ANNOUNCEMENT: defederating effective immediately from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works - Beehaw
beehaw.org
hey folks, we’ll be quick and to the point with this one: ##### we have made the decision to defederate from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. we recognize this is hugely inconvenient for a wide variety of reasons, but we think this is a decision we need to take immediately. the remainder of the post details our thoughts and decision-making on why this is necessary. — we have been concerned with how sustainable the explosion of new users on Lemmy is–particularly with federation in mind–basically since it began. i have already related [https://beehaw.org/post/520044?scrollToComments=true] how difficult dealing with the explosion has been just constrained to this instance for us four Admins, and increasingly we’re being confronted with external vectors we have to deal with that have further stressed our capabilities (elaborated on below). an unfortunate reality we’ve also found is we just don’t have the tools or the time here to parse out all the good from all the bad. all we have is a nuke and some pretty rudimentary mod powers that don’t scale well. we have a list of improvements we’d like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and federation if at all possible–but we’re unanimous in the belief that we can’t wait on what we want to be developed here. separately, we want to do this now, while the band-aid can be ripped off with substantially less pain. aside from/complementary to what’s mentioned above, our reason for defederating, by and large, boils down to: - these two instances’ open registration policy, which is extremely problematic for us given how federation works and how trivial it makes trolling, harassment, and other undesirable behavior; - the disproportionate number of moderator actions we take against users of these two instances, and the general amount of time we have to dedicate to bad actors on those two instances; - our need to preserve not only a moderated community but a vibe and general feeling this is actually a safe space for our users to participate in; - and the reality that fulfilling our ethos is simply not possible when we not only have to account for our own users but have to account for literally tens of thousands of new, completely unvetted users, some of whom explicitly see spaces like this as desirable to troll and disrupt and others of whom simply don’t care about what our instance stands for as Gaywallet puts it, in our discussion of whether to do this: > There’s a lot of soft moderating that happens, where people step in to diffuse tense situations. But it’s not just that, there’s a vibe that comes along with it. Most people need a lot of trust and support to open up, and it’s really hard to trust and support who’s around you when there are bad actors. People shut themselves off in various ways when there’s more hostility around them. They’ll even shut themselves off when there’s fake nice behavior around. There’s a lot of nuance in modding a community like this and it’s not just where we take moderator actions- sometimes people need to step in to diffuse, to negotiate, to help people grow. This only works when everyone is on the same page about our ethos and right now we can’t even assess that for people who aren’t from our instance, so we’re walking a tightrope by trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That isn’t sustainable forever and especially not in the face of massive growth on such a short timeframe. > > Explicitly safe spaces in real life typically aren’t open to having strangers walk in off the street, even if they have a bouncer to throw problematic people out. A single negative interaction might require a lot of energy to undo. and, to reiterate: we understand that a lot of people legitimately and fairly use these instances, and this is going to be painful while it’s in effect. but we hope you can understand why we’re doing this. our words, when we talk about building something better here, are not idle platitudes, and we are not out to build a space that grows at any cost. we want a better space, and we think this is necessary to do that right now. if you disagree we understand that, but we hope you can if nothing else come away with the understanding it was an informed decision. this is also not a permanent judgement. in the future as tools develop, cultures settle, attitudes and interest change, and the wave of newcomers settles down, we’ll reassess whether we feel capable of refederating with these communities. thanks for using our site folks.

Interesting bit of news for the threadiverse. All three of these are fairly large lemmy instances

  • bill_1992@kbin.social
    58·
    2 years ago

    Some of y’all getting angry need to look at yourself in the mirror. The whole point of federation was to allow communities to do things like this if they want.

    A lot of new people are going to see this mudslinging and rightfully turn around. Nobody is coming to Lemmy to see drama between instances.

    • smartman97@kbin.social
      14·
      2 years ago

      I thought the whole point of federation was that everything from every federated instance was connected and I only need one account to see every part of it. The fact that federation has been the only discussion since the blackout is not good for the alternatives to reddit. My whole life is tech and if it’s this distracting to me I can’t imagine any remotely average user being interested. The fact that this was the perfect time to be part of an alternative but the whole experience has mostly just proven reddits “give it a week” response true.

      • ParkingPsychology@kbin.social
        24·
        2 years ago

        I thought the whole point of federation was that everything from every federated instance was connected and I only need one account to see every part of it.

        That was never going to happen, not even in the best possible case.

        Far left and far right are always going to split off. Do you want to be having discussions about race with neo nazis? I don’t. Let them go to their own dark corner of the internet.

      • SQL_InjectMe@partizle.com
        8·
        2 years ago

        I thought the whole point of federation was that everything from every federated instance was connected and I only need one account to see every part of it.

