An admin of this instance, Nutomic, is a transphobe and has no right to be able to ban trans people from this community.
I'm calling for https://lemmy.ml/u/[email protected], the most prolific user of the transgender comm here on lemmy.ml, to be immediately unbanned and nutomic to be removed as admin. It is good and correct to leak the DMs of transphobes.
non-trans person sharing their perhaps invalid and uninformed opinions
As someone who was calling for easing up on dogpiling on nutomic in that thread, banning beaver here, and the instance, is IMO not ok, at all.
Nutomic, you were probably pissed off about the leaking, I think most would get that. But as an admin here and a core dev, I think you have to do way way better than use your admin rights here as a weapon against someone you no longer like and who posted on another instance. If you think there’s a situation to sort out, it’s gotta be done more openly than this.
Rule 1 of this instance (against transphobia) probably applies.
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
As in, this moderation action was likely against instance rules. How else is a minority community to combat their oppressors than post about what ever communication they receive? To punish them for that communication however inappropriate it would have been from a less oppressed person is therefore punishing them and then coming under rule 1.
There were plenty of other ways to handle this. Banning a user looks a lot like petty and unreliable admin-ing. Especially when the issue of whether you are a transphobe is on the table and instead of addressing that you’ve chosen use your power against the transgender community here.
I get that leaking personal chats is always a dodgy thing, but in this case, I really hope the lemmy ml admins sort this out.
It’s really bad to weaponise admin powers against an oppressed minority. Certainly makes me question my membership here and the admins values. And is a particularly bad look for an instance many are criticising for having power crazy admins, most of which is red scare crap but totally justified in this case I suspect.
[I'm neither transgender nor a tankie, but instead just a rando browsing "all" who has no dog in this fight (aside from a general preference toward egalitarianism and against bigotry). I'm only commenting because this appears to be starting to spill over into issues that are relevant to the Fediverse at large.]
Nutomic, you were probably pissed off about the leaking, I think most would get that.
Hell no, not even a little bit! There's no such thing as "leaking" a PM* because the recipient has the right to publicize it! It's fucking nuts to send a message to somebody -- especially one that pisses them off -- and then expect them to keep it secret for the sender's benefit. If the sender doesn't like it, his recourse is to not fucking send the message in the first place!
The notion that the recipient of a PM has any kind of obligation toward the sender is the dumbest fucking thing I've read on this site in a while, and that's saying a lot since I've been reading about Trump and shit. Actually going so far as to ban somebody for a reason so pants-on-head moronic is absolutely beyond the pale.
By the way, I'm assuming that you (@maegal) are saying things like "I get that leaking personal chats is always a dodgy thing" because you're trying to be charitable to better persuade Nutomic. If you actually believe that nonsense, then you need to get your head screwed on correctly, too.
(* unless somebody hacks the server to obtain PMs that he wasn't a party to, which I assume is not what we're talking about here.)
In saying “always a dodgy thing” I meant something closer to “always potentially” where obviously it depends with transphobic messages being a relevant example.
That being said, I think this is a scenario where people will naturally differ in their expectations. “Obligation” as you put it is a very strong word and nothing like what I was alluding to. But I think many would subscribe to the idea that direct messages are a relatively protected space. Some less so. All with exceptions and “lines” that probably differ too. I briefly asked someone I consider more ethical than me, and they were probably more inclined to think of DMs as protected than me. Obviously no excuse for abuse, but presumed private.
I also suspect that there are generational differences here too. Older people whose Internet lives precede facebook’s push toward merging real and online life might have a greater inclination toward expecting privacy online.
In this particular case, it was clearly devs/mods talking shop, so clearly less of a public discussion. But you never know. Maybe nutomic felt like they could share their more speculative “theories”without worrying about coming off as crazy. Dunno.
Personally, I’d like a culture where DMs are presumed protected and private. But maybe that’s just me.
Maybe it's worse on ML instances. I honestly would start explaining it by looking at how much red-scare crap they go through.
But generally, I think you're right ... I've seen ban-happy mods too, and not on ML instances.
I'd say it's people learning how to manage decentralisation/federation. It gives people a greater sense of ownership and power and so you get some power tripping and a new source of drama and identity politics (based on instances). Kinda sad actually.
Hexbear is 100% the safest for trans people on the fediverse, I definitely suggest heading there if you want a safer place. Its admin'd by a lot of trans people and has an extremely active trans community with thousands of comments and messages per day
I'm on lemmy.ml because I like checking all trans spaces on the fediverse, but obviously with a transphobe in charge that makes that harder. Of course, that also means wading through a lot of horseshit from transphobic trolls, which I'm hoping to help with
I'm just an occasional lurker here so I'm pretty out of the loop, but wouldn't it make more sense to just migrate to an instance without an openly transphobic admin? Isn't being able to do that supposed to be one of the big advantages of a federated service?
There's also the issue of Nutomic being a core Lemmy dev. While something can be said about detaching the art from the artist, having alleged* bigots be involved in the long-term planning of a project raises question of whether they'll let those opinions influence the direction of the project. For example, if somebody created a pull request to add pronouns to user profiles and it was rejected, would it be for a valid technical reason or bigotry with plausible deniability.
