Fwiw, you can export some things (block lists and subscriptions iirc), and likely should do so regularly just as a backup for if an instance dies.

Same with any important comments you’ve made. It’s impossible to back up everything, but the important stuff isn’t too big a task if you do a little at a time. I have something like 3 or 4 accounts with this same username across multiple instances just in case. A lot of people do that. Part of the benefit of the fediverse is not being limited to a single site that contains everything you have/do.

I think we have a fundamental difference in understanding in what defederation is, as a tool for admins to use.

While it should be the last tool to pull out, the entire point of it is to limit the spread of problematic content on an instance level.

This means that, if an instance is allowing things to stay up, other instances can defederate all at once instead of planning playing whack-a-mole with individual users.

While we’re currently talking about a situation involving dogwhistles, let’s step to the side and look at the concept itself.

There’s a list of instances recommended for defederation that can be a default. That list includes places that allow kiddie porn, places run by, or catering to nazis and their ilk, and even lemmygrad as an extremist instance.

Why not just block all those users individually instead of defederating?

I hope it’s obvious why not, that it would be a never ending moderation nightmare. The more a given instance is prone to a given kind of situation, regardless of what that might be, the more you have to consider defederation instead of individual bans.

Bringing that back to this situation, the question becomes one of thresholds. What is the right amount of transphobic dogwhistles to allow into an instance that’s by and for trans people?

In this case, Ada has set the threshold low. This has always been the case, so it isn’t something out of the blue.

When an instance is meant to be heavily curated in terms of screening out types of content, an admin is limited in their choices. If the instance has the means to have a big enough team, you can have people actively looking for content that isn’t acceptable and banning users. Or you can use defederation to screen out instances that are prone to the unwanted content.

Since there aren’t any instances with the kind of funding necessary to have a team of full time, 24/7 moderators screening the entirety of lemmy, defederation is the more realistic choice. It is something an admin team can deploy temporarily or permanently as the situation shifts.

So, I think it comes down to thresholds. Blahaj is set up as, and maintained as, a trans first space, a shelter for trans people online. They have a very low threshold because that’s the only way to meet that goal with the resources available to their instance. It seems you believe their threshold to be too low. Fair enough, we’re all allowed to have an opinion on the matter.

I would, however, point you to this very community, and suggest you go back through older posts. Blahaj is brought up frequently for banning users for this very thing. So, if they’re power tripping when they apply preemptive bans to users, and they’re power tripping when they defederate, what tools are they supposed to use? There aren’t any other tools at this point in lemmy development. There’s not even an automod to handle removing content on the fly, before it gets seen.

Iirc, the only filter that lemmy has for that is limited to a small range of slurs, and isn’t editable by admins. My memory may be faulty in that regard; if it is editable, and it can work on content from other instances, then that would be the better tool to use. But, afaik, it can’t do either. Last time I saw an explanation of how it works, it would only stop things on the individual instance, not federated content. Again, unless I misunderstood.

Then you run into the crowd that hates the idea of automod, so let’s be honest here, the blahaj team would be accused of power tripping if they did use something like that.

When it comes down to it, no matter what the blahaj team does, they’re going to catch hell. But the consequences of doing nothing are much worse. And, I’m going to be blunt as fuck here, 90% of the pissiness about blahaj’s rules and decisions catch hell that they either wouldn’t catch, or wouldn’t be as severe, because it’s a trans focused instance.

Do you remember beehaw at all? They completely defederated, and there was less venom towards them than for the selective defederation blahaj does. Admittedly, lemmy was smaller then, and there was venom, but not at the same scale.

I went back through the two main threads just now, and see no updates.

With that in mind, I do believe that if the comments haven’t been removed, at least temporarily, the matter has gone on too long. It has been long enough to verify the dogwhistle is in common enough use that even if the person using it didn’t know what it means, a moderator or admin should know and have taken action.

Even with the shitty state of search engines nowadays, it is possible to find out that a specific dogwhistle is known and in use within a few hours. Since it was something that I ran into months ago, it’s easy to confirm with A Wikipedia search

Since the recent UK court ruling is absolutely not applicable to this situation, and they’ve given no other reasoning for a decision being delayed on this matter, I don’t feel it would be reasonable for the comments to still be up. I don’t know if they are. Nobody has linked to them and shouldn’t have because brigading sucks even for this kind of thing, so I don’t know if the comments are still there.