        No. If an instance hosts toxic communities then your instance can choose to defederate from it. You don’t have to wait for the centralized authority to ban them. It’s about being able to choose your admins and form a web of “good” communities.

      • Noki@kbin.social
        3·
        2 years ago

        kbin is only live a month or so… of course there will be problems and missing moderation tools - it wont be much better for lemmy.

        There is no perfect time - some people will stay some will go back to reddit witout any change. thats a user thing not the fault of beehaw or the federation of servers.

    • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      5·
      2 years ago

      I do think it’s fair to criticize the decision to try to be one of the largest instances while only having four moderators. They should have accepted a place as a midsize instance with midsize communities in order to maintain their moderation goals. Or they could have worked to get more moderators. Blaming the defederated instances and mod tools seem disingenuous at best. That said mod tools undoubtedly need improvement.

      • yozul@kbin.social
        11·
        2 years ago

        To be fair, they said the reason they were defederating from those two instances in particular is because most of their moderation involved people from them. They didn’t expand beehaw beyond what they could handle, the rest of lemmy expanded beyond what they could handle. If this really is just a temporary measure, which is also what they said, then I think it’s pretty reasonable.

        • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          2·
          2 years ago

          That’s because they defederated from the two largest competing instances. I’m talking about the communities users not the instances. The issue is that beehaw has the largest and therefore defacto default communities. The timing is bad and will likely affect wider adoption. The biggest problem is that it is entirely foreseeable and solved by either accepting a smaller community (closing signups) or improving moderation capabilities (getting more moderators or investing in an alternative moderation system) before it meant splitting the threadiverse in half.

          • yozul@kbin.social
            8·
            2 years ago

            I’m not denying that it sucks, but if you’d told anybody this was going to happen a month ago they’d have just laughed at you. Of course they were unprepared. Everbody has more than they can deal with. Adding more mods isn’t as simple as picking some names out of a hat, and this isn’t a thing anyone was preparing for. There currently are no alternative moderation systems, everything is too new and until recently was all way to small for that to be important, and they just have more work then they can deal with trying to suddenly moderate all of the threadiverse.

            This was a bad option that sucked, but every option was a bad option that sucked. I’m more concerned with how they deal with things as they normalize over the coming weeks and months than I am with how they’re trying to put out the fires in the short term.

            • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              0·
              2 years ago

              But they chose a nonstandard moderation strategy that limited their ability to scale moderation with users. The default system is that communities are moderated independently of admins (not saying admins don’t form communities or that there’s no overlap between admins and mods) whereas on beehaw only the admins can create communities and therefore are the primary moderators.

              Now I’m not saying that there’s anything inherently wrong with the system they’ve chosen but the fact that it is nonstandard and in fact built into the core precept of beehaw means that this was easily foreseen.

              • yozul@kbin.social
                6·
                2 years ago

                Easily forseen if you knew that lemmy was suddenly going to have a hundred times as many users in the space of a couple weeks. That was the thing no one was prepared for though.

      • surrendertogravity@beehaw.orgEnglish
        4·
        2 years ago

        The admins have always been clear that they’re not trying to replace Reddit, and I’m quite sure they were not trying to be one of the largest instances.

        If they weren’t trying to get large then how did that happen? Based on admin comments, beehaw was one of the more active instances when the first wave of migration happened; and a decent amount of the pre-first wave posts about lemmy I saw on Reddit were about how Beehaw was a good instance to join as it was defederated from lemmygrad.

        • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          I’m not saying this has anything to do with replacing reddit but it is bad for the larger threadiverse community. Notably there were several other instances that closed registration for the purposes of not growing quicker than they could handle long term (see lemmy.ml). Beehaw has most of the largest (and therefore defacto default) communities. Active steps to avoid that would have allowed them to maintain their moderation goals while growing in an organic and sustainable way that benefits the larger threadiverse community.

          • surrendertogravity@beehaw.orgEnglish
            4·
            2 years ago

            I was strictly replying to the part of your comment where you said they made a decision to try to be one of the largest instances – imo they did not make a explicit decision to try to be that, but rather the growth was a side effect of the circumstances around reddit users checking out the fediverse.

            Is closing registrations is better than having an application with questions that weed out low-effort users? IMO it’s probably a wash. beehaw has only banned one user from the local instance that I know of, so the application process seems to be working overall. The issue is that other instances are growing too quickly and needing to moderate those users, not their own.

            I do agree this isn’t great for the threadiverse and I wish it hadn’t come to this, both on a personal and community level. I was subbed to the knitting community on lemmy.world, it was the most active of those communities that I saw, and now I’m locked out. Idk if I want to move to an alt on a different instance, or self-host my own so that I’m fully in control of what I can see, or what. :S

            • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              1·
              2 years ago

              No the issue is that four moderators for the whole instance was always unsustainable and allowing the communities to become the defacto defaults without growing the mod teams was a bad idea. This was easily foreseen and corrected. Blaming other instances is not at all fair.

