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ANNOUNCEMENT: defederating effective immediately from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works - Beehaw
beehaw.orghey folks, weāll 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. ā we have been concerned
with how sustainable the explosion of new users on Lemmy isāparticularly with
federation in mindābasically 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 weāre being confronted with external vectors we have to
deal with that have further stressed our capabilities (elaborated on below). an
unfortunate reality weāve also found is we just donāt 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 donāt scale well. we have a list of
improvements weād like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and
federation if at all possibleābut weāre unanimous in the belief that we canāt
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 whatās mentioned above, our reason for defederating, by
and large, boils down to: - these two instancesā 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 donāt care about what our instance stands for as Gaywallet puts it,
in our discussion of whether to do this: > Thereās a lot of soft moderating that
happens, where people step in to diffuse tense situations. But itās not just
that, thereās a vibe that comes along with it. Most people need a lot of trust
and support to open up, and itās really hard to trust and support whoās around
you when there are bad actors. People shut themselves off in various ways when
thereās more hostility around them. Theyāll even shut themselves off when
thereās fake nice behavior around. Thereās a lot of nuance in modding a
community like this and itās 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 canāt
even assess that for people who arenāt from our instance, so weāre walking a
tightrope by trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That isnāt
sustainable forever and especially not in the face of massive growth on such a
short timeframe. > > Explicitly safe spaces in real life typically arenāt 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 itās in effect. but we hope you can understand why weāre 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, weāll 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
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 youāre open to being banned because they felt like it, and you canāt even explain how you werenāt 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 donāt, Iāll 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 Iām 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.
Yup. Taking a look at their ethos/manifesto stuff it instantly became clear to me what sort of place beehaw is, and itās not one Iām super fond of, so I doubt Iāll 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 āoh kbin is next thenā lol. but each of the three kinda have a different vibe to me, so maybe kbin is tolerable to beehaw while lemmy isnāt?
I havenāt had much experience with lemmy at all, in order to guess, and Iāve 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. Itās possible they didnāt get as lucky as we did in who that constituted. The devsā weird CCP bent overshadowing some other instancesā reportedly great admins just makes it even more of a confusing mess culture-wise.
Iād like to think we can abide by such stringent
rulesimplications as ābe nice.ā But their stated reasoning is that thereās just too much content to ever hope to moderate by themselves, whichā¦they really should have seen coming on a platform whose intent is to federate, ngl. Doesnāt matter if your homebase is young. You need underlings for this once it gets beyond a couple hundred people.Which is why Iām leaning on the side of beehaw eventually deciding thereās 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 weāre nearly as bad as other places out there. I think weāve 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 Iām not sure beehaw will appreciate.
Yup. I completely agree. I understand why beehaw defederated from lemmy because lemmy kinda seemsā¦ unhinged, in comparison to beehawās carefully crafted community.
Whereas kbin I think youāre right, tend to be happy to civilly hear each other out. whereas I feel like beehaw isnāt really interested in that. Though I think of kbin users respect beehawās way of doing things while weāre in their space, they might not have issues with us.
granted, the response I got was āwe donāt even think about youā so maybe kbin is too small to really be noticeable to them lol.
Unhinged. Youāve found the perfect word for it. They come off to me like what happens in study hall when the instructor has to leave.
Goodness, my pride, lmao. I think Iām 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 thanā¦whatever reddit was. That would be one behavior I am thrilled to see die, and hopefully federating with more chaotic instances wonāt kick it up again. Iām concerned it may.
haha youāve summed up my thoughts exactly. itās a little interesting seeing lemmy get the wilder side of reddit and kbin getting the more reserved side. whereas both are āsimilarā enough that I think weāre fine with each other.
Beehaw hasnāt 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)ā¦
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. Thereās less issues. So, Iām surprised Beehaw had that amount of trolling.