I’m calling for https://lemmy.ml/u/Beaver@lemmy.ca, 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.

@dessalines@lemmy.ml @JoeBidet@lemmy.ml @cypherphunks

edit: you can find more info from kristinas post here and beavers post here

edit 2: proof, also beaver was banned from the whole instance modlong

edit 3: For trans people looking for a safer instance, I suggest Hexbear. They have a very active trans user base and are extremely supportive.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Oh god … this happened?!

    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.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      [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.)

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        I don’t think we’re that far off from each other.

        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.

    • aleph@lemm.ee
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      I swear, petty and vindictive banning is far worse on Lemmy than it ever was on Reddit, and particularly on ML instances.

      If I were to indulge in a bit of armchair psychology, I’d say it is a side effect of venerating authoritarianism.

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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        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.

        • aleph@lemm.ee
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          Fair point – having power decentralized certainly makes it more common for individual actors to act unilaterally in this way. However, in my experience the most egregious examples have been users being banned from Lemmy.ml for simply expressing a contrary opinion in a non-aggressive manner.

          For a community that is so actively political, the tolerance for an open exchange of views is surprisingly low.

          • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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            For a community that is so actively political, the tolerance for an open exchange of views is surprisingly low.

            I’m not over much of that activity, but I think the more accurate way to think about it is that they’re actively communist, and actively critical of the west and its imperialism/captialism. So they’re coming from a pretty different perspective than middle/centrist westerners and find some of the presumptions/beliefs of westerners outright awful lies. Whatever the truth is, they’re not trying to run a perfectly open forum to try to convince everyone of communism, when it comes to politics that is. So anything that starts with a critical view of China is immediately viewed suspiciously and likely to get moderated (depending I’d say). I understand how many would find that problematically censorial. Thing is though that they hold a minority position that tends to piss a lot of people off, so a good amount of defensiveness is just a natural consquence I’d say. In my experience, the worst part about their communist beliefs have been all of the loud anti-communists they’ve triggered.

            • aleph@lemm.ee
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              Yeah, that would definitely explain the hypersensitivity when it comes to any criticism of China or the USSR, valid or otherwise.

              It still strikes me as counter-productive, though, as there are many people on Lemmy who have capitalism-critical views who could be persuaded to shift further left or become more interested in socialist causes. Banning them, or censoring them, or labelling them as idiotic liberals, only serves to undermine that endeavor. Socialism is dying fast enough in the west as it is.

    • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOPM
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      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

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    How on earth is “Leaked private messages” a reason for banning. Absolutely an abuse of power and Streisand Effect is doing it’s thing.

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    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?

    • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.mlM
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      but wouldn’t it make more sense to just migrate to an instance without an openly transphobic admin

      That’s really just too passive for me at least, much prefer to occupy a space and make the transphobes leave.

      • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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        Is that even possible in this case? Seems like you’re guaranteed to lose a fight with an admin unless you’ve got another admin on your side.

        • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.mlM
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          I have had broadly positive interactions with dessalines in the past, and I don’t envy him the situation he is now placed in.

          I prefer to possibly lose a fight than give up before it starts.

    • rmuk@feddit.uk
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      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.

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    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.

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    man “leaked private messages” is such a weak fucking excuse in the face of transphobia. @nutomic@lemmy.ml 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 @dessalines@lemmy.ml 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

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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      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.

  • 4am@lemm.ee
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    Not that I disagree with anything in this post but I would like to point out that Nutomic is, IIRC, the literal creator and dev of Lemmy itself.

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        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.

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          I think its in the direction of who owns the github repo, which defines a bit more of a strict hierarchy

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            Sounds like one person is the creator, and the other is a prominent contributor. I’m just pointing out the oddness of the use of co- on only one side.

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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        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

    • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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      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.

    • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
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      He can be the president dude. If you’re a Transphobe little bitch, you deserve what’s coming to you.

      • Eggnog [she/her]@lemmy.mlM
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        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.

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          Nothing is removed for me. I’m guessing your instance bans the word “b1tc h”? Because that’s the only swear. Also fuck censorship

          • Eggnog [she/her]@lemmy.mlM
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            Suppose it does.

            You probably shouldn’t evade the filter though, at least not with a spoiler.

    • BuddyTheBeefalo@lemmy.ml
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      We don’t need their software.

      Sublinks, crafted using Java Spring Boot, stands as a state-of-the-art link aggregation platform, reminiscent yet advanced compared to Lemmy & Kbin.

      It features a Lemmy compatible API, allowing for seamless integration and migration for existing Lemmy users.

      https://demo.sublinks.org/

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    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.

    It’s just great.

    • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOPM
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      I’m a ‘tankie’, transphobia is unacceptable, being a ‘tankie’, anarchist, woke, socialist, etc. is fine and are the most common political stances trans people take.

        • njm1314@lemmy.world
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          You can take out the anti-capitalist regime part. They’re fine worshiping capitalists regimes. Putin’s as bad as transphobic as you can find but tankies love him.

        • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOPM
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          This is chauvinism. You are saying the people that help me house the trans homeless are ‘eating my face’. You know nothing but speak confidently.

          • aleph@lemm.ee
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            I know that there is a tendency amongst people of Nutomic’s ilk to view identity politics as little more than a bourgeois preoccupation. He said as much himself.

            Pointing that out isn’t chauvinism.

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              I know that there is a tendency amongst people of Nutomic’s ilk to view identity politics as little more than a bourgeois preoccupation. He said as much himself.

              I don’t consider nutomic to be a communist. Lumping someone that is a mess ideologically in with people that do good work is irresponsible.

  • ascos@lemmy.ml
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    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.

    • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOPM
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      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.

    • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOPM
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      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.

      • Valmond@lemmy.world
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        Wasn’t there a whole drama with hexbear, like tankies brigading and such? Or am I mixing this all up with some other instance?

        • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlOPM
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          If you mean trans people telling transphobes and racists to fuck off, I mean yeah they did that a lot

          • Valmond@lemmy.world
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            That’s awesome, but wasnt there a whole debacle with lots of instances defederating from hexbear? If it was so, I never heard it was a trans positiv community (I hope I’m wrong). I always heard beehaw was the trans 💖. Please enlighten me!

            • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.mlM
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              I will say, I have had a .ml account because I like to engage with the broader lemmy even if it is often very transphobic. Hexbear has the best trans environment from what I’ve seen, I think it’s worth emulating. The red scare fearmongering was a bit over the top from the other lemmies, people responding to your posts from instances you’re federated with is not brigading

              • Valmond@lemmy.world
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                Thanks! I knew there was something rotten in that instance. Wanting to dismantle the west, indeed, a very pro LGBT stance they have. Good luck being LGBT in one of the fine dictatorships like Russia (where trans is seen as a mental disease, probably the most lenient of those dictatorships, in Iran it’s a death sentence).

                Yeah I’ll keep myself at beehaw and leave hexbear to the pro dictator fachos.

                • amber (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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                  Lol yeah the west is so pro LGBT. Just ignore the hundreds of proposed anti-trans bills in the USA, or the mass incarceration/prison violence towards trans people, or the widespread medical gatekeeping, or the fact that being LGBT (especially T) makes you way more likely to be homeless, or how even the supposedly left Labour Party has taken a huge rightward swing under Queer Harmer. If you actually think there’s any hope of freedom for LGBT people in the western world you are a fucking idiot. Go read a book and you might yet be able to pull the worms out of your brain. Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba by Leslie Feinberg is a great one if you want to see what a country actually trying to improve the lives of LGBT people looks like.

                • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.mlM
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                  where trans is seen as a mental disease

                  Until extremely recently that was also the case in the states, as in, before informed consent became a thing I couldn’t get HRT without a doctors note saying I’m mentally ill and fuckable enough, and even then it was sterilization first and having to pay out of pocket for tons of shit.

                  Also Iran post islamic revolution was one of the few places you can get a binary transition- it’s still pretty fucked up, but not a death sentence by any measure.

                  I wish that Russia was less shitty about being trans so I could visit family more safely, it’s not been made better by having my identity turned into a cultural wedge issue.

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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          I have heard similar. Also hexbear is based on lemmy but not a part of the same fediverse, you might not be able to visit much else from it.

          I have no clue about their stance on lgbt+ though, to what i understood the main moral conflict seems to be wether or not you support russian/chinese state-socialism and left-authoritarianism. Allegedly theirs also censorship of criticism.

    • Ambii [She/They]@lemmy.ml
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      Fading away is when they’re still the big lemmy boogyman and are one of the most active instances

    • RandomGen1@lemm.ee
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      I wouldn’t call hexbear faded in the slightest. You may have them hidden/blocked/whatever to that effect

        • RandomGen1@lemm.ee
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          MAUs is a decent measure, but last I know (admittedly old data) Hexbear had quite the outsized post/comment rate for their users compared to other instances. I don’t know if the higher MAU count on the other instances counterbalance that at this point, but I think that’s at least worth something in determining the size of their presence on the fediverse

          • TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee
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            Yeah the data is interesting. Each individual in hexbear posts a lot more than your standard user, but they almost exclusively post to hexbear. Other instances bleed more into the broader fediverse and interact with each other more frequently.