              • Noki@kbin.social
                4·
                2 years ago

                you do not understand the problem. The growth was on every server of the fedivers - so moderationg users from different servers was to much work. how should they stop people from other servers? two options - block any individuell(which is to much work with so many open registration servers - they can just spamm new servers) or nuke the server where most of the trolls come from.

                • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                  2·
                  2 years ago

                  I DO understand the problem. They only have an issue with an influx of users because they are the largest (defacto default) communities. A position that was incompatible with their moderation system from the get go. Had they had more sustainably sized communities none of this would have been an issue.

    • eta_aquarid@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      exactly this; the whole point was so instances could pick and choose who they wanted to interact with

      I’d always heard that federation was good because if you get an instance infested with fascists, you (and everyone else who doesn’t want anything to do with them) can just cut that instance loose and let it drift away

      I guess others thought different?

    • Cylusthevirus@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      I mean some people absolutely do love and feed on drama, but is that who we want to attract? They’re not the nicest bunch to have around in my experience.

  • BaroqueInMind@kbin.social
    32·
    2 years ago

    This simply solidifies my opinion that I’ve had all along that Beehaw is a trash instance full of sensitive censor-happy ninnies and I hope they all resolve the issues they are having to eventually be finally free from trolls and assholes in their humble & beautiful walled-garden paradise echo chamber. All the best for them.

    • bill_1992@kbin.social
      59·
      2 years ago

      Isn’t the whole point of the fediverse that you get to create and craft your experience for your community? There’s a really good reason defederating is a feature. I don’t get it, Beehaw decides to use the features of federation so now we: firstly become tribalistic (them vs us), and secondly decide to get angry? Like it or not, this is what you signed up for when you wanted federation.

      I don’t see the point of getting angry like this, and really don’t see how this negativity being conducive to a thriving community. Some new people are going to explore fediverse, see tribalistic mudslinging among instances, and say “not for me.”

      I’d say respect their decision and move on, if it’s not for you it’s not for you.

      • zalack@kbin.social
        22·
        2 years ago

        Yeah, they’re saying “look, we only have four mods, have a highly targeted type of community we are trying to build, and have had to disproportionately moderate users from these instances” which seems reasonable on it’s face.

        That’s kind of the beauty of Lemmy/Kbin right? You can spin up an instance with whatever rules you want. I think people are reacting to the fact that during the Reddit exodus Beehaw kind of looked like a “default” general instance, including me.

        But that’s a misreading on our part, not them going back on that.

      • BreadDog@kbin.socialOP
        13·
        2 years ago

        Its both a value add and a negative. For those more focused on their own community (Like beehaw) it’s an obvious positive. But for many users, losing access to certain communities on your own instance of choice is going to be a negative. I personally don’t blame Beehaw for favoring the former. I think improved moderation tools and more granular federation would at least make the move less of a blow to users.

      • Leigh@beehaw.org
        11·
        2 years ago

        Absolutely. It’s disappointing that this person read a post made by the Beehaw admins that was written with nuance and grace, and then decided to respond with vitriol. That’s exactly the kind of attitude that is so prolific on Reddit, and I am happy to leave it behind. Thank you for your reasoned reply.

        OP, I encourage you in the future to choose grace.

        • Ski@kbin.social
          6·
          2 years ago

          This kind of post right here is the gold standard for why I chose Kbin over other instances. Well reasoned, free of vitriol, and looking to build a new culture outside of the one a lot of us left behind on Reddit.

        • BaroqueInMind@kbin.social
          2·
          2 years ago

          Vitriol is a strong word to describe what I said about Beehaw. I do not hold a bitter spite to what Beehaw did, in fact I understand and accept their decision as prudent and appropriate for their community.

          I simply hate how they act benevolent where the reality is the opposite; that their admins are legitimately overlords akin to a full-time power-abusing reddit moderator.

          Regarding your comment that I need to act with more grace, my apologies. You are correct, I should be less aggressive in my opinions and will self-censor henceforth to protect and maintain the humility of the discussions that occur here.

          • Leigh@beehaw.org
            1·
            2 years ago

            I simply hate how they act benevolent where the reality is the opposite; that their admins are legitimately overlords akin to a full-time power-abusing reddit moderator.

            What do you mean by this? Do you have examples? Maybe you’re correct and I just haven’t seen it, but every example I’ve seen of them responding to something has been great.

