What the fuck is going on with 196/onehundredninetysix?
What the fuck is going on with 196/onehundredninetysix?
I know there was some schism and moving of instances, but beyond that I can’t deduce what happened/is happening.
135 comments
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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 !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone and instructed users to move to !196@lemmy.world.
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: !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone. 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.-
This comment would probably make for a good crosspost to !fediverselore@lemmy.ca
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on it!
edit: https://lemmy.cafe/post/12094663 thanks again for the suggestion
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Great write-up, thanks. I love a good shit-show. 🍿
Sounds to me like the OG mods could have said “we don’t like how the admin runs things here, we are leaving as mods and starting a new 196 on .world with hookers and blackjack, you guys do what you want here.”
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I genuinely would have had no problem with that, and I think most others would agree with me.
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Which everyone would think is fine, but that would mean they'd be mods of an empty community, and thus have no power, and that of course made them upset.
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Oof. Rookie mistake. Even if people aren't against a move most people won't follow you to the new site simply because of laziness. It kills communities.
There really should be a life shattering reason to move a community to a new site.
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They stated pretty directly it wasn't about the Dragonfucker incident, nor did it involve policies on neopronouns. Drag wasn't even banned for anything to do with neopronouns.
I think the move to lemmy.world was a mistake, but I believe them when they say it has nothing to do with the neopronouns policy.
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Correct. Nevertheless the neopronouns incident was something of a catalyst; all the “differences” had to do with trans issues in some way, and it would be amiss of me not to point out the biggest moment that made 196 come out in support of Ada and Blahaj.
Their other “differences” are also bogus in my opinion.
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Anyone who is angry they can't whip out queerphobia when they're annoyed at someone who uses neopronouns doesn't understand why it's not OK to say racist shit about Clarance Thomas, misogynistic shit about JK Rowling, or transphobic shit about Keffals.
Just a huge red flag that respecting other people's humanity is contingent on benefiting them.
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Exactly. It's fine to attack their horrid personalities, terrible actions and all-round aweful nature, but we don't attack people based on things they can't control.
They chose to be fucking terrible, and we can attack that, it's really pretty simple, and easy too.
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Thanks for the writeup ... there should be some kind of news service for stuff like this. Everyone notices weird changes on lemmy but not everyone is in tune to every detail, every personality, every major user or mod, every instance, every community and everything they're doing.
All I saw were the changes and activities but I had no clue who, what, where or why .... which meant you didn't know who supports what or for what reason.
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I was trying to understand who was who and now I know. Cheers
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Fantastic write up. Reminds me of a post on Hobby Drama.
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I wonder if Blahaj admins will kick out all the mods who locked 196 and replace them with the mods who created oneninetysix.
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No and no. Ada stated that she will not oust the mod team, and she is currently the mod of onehundredninetysix, though is trying to find someone else to take it over as she has no interest in being mod.
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The really quick summary is that the mods of the 196 community on blahaj.zone wanted to move the community to lemmy.world, but did not announce it publicly to the users or seek their input, and so when the announcement came out, users of the instance felt blindsided by the announcement, and that lemmy.world was a fairly unpopular choice of instance. The resulting discussion from the thread largely did not dissuade skeptical users and contributed to the feelings that the mods were making a unilateral decision based on their desire and ignoring what the users of 196 wanted, and the decision to keep the original community on lemmy.blahaj.zone locked meant that users who did not want to post on lemmy.world were losing out their community.
This resulted in another 196 clone being created on blahaj, the original 196 becoming unlocked, and so now there are 3 196 communities. The newest one, !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone, has a particularly high posting rate right now, as users are attempting to assert that community's support as opposed to the ones run by the mods of the original and the lemmy.world communities.
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4 if you count the Brazilian one*
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Imagine an apartment building. The landlord decides the local city council is too overbearing, and decides to move to a different city. They expect the tenants to move with them.
Problem 1: The local city is known for inclusivity, and the new city is known for being overpopulated and having an overbearing city council. Either the landlord has sinister motives or didn't do their research.
Problem 2: The tenants weren't told of the move before the moving van came, and were given no opportunity to weigh in on the decision. The landlord was calling all the shots.
