After more than 1.5y I have been browsing the other site again, and I have noticed that most assholes have disappeared.
Take for example this section about recent developments in anti-trans bathroom bans in the UK, to which someone said:
As a queer trans woman, I’m pleasantly surprised by this comment section. Thank you to everyone who is an ally.
Well, I don’t remember this being the case on the other site. I have seen a similar progressive user base manifest itself in other “thorny” threads as well.
I wonder what has actually happened since the Exodus. I swear I have seen more shills and trolls here, than I have seen in the few weeks I have been browsing the other site.
So I entertain different propositions. One is that a lot of bad faith actors have stopped being paid for it. Or they have naturally moved to Xitter as their natural habitat.
Some of my theories get weirder, like some of the worst people on the other site were so mad at spez that they were part of the Exodus and ended up here organically. Or that the Fediverse is in the eye of bad faith entities and some of the operations were moved onto Lemmy, possibly infiltrating the very same political spaces that are now targeted as “extremist”.
What are your own pet theories about where the fuck the overwhelmingly transphobic portion of the other site did go?
I can speak to this, as I was a mod of r/AskConservatives when reddit admin sent out the communiqué that misgendering someone or othrwise denying trans identity was a reddit rule 1 (“remember the human”) violation. Which I think was a step in the right direction, but those first few months were… rough. Inconsistent communication from admin, inconsistent removals by admin, and a slew of bad-faith actions from users on both the right and the left. A lot of bans given out, the head mod resigned over it, another mod was permabanned from reddit over it, and the rest of us just decided the only safe course for all our users –querants and respondents alike– was to preclude any questions touching on trans identity. (Which was unpopular with every stripe, the hallmark of a good compromise.)
Admin was already getting better at enforcing this interpretation of Rule 1 by the time I resigned my modship over the API debacle. I can only imagine they’ve continued to become more consistent in the time since and gradually transphobes are being weeded out with sitewide bans, or at least getting the message and keeping their bigotry to themselves. I still think it would’ve been better from the start to address the matter face-on, rather than shuffling it in with the proscription other dehumanizing behavior, but reddit isn’t know for great decision-making or forthrightness, is it?