            Regarding your comment that I need to act with more grace, my apologies. You are correct, I should be less aggressive in my opinions and will self-censor henceforth to protect and maintain the humility of the discussions that occur here.

            Don’t sweat it, brother. <3

        • eta_aquarid@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          yeah, this is the weird thing; Beehaw’s reasonings are incredibly reasonable, and they’re not saying that the other parts of Lemmy aren’t good enough for them, which is what I think a lot of people are getting mad at

          that and thinking that they’re entitled to access to Beehaw

      • Noki@kbin.social
        5·
        2 years ago

        100% - the beauty of the fedivers is that everybody can chose to federatre OR NOT!

        If people wanne follow beehaw they can switch server or even go to some other fedivers project and follow from there.

      • eta_aquarid@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        Isn’t the whole point of the fediverse that you get to create and craft your experience for your community? There’s a really good reason defederating is a feature. I don’t get it, Beehaw decides to use the features of federation so now we: firstly become tribalistic (them vs us), and secondly decide to get angry? Like it or not, this is what you signed up for when you wanted federation.

        Yes, exactly

        like we’re not owed Beehaw’s cooperation; it’s their instance and if the users want to do this then that’s their perogative

        Regardless, this is being blown out of proportion; Beehaw outright said that this was temporary

    • dan1101@lemmy.world
      43·
      2 years ago

      Yeah I don’t feel quite as harshly but as soon as I saw they didn’t allow downvotes I knew their philosophy wasn’t for me. Too bad about losing their gaming group though.

      • Captain_Wtv@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 years ago

        I’ll be honest, it’s weird to not allow downvotes but be on a federated site. Idk if I’m weird or if that’s just me tho. Like if you go to beehaw from another Lemmy instance you can downvote them.

    • DigiWolf@kbin.social
      6·
      2 years ago

      That’s been my view too. There’s definitely a need for moderation, but I’ve been on the internet for quite some time and the vibe from Beehaw is very much concerning. Any time I’ve seen a community run like that, it always always ends up feeling like an echochamber run by a dictator. I want an internet that’s mostly wholesome, not a “happy fun camp where there’s all smiles and you had better not frown!”

    • lamentforicarus@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      I have a beehaw account. I’ve only experienced one user who’s a bit too intense about their thoughts. Everyone else has just been chill. The admin aren’t defederating from lemmy.ml, the other big instance, and have no plans to do so. They really were just overwhelmed by the two feds they blocked because of trollish users. It’s not as intense as you make it sound.

    • geoffervescent@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      I think it’s great. I want an account there for the occassions when I want to visit a safe space or a SFW website. It doesnt have to be your identity. You can go to different instances in different contexts, for different modes of interaction. And a third unrelated instance can remain federated with them both, if that’s amenable to all parties.

  • Otome-chan@kbin.social
    26·
    2 years ago

    I kinda expected that after seeing them purge some threads made by lemmy users. I have to imagine we kbin users are gonna get cut next lmao.

    • BlueForestDev@kbin.social
      7·
      2 years ago

      Good riddance. I like the no-downvote style but overzealous mods just create their own pillow fort of the same 5 users regurgitating the same shit over and over.

      • Otome-chan@kbin.social
        12·
        2 years ago

        Perhaps harsh but beehaw strikes me as the tumblr/progressive/sjw types that really wanna build their safe space. Which makes me wonder why they’re federating at all lol.

        I’m very glad that kbin seems to have a “let’s get all the content and speak freely” sorta vibe going on right now. hopefully things stay that way.

        • Nepenthe@kbin.social
          4·
          2 years ago

          I got the same sense. Authoritarianism runs on both sides of the political spectrum.

          While their FAQ touted an emphasis on empathy, the heavy flowery language while also making a point to refuse to have written rules at all somehow gave me a feeling of double-speak. The idea is nice, but now you’re open to being banned because they felt like it, and you can’t even explain how you weren’t breaking the rules if no rules exist. Refusing to allow anyone but themselves to create communities backs up the authoritarian streak. Not interested. I assume if they don’t, I’ll eventually be banned there anyway. I really like debate and I really dislike dictatorships.

          At least if one of the largest instances out there goes full Korea, it will leave other instances a chance to be noticed in their wake. It sounds salty, but I’m still getting used to what federation means for a platform and when we were still initially federating my entire feed was utterly nothing but beehaw. I am salty. I want as much variety as I can get.

          • Otome-chan@kbin.social
            4·
            2 years ago

            Yup. Taking a look at their ethos/manifesto stuff it instantly became clear to me what sort of place beehaw is, and it’s not one I’m super fond of, so I doubt I’ll ever make an account there.