Which, I think that brings us into complete agreement at this time. Rule 1 should have been applied already. If it hasn’t been, then it is implicit support for the comments.

Which is a valid viewpoint, obviously.

However, dogwhistles are a difficult thing to moderate. You first have to be aware that they exist (they are), then you have to be aware that a specific phrase is one (they do now), you’d have to verify that the report is one (still up in the air), and then decide what to do about it (still in the air).

Moderation does not have to be instant. Even if you have dozens of moderators or admins, expecting action even within an hour isn’t something to reasonably expect. Now, I haven’t gone back through and checked to see what they’ve decided at this point, if anything, but you and I are still talking about the principle itself, so I don’t know if that matters for this part of this particular discussion. As in, was the delay at the time of the post reasonable.

I agree with you that a comment using that dogwhistle needs to be removed. I agree that if it isn’t, then there’s a problem. The only point I see that we don’t agree on so far is how quickly an admin is expected to step in on a moderation case.

By this point, I would expect at least an update on the matter, some kind of “this is where we are in the process”. But, at the time of the post and the start of this particular conversation, I believe that they were still well within the range of an acceptable time frame for a policy decision on an unfamiliar dogwhistle.

Again, I’m still talking about events as of the time we started this chain. If you want to shift to what would be an acceptable state now we can, but I’ll need to go through both of the posts I’m aware of and update.

Well, I disagree, obviously.

This isn’t the appropriate community for a debate about what is and isn’t necessary for the struggle to minimize bigotry, so I won’t say much beyond the fact that trans people get killed all across the world, regularly, for no reason other than being trans. With that ugly fact in existence, I can not object to anyone working against the hatred towards them.

You call it bullying, I call it activism and struggling for protection.

I don’t think I would be able to change your view on the matter, and I know you can’t change mine because I’ve seen the violence and hate first hand. So I don’t have anything else to say here.

Ahhh, I made the error of forgetting to note that it does vary by location. Thank you :)

Aight, you seem to want to ignore the legal benefits, so I won’t mention that beyond saying that it is a hell of a lot easier to get married than to figure out all the paperwork needed to duplicate it, and not even have the exact same outcomes, just the majority. The tax thing, for example, you can’t file jointly if you aren’t married, no matter what else you set up (edit: in places where things like common law marriage aren’t recognized)

The biggest thing is the experience, imo. The memory.

Now, me and my wife went to the JoP, with our kid and required witnesses (my best friend and his husband).

No fancy reception, no major party, just went home and said to my dad “we’re back, no problems.” He said congratulations, and went back to watching TV.

Total spent was about a hundred bucks, including gas. And the memories of it are wonderful, we cherish it all, and we’re happy as hell we didn’t do anything else.

Wedding ceremonies, however, are expensive once you go beyond that bare minimum. That’s a cultural/sociological thing where the needs of the individual and the culture mesh into not only believing it necessary, but beneficial.

And, for the people that want it, it is beneficial. Ceremonies, rites, rituals, they serve a purpose beyond the legal or official status that comes with them. Weddings are as much about community as they are the couple. It’s the union being both recognized and celebrated at the same time, even when it’s a secular ceremony rather than religious.

Don’t get me wrong, the money spent on empty bullshit surrounding weddings is absurd. But the actual wedding, where the community stands around the couple is incredibly powerful in terms of validation, even when it’s the license that really matters legally. You can have ceremonies without the license; I performed several of them back before same sex marriage became legal. Those events were important, and doubly so because they had no legal standing.

I think that’s what you’re missing, that there’s a massive difference between two people shacking up and marriage. When the people involved swear an oath, and/or exchange symbols of union it means something, even if there’s no witnesses, not even someone to perform a ceremony. But as you move into witnesses and an officiant, it feels different because it is a public commitment. You can still divorce or whatever, but it happened, and you can never deny that. That moment, the vows, they exist in a way they don’t if you swear only to each other.

Yeah, two people can be just as committed, and honor their commitment perfectly without anything else. But it feels different.

Now, again, I’d argue that once you start shelling out for crazy dresses and cake and niche receptions, you hit diminishing returns very quick. That’s to satisfy other things, not the union itself. It may well make people happy, but it doesn’t add anything to the underlying point of there being a ceremony in the first place. That of saying to the world “where once there were two, now there are one”.

Not that anyone has to share the valuation, but it’s what underlies the whole thing, and it has value

Perfect idea, wrong asshole involved

It wasn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen. It was just the worst star trek movie I’ve ever seen

Fair enough.

