I abandoned Reddit over the weekend in advance of the blackout. As a trans woman, I tended to keep myself to myself in some very subject specific subreddits and avoided anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment for the most part (although certainly not homophobic language). Not ideal but it was manageable.
I was wondering how everybody in the same boat as me has found Lemmy? I had relatively high hopes given my positive experiences with the Fedivers in the past on Mastodon instances. Most there had pretty progressive stances even if they were not specifically LGBTQ+ focused.
Anyway, I lasted two days on lemmy.world. I wanted to be positive and explore and engage widely but there was zero action taken on slurs and transphobic concern trolling comments. Then the parental concern posts from other instances started popping into the All / Active feed, and I figured there was little chance of seeing any instance defederations happening. I could only see one defederation listed total.
I suppose I could have stuck it out for longer. The trouble is I have seen all of this before many times over. So here I am on lemmy.blahaj.zone instead. 💚
I have felt so much safer here and comfortable. I think staying here has been best, both because based url, but also I love having a queer focused space. I feel much less exposed. I know some people might come in, but having a no transphobia policy feels so much better considering the amount of causal transphobia I used to see in some of my communities even if they were meant to be “Safe”. I also love the discussions here and so far feels so much less cliquish and open
I liken it to having a “home.” I can go out and read whatever bigger community in whatever instance, but I can also stay home at Blåhaj if I don’t have the emotional energy to handle raw uncut internet stranger today. Reddit, even in smaller communities, always had a risk of a wandering bigot.
Server perfomance is also a big plus. Even on some of the other, smaller, more IT driven instances I experienced way more lag then here