            Yeah beehaw is pretty big at least from my perspective. I see three big communities: lemmy, kbin, and beehaw. and beehaw is easily the odd one out with their weird manifesto stuff lol. Which is why when they said they were defederating from lemmy, it kinda struck me as “oh kbin is next then” lol. but each of the three kinda have a different vibe to me, so maybe kbin is tolerable to beehaw while lemmy isn’t?

            • Nepenthe@kbin.social
              3·
              2 years ago

              I haven’t had much experience with lemmy at all, in order to guess, and I’ve seen conflicting things about them. Lemmy was already bigger and it feels like it got a lot more publicity than kbin, so they bore the brunt of the exodus. It’s possible they didn’t get as lucky as we did in who that constituted. The devs’ weird CCP bent overshadowing some other instances’ reportedly great admins just makes it even more of a confusing mess culture-wise.

              I’d like to think we can abide by such stringent rules implications as “be nice.” But their stated reasoning is that there’s just too much content to ever hope to moderate by themselves, which…they really should have seen coming on a platform whose intent is to federate, ngl. Doesn’t matter if your homebase is young. You need underlings for this once it gets beyond a couple hundred people.

              Which is why I’m leaning on the side of beehaw eventually deciding there’s no choice but to defed way more than this until and unless they can afford help. With four admin-mods alone against the mercy of the entire fediverse, their hopes of upholding the mission statement will eventually be laughable any other way.

              Not that I think we’re nearly as bad as other places out there. I think we’ve got a surprisingly great atmosphere going and I hope to god it stays. But those are their two options, and kbin users seem to have an admirably civil tendency both to shitpost and to question and hear out differing viewpoints in a way I’m not sure beehaw will appreciate.

              • Otome-chan@kbin.social
                4·
                2 years ago

                Yup. I completely agree. I understand why beehaw defederated from lemmy because lemmy kinda seems… unhinged, in comparison to beehaw’s carefully crafted community.

                Whereas kbin I think you’re right, tend to be happy to civilly hear each other out. whereas I feel like beehaw isn’t really interested in that. Though I think of kbin users respect beehaw’s way of doing things while we’re in their space, they might not have issues with us.

                granted, the response I got was “we don’t even think about you” so maybe kbin is too small to really be noticeable to them lol.

                • Nepenthe@kbin.social
                  3·
                  2 years ago

                  Unhinged. You’ve found the perfect word for it. They come off to me like what happens in study hall when the instructor has to leave.

                  granted, the response I got was “we don’t even think about you” so maybe kbin is too small to really be noticeable to them lol.

                  Goodness, my pride, lmao. I think I’m quite content not to be such a giant enough instance I get thought of. Hundreds of comfier, smaller places over Reddit Deux any day. I agree, the people here seem on the whole cognizant enough to keep themselves in check, rather than…whatever reddit was. That would be one behavior I am thrilled to see die, and hopefully federating with more chaotic instances won’t kick it up again. I’m concerned it may.

                • Captain_Wtv@lemmy.world
                  2·
                  2 years ago

                  Beehaw hasn’t really defederated from Lemmy. They still allow the biggest Lemmy instance and a lot of smaller Lemmy instances. What they have done is block 2 of the top 4 (hard to count since the user count tools are having issues here on the lemmy side)…

                  I first had worries about Lemmy and thought about kbin first, but seems the reddit migration has managed to make the issues minor in my case. There’s less issues. So, I’m surprised Beehaw had that amount of trolling.

        • iorale@lemmy.fmhy.ml
          1·
          2 years ago

          Perhaps harsh but beehaw strikes me as the tumblr/progressive/sjw types that really wanna build their safe space

          They literally said they want that instance to be their safe-space, so you are absolutely correct.
          Still it’s surprising how quickly a block-happy instance appeared, I was expecting it but not only days into this reddit-wave.

          • Otome-chan@kbin.social
            2·
            2 years ago

            I’m fairly new to kbin but we do have mod tools here, and people have used them to moderate their community. So far I haven’t seen any issues with spam or what I’d say is trolling (though beehaw may think different). As for whether the mod tools are “good” I guess is one’s opinion. I find they’re enough to moderate the small communities I started here on kbin, though I have to imagine much larger (100k-1m) communities might struggle with the tools available. kbin is very new and still under development. so we’ll see.

            • GuyDudeman@beehaw.org
              2·
              2 years ago

              Yeah. I would also imagine that a place like Beehaw is going to attract bad actors and trolls who want to wreck the place at the expense of Beehaw users, who specifically joined in order to have a community of nice people to hang out with.

