I’ve told this story on Lemmy a couple of times since being banned from Blahaj Zone, and I’ll tell it again.
I once posted a meme to a Blahaj community I moderated in which someone named Obvious_Troll@hexbear.net was attacking a trans person. It was a political meme, and I’ll try to avoid saying what the political viewpoint was so that this thread doesn’t get derailed. But as part of the meme, Obvious_Troll was being transphobic, and the reader was expected to agree that transphobia is bad and Obvious_Troll is… an obvious troll. The username wasn’t actually important to the meme, I was just including a picture of a Lemmy comment and had to include a name, so I made one up.
Ada then messaged me to say that the post would be removed unless I redacted Obvious_Troll’s name. Ada said that Obvious_Troll is a real, trans lemmy user, and I’m not to attack them. There is nobody on hexbear named Obvious_Troll, I made that username up.
Read bottom to top:
So Ada defended a fictional transphobic troll, deciding they were trans for some reason. The troll’s username was not the point of the meme, the point was what they were saying. So I made up a nonsense username to support the point of the meme. I don’t think anyone would choose the username Obvious_Troll unless they wanted to be seen as a troll. As near as I can tell, Ada defended Obvious_Troll because they were from Hexbear, and Ada seems to think every Hexbear user is trans. Even a made-up one who wants to be seen as a troll and who harasses trans people. Why did Ada hyperfocus on the instance name, and not notice that the username was ridiculous? I don’t know. I don’t understand it.
Blahaj is intended to be a safe space for trans people. And Ada’s intention with asking for redaction of this fake made up name was, somehow, to protect a trans person. And that’s good. But it’s really weird that Ada thought the way to protect trans people, is by defending fictional transphobic trolls.
EDIT: So, the discussion got derailed not by politics as I expected, but by Ada claiming Obvious_Troll is a real person again. Here’s the original post in which Obvious_Troll is being transphobic and the reader is supposed to agree that transphobia is bad:
The meme was about how transphobia is bad. You asked me to censor Obvious_Troll’s name because I was framing Obvious_Troll’s transphobic opinion as bad. You decided the fictional transphobic troll is actually a real trans person I was attacking, so you asked me to censor their name. Come on, I explained all of this in the post body which you keep quoting, and there’s you in the screenshot clearly stating that I’m “encouraging dumping on that person”, who is the fictional transphobic troll. I can understand you not remembering something that happened a couple months ago, but I explained it all in the post, and you can see it. Can you… do you lack the ability to tell the difference between facts and fiction? Is that what’s going on? I’m just bewildered by this conversation. It’s like you’re only reading one in every 10 words and just jumping between random conclusions.
Instance. Ada’s message says instance. It’s even in your screenshot.
That’s after I said the name was fake. Ada started out thinking Obvious_Troll was a real person, and only realised they were fake when I said so. Then she changed her request to censoring the instance instead of the person. You need to read the screenshot bottom to top, because Lemmy puts more recent private messages at the top. I know it’s annoying.
Even if it’s a fake user, you were still targeting the whole instance in your meme.
Requesting to remove the name of the instance seems reasonable.
Sure. And I did remove the instance name as requested, and the meme stayed up until the entire community it was posted in was later deleted. This post isn’t about the instance censoring. This post is about the initial decision by Ada that Obvious_Troll must be a real, trans lemmy user, which has now happened twice, because Ada claimed Obvious_Troll is real again.
Seeing a name that seems to exist on a meme presenting a whole community as self harming seems enough to just ask the poster to remove it.
If you see a car picture with a plate number in a post, are you going to contact the DMV to see if the plate number is assigned, or just ask the poster to remove that sensitive information?
I don’t really see the drama here