Problem 3: The landlord sealed the building as they moved, making it impossible for someone else to take over as landlord and keep the building running. There was really no reason to do that.
This went about as smoothly as you'd expect. While the landlords did eventually unseal the building, a lot of people completely lost faith in them and moved into a new apartment building in the same city, but with a new landlord ( !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone ).
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Semi-related question: What the fuck is 196? I've never understood what it was, just that it was a carry-over from Reddit. Me browsing it is like Homer Simpson reading a Far Side calendar: "I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. LOL....I don't get it."
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Some guy made a subreddit called 195 (named after their dorm room number IIRC) where the only rule was that you had to post something before leaving. They later closed the subreddit because it had gotten too large to operate by one person. 196 was created by the community as a successor with the same one rule. Just post. Simple as.
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Missing a real chance to continue adding up here. The current one should be 198
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The continuation of /r/196.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=r%2F196
r/196
A subreddit that gained popularity due to only having one rule, which is to post before leaving. The sub started after it's predecessor, r/195, was shut down by the moderators.
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For me, a place where people post dumb and entertaining memes. I guess the origin was “rule 196” which says that you have to post something before you leave or log off. But whatever, dumb meme, me press up button.
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A place to shitpost.
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Edit: seems my memory of the quantity was wrong.
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I think in Rainman, when the 200 toothpicks fell to the ground, Ray counted 196 instantly. There were four left in the box.
The sub name is unrelated, but that's how I think of it :)
Time to go counting cards...
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Well in Rain Man, he counted 246 toothpicks ("82, 82, 82.") out of 250
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https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/20937206
Mods of !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone locked the community on blåhaj and wanted to forcefully move over to lemmy.world. Most people didn't like that and someone created !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone as an alternative.
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The mod team tried to move everything to .world. No one liked that and now there's !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone !196@lemmy.world and !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone 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.
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The mod team and admin had a drama over heavy handed admin over reach on bans in 196blahaj.
That's one way to say it. Another way to say the same thing is disagreement about ban decisions and length of ban duration.
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Ya, i woke up this morning to my entire feed being nothing but their “rules” posts. Didn't take more than a few minutes before that place got blocked. My block list is sooo long here….
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I've blocked hundreds of communities. Kinda the opposite approach to subscribing by building a list of personalized content from scratch; I've whittled down All to mostly good content.
196 is on the blocklist 3 times now, lol.
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I blocked them long ago and they came back from dead. I blocked them again. They are not funny and they post a lot. They invade my feed like a virus. Can't have that!
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This post isn't really broad enough for the intent of the creator(s) of this community (not me) but I'm not one to remove a post that already has active discussion.
That said:
I'll look through but I'm generally here as more an extra set of eyes for the most egregious content, rather than to be deciphering through individual threads. Locking is an option I may have to use and tbh someone else here may still lock or remove it.
I get this is a contentious topic. I don't want to stifle discussion. I prefer to mod passively. I volunteered here because no one else was and I'm already clearly active enough.
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I didn’t mean to stir up shit, I was genuinely curious and wanted to… Ask Lemmy.
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No problem. Though I'll be locking this post. It really generated lots of reports and drama in the comments section.
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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.
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It's a broader disagreement that's been simmering for a while. The 196 mods say that the Drag controversy is unrelated, as Dragonfucker had been banned from 196 long before for unrelated reasons.
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That's not what they were saying when Ada said neopronouns aren't trolling. This thing they're saying now seems like a PR line to avoid getting the community outright taken by Ada.
At present, drag is banned from 196 for advocating violence against Nazis, but at the time, the ban was for "trolling" after making several posts in support of neopronouns.
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sounds like me. I don't specifically hate memes but like new ones pop up constantly and some seem to be generated just so an individual can throw things up. dank ass, memeorama, funny home of the fun, just all over the place. I actually just blocked 196 a bit ago because I was loathe since I consider it a bit more historically legit but man I want like less than 1% to be memes.
