So the original reason for /r/195 was due to a dorm room number. The roommates started it, and visitors had to post before leaving. It was just a sort of joke and/or meme dump between their friends. Then it got popular across a wider audience. By that point, the original roommates had already moved out and lost interest in the sub, so it was left unmoderated. This led to the Nazi Bar phenomenon, where the alt right and nazis quickly started using it to post Nazi memes, and run the original posters off.
These original posters created /196, and moderated it heavily. This heavy moderation was specifically because of the nazis on 195, (which also led frequent brigades on 196) so anything even slightly conservative quickly got squashed. As a result, /196 became known as a safe space for LGBTQ+ people.
But when it was brought to Lemmy, the schism developed. Largely due to differing mod/admin behaviors, and individual posters preferring one community over another. The .ml instance tends to be cordial, but is very heavily moderated. Dissent is quickly deleted and admins issue bans liberally; The .ml instances tend to be cordial because there isn’t much room for discussion outside of the admins’ specific beliefs. This means the /196 on .ml quickly fell in line with the types of posts that the instance required.
Meanwhile, the /196 on blahaj primarily focused on maintaining that safe space for LGBTQ+ mindset, so that’s where those posters landed.
As far as the /c/196@blahaj vs /c/onehundredninetysix schism, that was due to a disagreement with the mods of /c/196@blahaj. The mods tried to move the community to Lemmy.World instead, taking a “the users don’t own this community, we do” stance on it. That backfired, as many of the blahaj posters disliked the admins of .world, plus centralization flies in the face of lemmy’s decentralized structure. /onehundredninetysix was created in defiance of the /196@blahaj (and /196@world) mods, and many of the @blahaj posters moved there instead.
I can actually explain the schism, kind of…
So the original reason for /r/195 was due to a dorm room number. The roommates started it, and visitors had to post before leaving. It was just a sort of joke and/or meme dump between their friends. Then it got popular across a wider audience. By that point, the original roommates had already moved out and lost interest in the sub, so it was left unmoderated. This led to the Nazi Bar phenomenon, where the alt right and nazis quickly started using it to post Nazi memes, and run the original posters off.
These original posters created /196, and moderated it heavily. This heavy moderation was specifically because of the nazis on 195, (which also led frequent brigades on 196) so anything even slightly conservative quickly got squashed. As a result, /196 became known as a safe space for LGBTQ+ people.
But when it was brought to Lemmy, the schism developed. Largely due to differing mod/admin behaviors, and individual posters preferring one community over another. The .ml instance tends to be cordial, but is very heavily moderated. Dissent is quickly deleted and admins issue bans liberally; The .ml instances tend to be cordial because there isn’t much room for discussion outside of the admins’ specific beliefs. This means the /196 on .ml quickly fell in line with the types of posts that the instance required.
Meanwhile, the /196 on blahaj primarily focused on maintaining that safe space for LGBTQ+ mindset, so that’s where those posters landed.
As far as the /c/196@blahaj vs /c/onehundredninetysix schism, that was due to a disagreement with the mods of /c/196@blahaj. The mods tried to move the community to Lemmy.World instead, taking a “the users don’t own this community, we do” stance on it. That backfired, as many of the blahaj posters disliked the admins of .world, plus centralization flies in the face of lemmy’s decentralized structure. /onehundredninetysix was created in defiance of the /196@blahaj (and /196@world) mods, and many of the @blahaj posters moved there instead.