If I may, allow me to explain why I think it was a not wrong decision. Now, notice how I phrased it this time, please. It is definitely different in implication from my original phrasing, and that does represent some thought that has occurred since the time of the comment.

.uk is run by multiple admins. It is run as something between a collective and something akin to a democracy within the admin team. When it comes to making a decision for the instance that would require a change to policy, or a deviation from policy, a single admin making the decision without consulting the others would be a bet difficult choice.

It would require that admin to explain their decision going against established policy, possibly creating a big problem, one that could result in long term instability for the instance, possibly even the breaking of an instance.

A single admin holding to policy means that the instance is running as intended. The policies may need changing, but it isn’t a decision that is an emergency. There’s plenty of time for admins to discuss things, debate, weigh possibilities, come up with a plan, verify the plan would be effective, maybe even explore the possibilities publicly.

A delay is not a bad thing, when the issue is one that requires a change to policy. Since the admins have stated that they are discussing it, and that their reason for delay isn’t support for the comments in question, their decision to move slowly is not wrong as an instance. To the contrary, with it not being an emergency, it’s the smart decision.

Now, I’ll also say that the specific admin Ada contacted has publicly stated that they’re concerned about running afoul of UK regulations, and thus are weighing that in as part of any decisions regarding policies on dogwhistles as a form of transphobia, I’ll add that the specific admin did not make a wrong decision either.

However! As an individual admin, they did do something wrong, but not about the decision itself. Poor communication about internal matters when dealing with a credible issue reported by a reliable and known member of the fediverse that is also an admin and would understand even the most barebones explanation was a bad decision. I hesitate to call it wrong, but it fits that word well enough in this context for it to be acceptable, imo.

So, o would amend my previous opinion “didn’t do anything wrong as an instance” to “didn’t make a wrong decision as an instance”, as it more accurately reflects both the events as known to me at this time, and my opinion on those events. I hope it obvious that if more information comes to light, that opinion could, and almost certainly would, change if the new information was relevant to the previous events.

I say it that way because if .uk decided to just allow dogwhistles to go unchallenged and to stay up because of that, it would be wrong, in my opinion; but it wouldn’t change whether or not previous actions were appropriate or not unless there was an indication that was the intent all along.

Now, I also have to say that inaction being implicit support isn’t true in all cases all the time, and that statements do matter (or should) in coming to the conclusion that that is what’s occuring, but I don’t think anyone has to agree with me on those two subjects. They’re tangential to the issue here, in c/ptb to begin with, and I do believe that when the issue is dogwhistles, it does hold true with certain criteria met, so I agree in this case anyway.

Aight, ima weigh in because I want to, not because I need to.

But I didn’t write my first piece of fiction for myself until I was in my thirties.

I didn’t write the first the public to read until I was almost 40.

The first two kinda sold, but didn’t. Like, I had a publisher, and it flopped because zero marketing, and mid tier writing. I never said it was good, just that I did it.

Since then, I’ve finished another novel, am partway into the sequel, have a short story collection I’m editing for self publication, and I still haven’t made more than twenty bucks on anything published.

However, like Tolkien, that first story I wrote for the public was after years of writing stuff in general. Custom fiction, little stories for individuals in my life, that kind of thing that wasn’t for me.

So, if you expect to crank your first story out at 45 and have a hit, keep dreaming because you’d need a shit ton of luck and connections. But from 45 to 50 (my age), you can get a fuck ton better, and have fans, if you choose to share your work.

It’s never too late to start. It might be too late to get good, and even if you do there’s no guarantee it’ll sell, but don’t let that stop you

Well, yeah, but you’re a DUMBASS, so what do you expect?

!it’s their user name, don’t give me shit!<

Yeah, but I’m offing myself when I hit 70, so the clock is ticking

Ngl, kinda mid. They cover the net, but only when upright, and most fields aren’t underwater, so they’re too busy flipping their fins in the dirt to block anything

Going back one month, I see two posts that aren’t in the positive on this C/, and one of those is kinda off topic, the other at 0, which means equal down and up votes.

I’m also subscribed to most of the firearm communities and haven’t seen consistent negative votes over time. They all have reliably calm discussion, when discussion occurs, with some outliers.

There definitely are knee-jerk down votes, but they balance back out. This post was at 9 (iirc) positive when I first commented in response to you, and was sitting at 14 before I started this comment.