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It's just too much. Even the ones I find funny, there is just too much, and with so many communities and cross posting they multiply. And things like the Star Trek instance, I've seen some episodes and some of the movies, but I'm not into Trek so much I need a steady stream of that every day!
I like when people reference memes in response to something I post and I can look up whatever it is on Know Your Meme and enjoy it. That's probably not how memes are exactly meant to be enjoyed, but it's how I can appreciate most of them. Maybe a little too Abe Simpson yells at cloud, but I'm allowed to operate how I want! 😇
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Blahaj didn't change its rules. Misgendering isn't allowed on Blahaj, it never was, and it never will be. Blahaj is founded on values of empathy and tolerance. Respecting neopronoun users is nothing new to the queer community, no matter how new it is to the 196 mods.
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Thanks for the clarification that it was an enforcement rather than a change. I feel that is significant to the story.
I still believe that it isn't trolling, as you/drag are far too consistent and what you/drag posts is really just regular, responsible, non-inflammatory stuff, at least what of it I've come across, though I avoid most edgier posts in general.
If people don't like it, they have numerous options to ignore or avoid the posts and comments, I don't see why so many have to actively trash what guidelines you've/drag have asked people to respect.
As a CIS/het, I will freely admit I don't know enough about the issues to judge if this is helpful or hurtful to the non-binary community as a whole, but until I see you/drag do something rude, I have no complaints about giving you what consideration you ask for, as you/drag have been nothing but respectful to me. It doesn't make me feel like any other non-binary people are a joke or anything like that. Different things make different people happy, and if what I've read from your comments has all been genuine, your/drag's life isn't the easiest, and if me be respectful of some word choices can make life not worse, it's the least I can do.
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Onehundrednightysix is stupid. You should have just named it oneninesix
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Hehe that was one of the first posts -- the creator regretting the name. But the community rolled with it. Somehow that fits.
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They should’ve called it 197
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I think there is some drama with the mods but I am also lost and waiting for someone to clarify it.
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The 196 mods decided to move their community, because Ada kept removing posts that broke the rules when they wouldn't clear the reports on Blahaj's end. The users said they don't like the mods anyway, and they're gonna make their own 196 with blackjack and hookers. The mods reopened the old community and said I'm sorry baby, come back I've changed. The users don't believe the mods and want them removed.
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I too was confused so read the post the mod wrote. Admins were banning users without telling mods. Admin said they were banning because mods weren't doing their job. Mods talked to admin and they agreed moving to world would be better. Users got angry because no one told them.
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Mod team wanted to move to another instance due to oddities and frustration with modding on a difference instance to their accounts(with a light amount of disagreement with instance admins, though not really drama worthy), and they elected to do so without any warning or community input. Many people were displeased by this, which was compounded by the decision to lock the old community rather than simply abandon it and let someone else take over.
You then get a mix of opportunists, drama vampires, the standard fare “all change is bad”, and people that were just unhappy that the decision was made suddenly and opaquely, all working to try to make a new community on .blahaj, with varying levels of smugness, bickering, and some level of actual reasonable discourse hidden beneath it all.
We’ll see “which” 196 ends up being the de facto, but my money’s on .world just due to user numbers and the fact that the old 196 was basically the only community anybody outside of .blahaj ever saw from the instance in my experience.
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We’ll see “which” 196 ends up being the de facto, but my money’s on .world just due to user numbers
investigates
As of this writing, it looks like the userbase on each is:
Community Subscriber Count !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone 270 !196@lemmy.world 4490 EDIT: !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone has 16,800 subscribers, but if you figure that it's been around for a while and probably some of those accounts aren't active or are duplicates from people changing home instance or the like, active users might be a better metric. It's had 1.46k users active in the last day, 5.38k users in the last week, 9.8k users in the last month, and 19.4k users in the last 6 months.
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I wouldn’t wanna call it for a few weeks at the very least, and sub numbers feel like an odd metric to me since I barely sub to anything on lemmy. The blahaj instance seems to have a lot more activity at the moment for instance, but a lot of that was just frantically reposting old content from the other instance so 🤷🏻♂️
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The fur freaks are being catty, just wait for the dust to settle.
135 comments