              • Otome-chan@kbin.social
                6·
                2 years ago

                the vibe here on kbin is I think very similar to what you might find on more serious subreddits or on something like hacker news. we’re interested in content, discussion, etc. but there’s not really overt trolling. I rarely see “shitposting” and other stuff as well. If you think “nerds who wanna talk about stuff and share news/content” you’ve got the right gist. I don’t really think anyone I’ve seen here would go out of there way to cause problems. but kbin does have open signups (not invite).

                idk what the mindset is for lemmy, beehaw, and the rest of the fediverse, but I think due to the long downtime for federation here on kbin there’s this vibe of “we have kbin stuff, and then we have stuff from those other guys” It’s to the point where someone quickly made a script to be able to easily see where someone is posting from.

                In that regard, it’s always very obvious to me when I’m among beehaw users and in beehaw communities. same for when I’m in lemmy spaces, or kbin spaces. whereas I think lemmy users may not know or care about that distinction. Though this might just be my own musing and others aren’t thinking like that haha.

                • Captain_Wtv@lemmy.world
                  0·
                  2 years ago

                  Really? The tone in Beehaw is obvious yeah, but I thought the tone for kbin and lemmy was slightly similar – unless things really changed in the few days when federation was down (which is possible)

          • ParkingPsychology@kbin.social
            1·
            2 years ago

            Not to the degree what I’m used to. It’s very minimal. It’ll probably take a year or two before it’s fully there, is my expectation.

            It’s not an easy thing to make and it doesn’t have the highest priority generally. Reddit didn’t even have automoderator for years.

    • Captain_Wtv@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 years ago

      You might be. Beehaw blocks the most places from what I have seen. And per the discussion on shitjustworks, it seems the mod tool they want is to allow their users to post on other instances but not let outside users post on theirs.

      • Otome-chan@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        really? that’s kinda yikes lol. like I can post on beehaw just fine from kbin, so I’m not quite sure that’s the case? I think they just want to be able to moderate strictly and they’ve only got like 4 mods over there.

  • Syo@kbin.social
    16·
    2 years ago

    I guess. That is the whole point right? If you like how a instance is run, you join them. And if any beehaw users don’t like this direction it’s taking, they can always make another account on Lemmy.

    Fediverse allows for great potential of redundant, diverse, and flexible meta content consumption, but we the users are bearing some of that growing pain right now as this all grows and things get shuffled on the fly.

  • experbia@kbin.social
    16·
    2 years ago

    All this talk of defederation and blocklists makes me generally uneasy. I understand how it’s easy to fall into. Nobody wants political extremists and criminals and bad actors and stuff on their instance, so it makes sense you might want to ban trollfactory dot xyz, nazihq dot us, and/or uncompromisingmarxist dot boats, or whatever.

    But I think the stupidest shit I saw on reddit were the subreddits that would ban you for even posting on an ideologically competing subreddit, with no consideration for the message you’d written. This is worse than that because it’s the opposite, and includes even reading the content.

    Imagine if when you went to post on /r/RestaurantOwners, and its AutoMod had the power to then immediately ban you from even looking at /r/antiwork and /r/WorkReform. Imagine posting to /r/conservative to correct someone’s error only to get permanently banned from viewing any “leftist” subs ever again. This is the vibe I get from this and as much as I want to avoid creating nodules of extremism and hatred, I want less to have people grabbing my head, taping my mouth, and averting my eyes from things they don’t like when they don’t even know what my thinking is.

    I feel like widespread trigger happy banlists are the death of small instances, too. Maybe one small instance doesn’t catch some newly registered asshole for a day or two but it’s too late. The 16-hour a day lifestyle moderator on a massive instance who has gangstalking delusions over nebulous “trolls” has already blacklisted all 150 of your users permanently and listed your domain for defederation as officially owned by the Nazi party in a massive register shared by the top 100 largest instances. The number of times I’ve heard this story with small Mastodon instances is more than I care for.

    • Sentrovasi@kbin.social
      11·
      2 years ago

      You’re not banned from looking at anything. Just go to their instance, abide by their signup rules and don’t do the shit they defederated to avoid.

    • Nymphioxetine@beehaw.org
      3·
      2 years ago

      A very good take on the pros and cons of this kind of thing.

      Personally as someone with an account on Beehaw I don’t think I’ll mind mostly. I’ve been pretty happy with the communities they have already made and been quite impressed with content amounts.

      Let’s be honest, this federated forum/link-aggregator is in its infancy. Rexxit brought it into the lime light and just kind of put a magnifying glass on these sorts of growing pains.

      I’d like to point out that most of the criticism I’ve seen has come from outside the community. I don’t feel like this will be a long term thing only. It’s really an attempt at trying to preserve the community brand and feeling for its members especially while things are still young.

    • Captain_Wtv@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      Yeah, I personally would understand the decision more if they at least tried having mods. They don’t. Their mods are just the admins. The admins are also the only ones able to make communities (magazines for kbin viewers) on beehaw.