Are the numbers showing different for you? Some apps don’t always show votes right, or so I’ve been told, and some instances are slower to federate votes supposedly (with .world being the usual major slow one). So you may be seeing inaccurate numbers. Now, I checked on a different app, and via browser before opening my big mouth for this comment, and all showed 14 positive for me. I don’t care about down votes much, so I didn’t check to see how many of those were present (probably should have, but that’s what I get for starting before taking an extra half minute to think).

Lemmy is way slower than reddit. You can make a post and not get any votes for days on the more niche communities. It’s nothing unusual for the first few votes to be down for whatever reason, and then go up over hours or days.

But, being real, I’m outspoken about firearms rights here on lemmy. It is very rare anyone raises a fuss at all, and I’ve never had a comment stay in the negative (and this is an aside to my homie Spider, I told you I don’t fucking care, so stop pestering me about it).

Seriously, take a day or two, come back and check this post again. I strongly suspect it’ll end up around 20 positive total. Maybe higher.

But you can’t base anything off of the first few hours after a lemmy post. We just don’t have the traffic

Fwiw, I’m leftist too, I was wondering about the use of the term because the usual US conservative vs liberal thing taints some subjects. Sorry if I was dickish, that wasn’t my intent at all.

I think there always needs to be an up to a point when “buying usa” comes up. For any country, really.

When the general population has plenty of income to match the prices of goods made in a country with things like minimum wages set to a fair rate, good unions, and the government protecting the consumer first, chances are better that people will pay more.

But still only up to a point.

When none of those are in place, the point at which little people nope the fuck out to something made elsewhere gets lower because they can’t pay more, not and still pay for all the other shit that’s inescapable.

So, gotta factor that in

Edit: I like to visit articles after my initial thoughts. And their take on it is skewed. But not as bad I would have guessed. They seem to miss the point that, no matter how good their product is, it’s a luxury product to begin with. The typical consumer isn’t even going to pony up 100 bucks for a shower filter unless there’s a damn good reason. So, of course their already small buyer base is going to skew away from something damn near three times that. Which is the “up to a point”.

Even someone making okay money is unlikely to be making enough to look at something not mandatory that costs more than twice their hourly rate for the cheap version and decide to still pay more. They’re over the tipping point to begin with

Kinda, yeah.

It’s about the recent ruling that defines who is and isn’t a woman legally.

While it doesn’t seem like something that should impact a lemmy instance choosing to protect trans people via moderation of hate speech in disguise (That’s what a dogwhistle is in this context), I think that the admins are saying they’re taking an overabundance of caution until they’ve had a chance to figure out how the change does effect the instance.

On the surface, what it means is that trans women aren’t covered by equality laws for women, they would need their own, separate laws to cover them. So it does enshrine a lack of protection under the law, up to a point.

Now, I’m not sure what kind of legal liability the admins are worried about, because uk laws are not exactly something I’m generally aware of. There may be laws there that allow legal action against a forum for censorship for all I know, and if trans women are no longer “protected”, then removing such comments might open them up for lawsuits. But that’s just a hypothetical, because afaik, that isn’t something that’s actionable there, and nobody from feddit.uk has said that’s what they’re worried about, it’s just an off-the-cuff hypothetical

Which is emperor or the other since pass admins run across this, it might help cool down the drama if you do specify what kind of legal issues are the concern

And even as user. She interacts elsewhere sometimes, and I swear, she’s one of the most easy to deal with people on lemmy when there’s a disagreement.

Fiendishly unwavering for her community, and trans rights, but absolutely wonderful to talk to. Nothing but respect for Ada from me.

As a side note, you’d usually say pale skin, not bright, in English

Bright is close enough to figure out what you mean from context, but it is a very non standard use of the word.

Generally, in the US, most racism in terms of what you could expect as a tourist is going to be against darker skin. Yes, racism against paler skinned people exists, but not in a way that most tourists with pale skin will experience. You would usually have to go into residential districts of cities or towns rather than business or entertainment districts to experience racism towards pale skin. Most of the people dealing with tourists either want their money enough to be polite and friendly, aren’t racists, or are also pale skinned.

Even then, if you stray into residential areas, you’re still more likely to run into trouble for being a tourist, no matter what color your skin is. Nobody likes tourists fucking around their neighbourhood away from businesses, and being a foreign tourist is “worse” in some ways, though not in others. As an example, if some random dude from new York comes to my town, they’ll likely be less welcome walking down our street, talking and taking pictures than someone from africa, no matter what skin color is involved.