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.
I'm not sure what you're confused about, honestly.
People harassed Drag and that wasn't okay, but during the backlash you mentioned in your post, many people pointed out that Drag had a legitimate history of "trolling", the most egregious of which was telling someone repeatedly to kill themselves, along with general calls for violence from and the suicide of trans people. We banned Drag for this.
So when Ada made her post, it looked like she was calling us out for labeling Drag a troll, and indeed that is the narrative a lot of you ran with.
So now that you've had a hand in perpetuating this misunderstanding, I'd appreciate it if you set the record straight. Because frankly, I'm sick of people like you labeling me and the other mods as bigots. I'm sick of you guys putting words in our mouths. If you're going to make a "writeup" about us, then tell them the real reason we wanted to leave LBZ.
?
So I actually agree with everything you wrote here except that “that is the narrative a lot of you ran with.” I didn’t. And I told off everyone who did. I appreciated you banning Drag for the user’s disgusting behavior. You did the right thing. Ada was calling out commenters who were using harassment and misgendering to combat trolls. Most that were mad were upset at Ada. Few to none interpereted that as a diss on you. Certainly not me.
You are getting pretty acerbic about this already so if you do respond please be chill. But I would encourage you to engage with the concept that this wasn’t even about you until you made it that way by locking the community.
In general, this is showing me that you just really never even had a finger on the pulse of your own former community, so I think this has all been for the best.
You literally just told everybody that the mods disagreed with the neopronouns policy that Ada created over the Drag drama. None of us did, and it had nothing to do with why we wanted to move.
I understand that you don't want to feel like you're in the wrong, but you are. You are putting words in our mouths and we're being labeled bigots because of it.
Hey I just wanted to say I empathize with how stressful this situation must be for all of you & i can see that you all had good intentions at heart when doing this. Everybody makes mistakes & I feel bad about how much venom you guys have gotten. Yes the community should have been consulted, but also you're just people and no one is perfect.
I hope you all are staying healthy & aren't letting this get to you too much 💜
Thank you. It's been...a wild couple of days haha.
I appreciate this a lot
I can only imagine, big drama like this is never fun lol.
Heres to hoping this blows over quick & something else captures the attention of the lemmiverse