this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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Blahaj Lemmy Meta

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Blåhaj Lemmy is a Lemmy instance attached to blahaj.zone. This is a group for questions or discussions relevant to either instance.

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I've seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone's pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they're wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they're transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.

It's because Blahaj doesn't have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada's psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada's interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.

And Ada didn't write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.

I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.

If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn't be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn't understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn't misunderstand it so often.

I think the current system is creating pointless drama.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

I do feel sorry for instance administrators that get roped into the moderation decisions of communities. Instances should provide very broad and strict rules meant to keep the system running and out of legal liability. It doesn't need to be so specific about content.

It is communities and their mod teams (who not bound by the instance) to operate within that framework to set and enforce rules for content moderation.

But FWIW at least one of those prominent bans a bit ago were WELL aware of why they were banned. They intentionally went to get banned to spark a debate on the rules and specifically to draw the instance admin into it.