    • sim_@beehaw.org
      1·
      2 years ago

      The admins at Beehaw have been explicit that this choice is not about locking their users in but about keeping bad actors out. But all of this is new, so the tools to accomplish that are crude for now.

    • BreadDog@kbin.socialOP
      6·
      2 years ago

      Certainly so. From a sort of… sociological point I’m wondering what the impacts are of major instances growing independent of each other. I feel like I can already feel it with kbin and lemmy both growing separately during the blackout. I’m wondering if the trend for major instances is going to be where each one has their own unique culture or if they will eventually homogenize.

      Only real concern here, although I didn’t participate during the mastodon surge last year, I heard that defederation became a bit of an issue with how common there. Granted, I feel like the impact is probably less here with the fact that you are interacting with topics rather than people.

      • Nepenthe@kbin.social
        4·
        2 years ago

        I’m personally hoping for a unique culture, especially since we currently have quite a good one. Going solo is just going solo – it’s sad and kinda dumb, since it defeats the entire point of the fediverse, but if they’re ok hanging out on a closed forum it’s not like those haven’t existed for decades.

        I hadn’t thought something like Mastodon would be able to defederate. Thinking about it, that would be far more disastrous for a platform aimed at following individuals to be able to do. The stress induced from having to choose an instance knowing they block other instances and being unable to even tell if that’s a bad thing or not until you investigate each and every one anyway. Having to look up what your favorite people are on, if you’re on Mastodon, so you can get news without leaving any of them out. What a mess.

        • GuyDudeman@beehaw.org
          4·
          2 years ago

          They’re not going solo though. They are still connected to hundreds of other instances. Including Lemmy.ml, which is still the biggest instance.

          • cnnrduncan@beehaw.org
            1·
            2 years ago

            Additionally, the Beehaw admins have said they’re open to refederating with lemmy.world et al if/when Lemmy gets better moderation tools.

        • eta_aquarid@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          they defederated from Lemmy.world and the other one, that’s it

          they’re not closing themselves off; they made it very clear what they were doing and why; people keep just catastrophizing about it over and over for some reason

          like they made it clear what they were doing and that it wouldn’t necessarily be permanent

        • AbelianGrape@beehaw.org
          1·
          2 years ago

          Lemmy specifically hasn’t implemented less harsh measures yet. This is a stop-gap action to cut off a trolling problem at its source. The beehaw admins say they will reevaluate when less drastic tools are available, e.g. allow beehaw users to interact with lemmy.world but not the other way around.

          I’m not sure I 100% agree, personally, but beehaw’s ethos is “be(e) nice” and if trolls are trolling, it can make it very hard for some people to open up and contribute. So I see where it’s coming from.

      • Shortcake@kbin.social
        3·
        2 years ago

        i think it really depends on the admin. I saw many threads on mastodon of hundreds of instances defederated with and listed reasons. some made sense, others did not.

  • arkcom@kbin.social
    8·
    2 years ago

    They should be running a standard forum software, but are already in too deep to fix the actual problem.

  • SQL_InjectMe@partizle.com
    5·
    2 years ago

    That’s fair, buuuuut why are the admins moderating comments? Why shouldn’t the moderators mod their communities and report problematic users to admins so those users can be blocked.

    • SQL_InjectMe@partizle.com
      14·
      2 years ago

      The admins are probably modding the communities because they probably created them but the proper solution should be to find mods, not just defederate

    • Nepenthe@kbin.social
      11·
      2 years ago

      No one on beehaw can create communities except the admins, with the promise that they will personally split the ones they have into more distinct topics as it becomes necessary. As such, that also makes them automatically the mods. It’s one of the reasons I decided against it, as well as… * gestures to headline. *

      I was quite curious what removing the downvote button would do to foster actual discussion, since its use is frowned upon in my one remaining reddit kebble sub, and everyone who remains each week is shockingly cordial with one another. Pity to see beehaw crashing and burning so fast like this.

      • CleoTheWizard@beehaw.org
        5·
        2 years ago

        Is it crashing and burning if it aligns with their explicitly stated goals? Seems like they’re sticking to their guns and having a well moderated community by doing this. Some people will want that, some won’t. But if we want this federation thing to work, we can’t start whining about instances making choices about what their users interact with. If anything I’m glad this is happening early so that people can see how the federation stuff will play out and get used to the idea.

        • Nepenthe@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          Having thought it over, I think the only two ways this can go are that beehaw defederates with almost everyone who isn’t a carbon copy of themselves in order to lighten the load, or they put more admins/mods in control (is this possible? I assume it is). Nothing else is going to stem interaction between y’all’s instance and every person and post on the fediverse that breaks the rules. What they wanted to do is admirable, but really doesn’t scale well with the amount of interaction being seen now.

