I know there was some schism and moving of instances, but beyond that I can’t deduce what happened/is happening.
Semi-related question: What the fuck is 196? I’ve never understood what it was, just that it was a carry-over from Reddit.
I think I’m 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…
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.
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.
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.
Missing a real chance to continue adding up here. The current one should be 198
A place to shitpost.
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.
Half the community liked it, it was just the half that was banned for dissent
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.
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.
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.
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 🤷🏻♂️
Mods made a dictator decree to move the community to world, and blocking the old one. People did not agree and made their own new one. On the original instance. Spam in the new community ensued.
Either way, old one was blocked for me. New one too.
After the old 196 mod made a dictator decree to validate trolls, banning all dissenters.
People did not agree and made their own new one
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.
After another mod of the instance wanted to forcefully change the community to validate trolls instead of providing a safe space for LGBTQ people
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….
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.
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!
From what I’ve gathered, the main mod (Ada?) seemed to have seen some problems in federation between blahaj and lemmyworld, maybe some other concerns too. So they decided to up and move the community, closing the original 196 to mod-only. It seems there is pushback about the decision, with other mods speaking up with disagreement over the move and the reasons for it, so have started the onehundredninetysix community on blahaj.
I think that’s the gist of it
Ada is the admin of blahaj, not a part of the mod team for 196. She has final say on anything that is on the instance but isn’t directly involved in 196.
The reason for the move hasn’t really been clear. The mods were vague when they announced the move, effective immediately, and the most common theory I saw was about a certain person who uses neopronouns and an event where Ada stepped in to use her power as admin to overrule the mods of 196. The mods of 196 have since clarified with a vague statement about how they don’t like how Ada handles moderation across the instance (banning trolls more on a “vibe check” than hard rules or something? I don’t really know) and praise for .world’s instance level rules regarding things like trolls and harassment.
The community was blindsided by this, as 196 was locked and moved within hours of the announcement; and they largely voiced disagreement with the decision it seems. In response, I believe some member of the community created onehundredninetysix to keep the community on blahaj, and Ada herself is currently the only mod of the community, though she’s looking for people to take it over.
main mod (Ada?)
Ada isn’t a mod of !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone. Ada is the admin of lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Never underestimate the power of the internet :D
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.
I didn’t mean to stir up shit, I was genuinely curious and wanted to… Ask Lemmy.
No problem. Though I’ll be locking this post. It really generated lots of reports and drama in the comments section.
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.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.
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.
Fantastic write up. Reminds me of a post on Hobby Drama.
I wonder if Blahaj admins will kick out all the mods who locked 196 and replace them with the mods who created oneninetysix.
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.
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.
I was watching that community over the past day or two and didn’t see any news about any of this until now … things were happening on Lemmy, lots of new posts from 196 everywhere and noise about a controversy there and no info for those who don’t know until this post was made
fediverselore is good … it’s just a bit slow in the uptake
It usually waits for the dust to settle.
!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com might be more what you’re looking for
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.”
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.
I genuinely would have had no problem with that, and I think most others would agree with me.
I guess they decided to forget the hookers … and the blackjack.
Ahh forget the whole thing
This comment would probably make for a good crosspost to !fediverselore@lemmy.ca
on it!
edit: https://lemmy.cafe/post/12094663 thanks again for the suggestion
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.
Yup. Clearly, “the admin is going to generally protect trans identities on her instance” didn’t ring as “life shattering” to too many. 😸
Anyone who has spent time in LGBTQ spaces knows the blanket inclusivity policies empower trolls and kill communities.
It’s better we move to .world befor the mods ruin blahaj too.
Hi! Have spent time in LGBTQ spaces; have never seen any such thing.
You have a disturbing modlog so I do hope you stay over there on .world. I sure won’t miss you.
Hi, this literally already happened on the 196 on reddit.
You also have a disturbing modlog if that’s where you want to take this.
I don’t care if you miss me troll.
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.
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:
In their “sorry” post, Moss cites this:
For example, 2 months ago, Kolanaki reached out to us via email and said they were banned from 196 for “playing the victim” and asked us why we banned him, but we didn’t. Moss talked to them and realized that the ban was unjust after reviewing the comment he was banned for. If he had never contacted us, we wouldn’t have known about the ban, and they would have still thought we banned them.
I don’t know about y’all, but this sounds like a successful ban appeal to me. I would rather have a few little mistakes like this, ones that can be corrected with an apology, than hundreds of comments harrassing users based on their gender.
Much love to Ada!
Yeah I think the above comment is inappropriately tying the issue to a topic they specifically said wasn’t the motivation
It’s the prevailing narrative though, so I guess it may as well be the truth.
“the misinformation is popular, despite those involved disregarding it. so I shall believe it.”
?
That seems to be the gist of what is happening en masse, yes. Regardless of what the true events may be, this is how everyone is going to end up remembering it.
Their words are available on the topic and ada could easily refute them.
Exactly. But why would anyone who is justifiably upset and willing to believe whatever account of events is more convenient bother to dig for evidence to the contrary?
We already have this being created out of this very thread, in a community that is meant to chronicle the history of Lemmy, so “by the victors” and all. It’s not the hill I’m willing to die on, at least.
I was trying to understand who was who and now I know. Cheers
The fur freaks are being catty, just wait for the dust to settle.
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 ).
Onehundrednightysix is stupid. You should have just named it oneninesix
They should’ve called it 197
Hehe that was one of the first posts – the creator regretting the name. But the community rolled with it. Somehow that fits.
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.
I think there is some drama with the mods but I am also lost and waiting for someone to clarify it.
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.
