Back in December, the instance hosting 196 (lemmy.blahaj.zone) announced that, as part of its mission as a trans-friendly space, harassment based on gender or neopronouns would remain prohibited—even if the user in question was suspected of being a troll. Users were asked to disengage, block, and report suspected trolling behavior rather than bring harassment into a community already vulnerable to that kind of bullying.

There was a small backlash to the policy from some users. This led to a number of “toe the line” posts that weren’t outright gender-based harassment but strongly signaled an intent to misgender or harass in the future. Blahaj admins promptly removed all offending comments during this wave of dissent.

Important to note: The majority of the Blahaj and 196 users supported the policy, upvoting and praising the admins for creating a safe space for trans individuals.

By January, the backlash had mostly subsided, and the trolls causing issues had moved on. However, 196 moderator @moss and their team remained unhappy with the policy. They cited “personal differences” and felt Blahaj admins had overstepped by removing comments themselves rather than allowing 196 mods to address users who openly expressed intent to harass others.

Yesterday, @moss and the 196 moderation team enacted a major decision without consulting the community. They locked [email protected] and instructed users to move to [email protected].

This move was extremely unpopular. Many users strongly dislike lemmy.world for various reasons (a complicated topic better unpacked elsewhere). The announcement post was met with widespread backlash, and @moss eventually locked it. In response, a few users created a new community on Blahaj: [email protected]. The new community quickly grew in size and activity, with most users opting to stay on Blahaj rather than migrate to lemmy.world.

It’s clear @moss and the 196 moderators underestimated the community’s attachment to its home on Blahaj. By attempting to uproot the group without input, they alienated much of the community. As a result, most users have moved to the new Blahaj-hosted community, which has already become the more active space.

TL;DR:
@Moss and the 196 mod team tried to move the community to lemmy.world without consulting anyone. The decision was extremely unpopular, leading to backlash and the creation of a new Blahaj-hosted community that most users now prefer.

The mod team tried to move everything to .world. No one liked that and now there’s [email protected] [email protected] and [email protected] the top two are run by the old mod team, the last one is ran by a new mod team. Blahaj zone and onehundresninetysix are active. (Rip 196.world, gone and certainly forgotten.) The mod team and admin had a drama over heavy handed admin over reach on bans in 196blahaj.

I block most meme based communities because they overpower the rest of what I like, but I’ve been picking up bits of the events from context.

Does this center around the one individual using, shall we say, a very distinct set of pronouns that a lot of people took issue with?

I kind of enjoyed that person in a social commentary way, but I can see why people more directly effected by pronoun usage may have taken issue and blahaj changing their rules due to it, but if that is what is causing this big schism, that’s a pretty wild thing that all is this is the result. I’m interested in the opinions on both sides, but it’s one of these things I’m afraid to ask due to polarization like this. I have genuine curiosity but I can totally see how someone could trollishly go after the same info.