          Temporary measures while they expand their abilities would be the much more expected way for this to go. If instead their solution is to just defederate everything all the time forever because people not signed up for beehaw didn’t sign up for beehaw’s rules, they might as well have built a wordpress forum for way less money than they’re spending. There’s going to be too much.

          • AbelianGrape@beehaw.org
            3·
            2 years ago

            I’m a bit confused by your comment. They say in their post that they will reevaluate when Lemmy’s mod tools improve. More granular control over federation could help too. It’s a temporary measure.

            It’s not like they’re taking extreme action because they want to cause schisms. “They will defederate with everyone” only seems to apply if every other huge instance also has high numbers of trolls. Maybe not so unlikely, but mod tools on Lemmy will hopefully improve by then. Note: you sign up for beehaw’s rules when you choose to interact on beehaw, not when you sign up to beehaw. The issue they are dealing with here is that they have had to disproportionately moderate users interacting on beehaw coming from those instances.

            And at the end of the day, if beehaw becomes too isolated, it takes like 5 clicks to open a different instance in my browser and sign up there instead.

          • Captain_Wtv@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 years ago

            For reference, Beehaw blocks almost 400 instances.

            I’m assuming most are troublesome communities and it makes sense. But, I do worry they are block happy. I wish they at least had reasons listed or a megathread with reasons for transparency.

  • ANuStart@kbin.social
    5·
    2 years ago

    The sad reality is that during the reddit blackout, people were pushing lemmy (specifically Beehaw) as the reddit replacement because yay decentralized, federated, fun!

    For a lot of those reddit refugees the effort they put into making content and trying to make Beehaw their home is gone now.

    They’re not going to want to start all over at a new instance and rebuild yet again.

    They’re just going to go back to reddit

    • eric5949@beehaw.org
      2·
      2 years ago

      Exactly. I’ve been trying to rebuild my account on lemmy.world but it’s disenheartening and honestly makes me want to not bother. The answer isnt defederating, the answer is find some mods.

    • Briskfall@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      I feel like the concept of “decentralisation” is good for the consuming users and people who want to discuss an interesting topic/subject, but not really for OC/content craetors… They just want their work to be as exposed to as many people as possible (exposure -> more clients -> bigger brand/value -> profit???), and defederalisating goes against that principle.

    • eta_aquarid@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      I think the issue is that everyone’s so focused on seeing Lemmy as a “notReddit” that they outright get pissed when it doesn’t work the way they think it should (like Reddit except the parts they think are bad)

      Lemmy (and kbin, and other similar platforms) and Reddit have the same niche, but they’re not the same thing

    • zalack@kbin.social
      23·
      2 years ago

      Or they’ll just be a smallish instance building the kind of community they want to build. There’s nothing wrong with knowing what you want to be and not trying to be more.

    • Kierunkowy74@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      They can’t scale. They will survive, though. Other generic Lemmy servers are overshadowing Beehaw as a generic Lemmy server. And it is fine for both them and Beehaw, IMO.

  • lixus98@kbin.social
    4·
    2 years ago

    To be honest? I don’t like the decision I wish there was a better way to handle this, this might make users not want to join the fediverse out of fear of losing contact with communities that they participate in.

    • ParkingPsychology@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      Just make an extra account… I don’t know about you, but I have a ton of reddit accounts, on reddit I already kept my participation separated and I used containers to quickly switch between them. It’s fine, I wouldn’t even notice a difference.

        • Noki@kbin.social
          3·
          2 years ago

          there is still enough serves that you can register that are not blocked by beehaw - or you can interact with mastodon/calckey software with lemmy and kbin. so easy.

  • spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    4·
    2 years ago

    Ultimately this is because beehaw allowed themselves to become one of the largest instances on the threadiverse with only FOUR mods. Any blame on the other instances/mod tools is deflection. This is poor management at it’s core and is bad for the larger community. That said I would love to see more in the way of improved mod tools.

  • mitch@beehaw.org
    2·
    2 years ago

    I think this is a fair choice for Beehaw to make, but I am frustrated that now I have less content to read. I wish we had better community discovery tools.

    • anthoniix@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      If you make an account on beehaw you cant see anything from lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works. Same in the opposite direction.

        • PabloDiscobar@kbin.social
          3·
          2 years ago

          As far as I know the content is duplicated on each server federated, on demand by users requesting content. My guess is that the content will be frozen on the defederation date. Your server won’t be able to read, or maybe read, but certainly not write to the other server, and the conversations there will happen without you.

    • Otome-chan@kbin.social
      1·
      2 years ago

      beehaw blocked lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. so people on beehaw can’t see lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works content/users and vice versa.