* I say this because I'm not looking to get instance banned at this time.
Unfortunately, there's no friction-free way to migrate. On Mastodon, for example, you can migrate between instances by exchanging codes between your old and new accounts and, in time, your posts, comments, memberships, followers, etc will move across automatically. On Lemmy, however, that's not an option and you start from fresh with on the new instance.
You can import/export settings (which includes which communities you follow). Although I've heard some instances have issues and it doesn't include you posts/comments/etc.
Apologies, I just woke and can’t quite sort all the details. But I’m on the side of anyone who promotes acceptance. I’m against anyone who is a bigot. I support safe and welcoming communities.
man "leaked private messages" is such a weak fucking excuse in the face of transphobia. @[email protected] you realize you're just alienating a huge fucking number of comrades? not just trans people, but all those that rightfully stand with us too.
edit:
nutomic you absolutely can come back from this if you don't double down. accept your shit, and work on it. and you know what that would be great to see, there's not enough of that in the world.
if not then @[email protected] and other core devs, i think you have a tough decision to make. i absolutely do not envy you. though do keep in mind that handling this correctly will solidify even tighter community support behind the Lemmy project.
we need more good comrades behind ActivityPub development :p
Agreeing with you here, I’m wondering if this can spawn a broader project to try to alter the relationship between the admins, mods and users.
More and better feedback loops and grassroots organisation and less “admins and mods own this, take it or leave it” culture.
In the end, I think this comes down to poor admin/mod practice and poor community leadership where many of the users here would just like to make sure things are better.
It seems a strange distinction to say one person is a creator and another is the co-creator. Kind of by definition, that makes both people co-creators.
Though to be fair, there's a good chance that your pleas are not heeded here and that the admins do close ranks (I'm hoping some form of correction occurs, becuase it's pretty obviously a petty and personal ban). Point being, you and this community may want to (if you/they aren't already) think about what you want to do should they ignore you here.
Also, in the proof you provided ... it's important to note that they banned beaver from the whole instance. You'll see bans from a whole bunch of communities as well as a general in the modlog: https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=9782557
They're a core dev, yes, but not the creator AFAIU, that's dessalines who started the project. Nutomic joined pretty early though and is a major contributor to the project yes. I think they've been happy to counter each other's behaviour whenever it made sense in the past.
edit: assumed this was a different word, gah. Leaving for context.
removed
I'm guessing what you said here, but you should think about if using such words as insults might hurt bystanders.
example of ablest language
like could you see how calling someone a pathetic cripple might make physically handicapped people upset? Kinda similar with insulting someone's intelligence. Just something to think about.
I suggest lemm.ee. Extremely chill, no politics (on an instance level anyways), few blocked instances except the troll ones, stable, ^also ^no ^stupid ^hexbear ^emojis.
I just think it's sort of interesting that this particular event is what has clued some people into the fact that a not insignificant portion of the online leftist community views LGBT issues in the context of this geopolitical campism. These are the same attitudes which cause some in the community to routinely look past other notable anti-LGBT groups on the international stage, simply because they stand in opposition to bigger bads. These attitudes have never been hidden, and I have always thought they were expressed and supported with a startling lack of nuance and consideration for the people who are actually injured by them.
I think you are close to getting it but not quite.
the online leftist community views LGBT issues in the context of this geopolitical campism
Most of the online left oppose, say, Russia's LGBT laws. Do we think its grounds for invading Russia? No, bombs do not discriminate against queers, transgender people will be drafted and forced to detransition, supply lines for necessary medicine for trans people are disrupted, if that is the cause of war there will be pogroms, etc.
Nutomic and ilk like him are ultimately not very ideological and not very well read. They like a corner of a pretty picture but do not see the whole, these people should not be given any position over others.
Hexbear hasn't really faded, their trans megathread hits 2-3k comments regularly, so it is very relevant to trans affairs on lemmy. They have an extremely active trans community and are very supportive of them, going so far as defederating from problematic instances that have a lot of people that harass trans people on them.
Its a more strict community that doesn't fuck with the wider fediverse on purpose, they care about their queer users. And 66% of hexbear is queer, by the way, and about half are trans.
Yeah well you're not in control of that guy's servers. He can do what he wants. Why stay? Staying defeats the point of the fediverse. Why give him the time of day?
As a non-trans (IE, not having direct personal stakes as others would) ... two salient issues here for me are:
Ensuring consistency between admin actions and instance rules and culture
Creating a culture of and expectations around reasonably holding admins/mods to account for their conduct. Overzealous and personal admin/mod actions are a cancer for group-based social media platforms like this. Simply moving is one possible course of action, but a damaging one. Creating feedback loops between users and mods, IMO, is a better way to go, and so trying for that here is worthwhile.
I'm not saying it doesn't suck. I'm saying you can't police this guy's server. He does that. You literally physically cannot. Moving away isn't damaging to you. It's damaging to him. These instances live off the community just like Reddit.
As Marx and Lenin said in Chapter 7 of "Marxu no Leninu kotaku tokadimasai": "uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu transphobia is based uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu uwu"