this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
41 points (68.1% liked)

Ye Power Trippin' Bastards

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360 users here now

This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.

Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.


Posting Guidelines

All posts should follow this basic structure:

  1. Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
  2. What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
  3. Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
  4. Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
  5. Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.

Rules


Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.

Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.

YTPB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.


Some acronyms you might see.


Relevant comms

founded 8 months ago
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There's a post about it.

That post explicitly says it's not a place for debate or participation from users of other instances.

I'd like to respect that but I think events like this need debate and discussion because it helps to develop and evolve the culture of lemmy and the fediverse in general.

The post says:

This post is "FYI only" for blahaj lemmy members. It is not a debate, and is not intended for non blahaj lemmy users to weigh in and offer opinions.

I recently received reports of a feddit.uk user espousing transphobia. Specifically, this was a feddit.uk user refusing to use the word cis, repeating the "adult human female" dog whistle, and claiming that trans women are not women. I approached a member of the feddit.uk admin team and raised my concerns and sought clarification of their stance on posts like this, where the transphobia is mostly dogwhistles, and "civil disagreement" on the validity of trans folk.

I was told by the feddit.uk admin that their preferred response is this kind of transphobia is to "sort it out through discussion and voting". However, the comments in question are currently more upvoted than downvoted, and little "sorting out" has occurred. The posts remain in place.

At this point, the admin stopped responding to my messages despite being active elsewhere on lemmy. When it became clear they were ignoring my messages and had no intention of removing the posts in question, I made the decision to defederate the instance.

I know some folk agree with the feddit.uk admins approach of pushback through discussion and voting, but this instance is not designed to be that kind of space. Blahaj lemmy is meant to be a place where we can avoid the rampant transphobia universally visible on nearly every other social media platform, and where we can exist without needing to debate our right to do so.

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[–] flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.com 59 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I feel like this community serves a great purpose. And I'm a massive fan of drinking my tea and reading all the drama it attracts. But I am just beyond tired of the same handful of commenters popping up to always agree with whoever is opposed to blahaj.

I give this one a YDI. Anybody posting anything transphobic who gets caught by Ada is gonna be banned. Any instance with a mod or admin who makes transphobic posts or comments will get defederated. No one is entitled to having their content served on Ada's servers, and the people who join blahaj know that, and seem to appreciate it.

Which is sort of why I always wind up agreeing with her. Her server has clear, concise beliefs, and clear, concise administration, and she has the clear-throated consent of her governed or they would leave.

The only server whose vibe I appreciate more is divide by zero. Shout-out to what I feel is the most neurospicy, nonconformist bunch of pirates I ever met.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 day ago
[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 67 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's why I chose blahaj zone as my instance. It's nice not having to justify my existence

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[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 86 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Just a sense check here, are you asserting that Ada is a PTB for defederating from feddit.uk after their admins failed to take action?

Blajah Zone is specifically run as a safe space for trans folks, so it's an emphatic YDI to feddit.uk from me.

Given that the UK Supreme Court recently ruled that the legal definition of a woman in the UK is based on biological sex, and the supposedly Labour PM Starmer is running with it (wtf Starmer???), it's not surprising to me that TERFs and their supporters are coming out of the woodwork on feddit.uk.

Fuck TERFs and fuck Starmer for jumping on Trump's anti-DEI bandwagon just to pander to transphobic voters.

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 1 day ago (6 children)

I'm not asserting anything. My motivation was exactly what it says in the opening post. I think discussion about these things is important.

Sadly it seems I've made a mistake and that this sub might have been the wrong place to post. I didn't realise this community did PTB / YDI style determinations and yes, I failed to read the side bar prior to posting.

Unfortunately it seems like there is some actual discussion happening so it feels wrong to just delete the post at this point. I was going to report my own post but it seems that's not possible?

[–] idegenszavak@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)
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[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

OP seems pretty neutral and this is just a "here's what's going on in lemmy moderation/administration".

[–] pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 30 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Then why did they post about it in this community?

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 36 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

Borderline YDI.

Reasoning for that is that the decision to defederate is one that is in line with the stated goals of blahaj. They have made it clear that they will defederate, ban, or otherwise use the available lemmy tool to allow blahaj to serve as a safe, sheltered place for people that are under siege by the world at large.

Ergo, this can't be a power trip as it isn't arbitrary, or outside of stated goals. Were I a blahaj admin, I would have taken similar steps to maintain the instance as intended, even though I tend to look on defederation as a last ditch tool in general. You can't maintain a truly safe space without aggressive defenses.

If blahaj was established as a general purpose instance, this would be power tripping. But it wasn't, and isn't a general instance. It's like beehaw was; they're using lemmy as the underpinning software, but the instance has a different goal than the typical ones. The federation status is one that's nice but not necessary for the instance to achieve its primary goal.

This is more equivalent to a forum blocking links to breitbart, only at a bigger scale; curation rather than control for control's sake.

However, I want to make it clear that .uk didn't do anything wrong as an instance. That's why it's "borderline" YDI. It's only YDI in the sense that the instance policy is incompatible with the instance goals of blahaj. The decision to aggressively moderate dog whistles is a difficult one, as dog whistles change over time, and are not always something every admin is going to hate resources to do.

Now, once you're aware of a dog whistle, you have a few choices. One is to hide your head in the sand and pretend it isn't anything at all. Another is to remove that specific occurrence, and do nothing else. You can delay a decision until you have time to verify that it is a dog whistle (you don't have to just accept someone's word that it is, no matter who is saying it). You can choose to not give a fuck. You can even agree with the dog whistle and directly support it. You'd be an asshole if you chose that option, but it is an option.

And there's in betweens of all those.

The .uk admin decided to refer to their standing policy and take no action. Since it is a standing policy, it isn't a direct support for the bigotry, only an expression of some factor that leads them to choose not to tale actions outside of instance policy. That factor may be something unpleasant, but that's not the same as being something like bigotry, or even apathy. We don't have anything at the time I'm writing this book from a .uk admin giving further insight. In other words, while I don't agree with their choice, they didn't do anything wrong either, unless there's some evidence of bigotry on their end. And no, just not agreeing to remove a single comment or post is not enough evidence to determine that.

From my end of things, though I won't go far into it because I don't believe in derailing the main goal of this community, dog whistles are so common now, and have been so effective that they get picked up by people that aren't expressly bigoted, they should be as aggressively monitored as possible. But nobody can keep up with all of them, even just one targeted branch of the practice. I try to keep track of the ones that are most relevant to my personal areas of militancy, and I keep running into new ones because the people creating them change them so frequently. But, when reported, they should be taken seriously, and after confirmation, be treated just the same as slurs and other hate speech. I also recognize that nobody is obligated to act before confirmation, and that it may not always be possible to confirm that a newish dogwhistle is one. It takes time for such knowledge to circulate.

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[–] ElcaineVolta@kbin.melroy.org 42 points 1 day ago

terfs fuck off.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 day ago
[–] LWD@lemm.ee 38 points 1 day ago (2 children)

TDI (they deserved it) unless Feddit admins pop in with some extravagant response

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