community without any kind of consultation, why don’t you move to L.W and allow people who do want to be here, who do want to be subject to the moderation rules of this instance, to step in and take the reins?

I say unlock the community and appoint a new mod team. Who said you could just close the whole community, just because you’ve volunteered to take out the trash?

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58 points

yeah i’m tending to agree with this, especially as i’m skeptical that the culture will remain the same on lemmy.world. would be nice to have a fallback plan; and, indeed, this whole plan seems to have been orchestrated without consulting the community much at all

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106 points

We joined this community because its on blahaj.zone.

We’re not moving

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54 points

Seriously. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea should leave the community, so ultimately this may be a good thing, so long as this community is kept here and passed to other people.

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