YSK: If you're on Lemmy.World or Sh.itjust.works you should not subscribe to any Beehaw communities

SteelBeard@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 786 points –

Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.

Edit: A lot of people are asking why Beehaw did this. I want to keep this post informational and not color it with my personal opinion. I am adding a link to the Beehaw announcement if you are interested in reading it, you can form your own views. https://beehaw.org/post/567170

485

You are viewing a single comment

Wow so much misinformed hostility against Beehaw here. The mod tools for Lemmy are currently limited and they just want to protect their community from trolls and spam. There's no conspiracy here to break federation.

Beehaw is some pseudo moral purity echo chamber. They consider anyone with a contrary opinion a troll. People create these "safe spaces" under the guise of protecting minority groups, but fuck.. I'm a minority, and I knew immediately I wasn't going to be welcome there.

People are free to judge it as they please.

--edit--

Why aren't other instances having this problem? Like if trolls and spam are such an issue, why do I only see relevant on topic comments in other instances?

T he issue isn't trolls, it's political dissent. And if you care about the truth, if you care about having the ability to talk about and express your ideas freely to other people, to have uncomfortable discussions with people you disagree with, to be exposed to new ideas, and fuck.. to possibly even change your mind, you shouldn't support beehaw.

If you genuinely want that type of environment, go for it, but that place should be called out for what it is.

This type of political authoritianism is why I left Reddit. It kills discussion, and I'm here for critical discussion.

Why would you not be welcome? Is it for your political opinions? Even if it were, I don't think they would personally shun you unless it entails attacking minorities.

That aside, and having said that of course it is everyone's perrogative to judge this behavior, I personally feel it is an exaggeration. Not every instance is about free speech nor should they be, at the end of the day the fediverse is about creating communities, one is able and should shape them into what their vision of that is. This is not authoritarianism, in this case they said it is due to their inability to moderate.

Even if it weren't for that, it is good that communities don't federate with every instance, aa I said, not everyone is about free speech and changing opinions some are here to have a good time and for that adequate protection is necessary.

I myself prefer deciding myself when to block other instances, so I joined one that let's users decide. But if other instances decided to block us I would understand and either move on or join another instance to interact with them without thinking much about it (having multiple accounts is kind of easy on the apps,)

I think I'm kind of used from servers blocking one another from my time on mastodon and I've seen the necessity of the practice, for example an anime focused group blocking bot instances, brigading, alt right groups, etc.

This is not authoritarianism, in this case they said it is due to their inability to moderate.

Rationally I think this is straight bullshit. Their inability to moderate is because of the desire to control the political direction of topics. If people want an echo chamber, fine, but I'm calling it out.

If people want an echo chamber, fine, but I’m calling it out.

Yes, that was always allowed. Beehaw is extremely up front about the kinds of voices and perspectives welcome on it. It never claimed to be a bastion of free speech. Complaining about that is like saying you don't like a burger restaurant because they don't serve sushi.

Dude this is a discussion based website, and you're complaining about me complaining? Pot meet kettle.

you’re complaining about me complaining?

I think it was Alexander Pope who once said that bad criticism does more harm than bad writing. Same principle applies here. Your criticism is bad. You don't like getting "called out on it," then make a better one.

Dude I'm voicing my opinion. You apparently don't even disagree you just dislike like I'm expressing it? What's your deal?

Your opinion encompasses a criticism of another Lemmy community on the basis that it doesn't operate in a way that you like. Which is fine. But you framed it as a fault of the community itself and not a matter of personal preference. My "deal" is that I don't think that's very cash money of you, pimp.

I don't give two fucks what you think about the "framing" of what I've said. Would you get upset if someone said "McDonald's is shit food" or "Reality TV is shit television"?

Anyways, your criticism has absolutely nothing to do with the content of my comment. You've said you agree with me so 🤷‍♀️

I guess it depends on the context. If someone said that McDonald's quality was fine for the amount of money you spent and is a fine choice if you're traveling and need to grab something quick to eat and your immediate reply was just that it was shit, I would say that if your opinion is given as a response to someone else's and is poorly worded or thought out, you've automatically opened yourself to having your opinion criticized.

That said, do you not recall that your original response in this thread was to someone who said about Beehaw

This is not authoritarianism, in this case they said it is due to their inability to moderate.

And you disagreed with THEIR opinion?

This entire thing is me thinking your opinion is bad, while your original comment was you saying you think someone else's opinion is bad.

Pot, meet kettle.

This entire thing is me thinking your opinion is bad, while your original comment was you saying you think someone else's opinion is bad.

Dude you've provided exactly zero counterpoints to my position. You think my opinion is bad, fine.

Except, I did. Your claim is that Beehaw is authoritarian. Authoritarianism, however, is a political system. This is an explicit example of hyperbole to the point of misrepresentation because authoritarianism presumably ignores the sovereignty and political rights of the members of a nation state. Beehaw is just a website, one in which you can voluntarily participate, but one in which you're also neither product nor customer. You have no valid claim to any tangible rights on that server. It's much closer to just disliking a restaurant because it doesn't serve the food you want and asks you to leave after you keep ordering stuff they just don't serve. If you want to be able to say slurs or whatever without repercussion, there's plenty of places on the internet you can get your kicks by doing that. You just can't do it there.

16 more...
16 more...
16 more...
16 more...
16 more...
16 more...
16 more...
16 more...
16 more...

Fine, I just don't get the echo chamber feeling but admittedly I only use beehive for gaming/anime/escapism hobby related communities so I haven't seen it being all about conteolling politics, at least not directly.

At the end of the day I barely get what you mean by controlling politics, since it is not apparent on the communities I visit. Also keep in mind, I'm not american so if this is about the culture war over there or a republicans vs democrats thing I probably won't notice it since it hasn't affected any discussion I've had.

But I would need concrete examples for me to see it as authoritarian because in a vacuum as I explained I can see communities pulling this kind of conduct without it being about controlling the discourse per se but more about helping communities.

Edit: forgot to say, but if it was over politics I don't think that would necessitate a ban lemmy.world (or alternative ly that would mean complete defederation) since it has no clear political affiliation, I see it just it being massive and difficult to moderate otherwise they would have targeted many other toxic instances way before touching .world.

So if you take Reveddit, and go look at Reddit communities you'll see massive political disparity in how comments are moderated. Go look at beehaw modlogs and you'll see the same thing.

If you personally aren't able to see the bias in moderating, sorry I don't know how to teach that.

16 more...
16 more...

Beehaw lost me when admins allowed a female user to repeatedly insult men, say 95% of them are awful, that men shouldn’t even exist etc they claim they’re a “safe, welcoming space” but it’s actually hypocritical.

They defederated from this and other instances and yet I’ve never seen any comments reaching that level of hostility here. The only way to interpret that is that they actually are okay with insults and bigotry as long as it suits their whims. If a man had made the same remarks it’d be written off as the rantings of an incel and they’d likely be banned.

I should be their target audience as someone who has voted left my entire life and it’s too much and too controlled for me. Either they’re for all equality and inclusiveness or they’re not. Pick one.

2 more...
18 more...

Eh, there were a few posts about this on lemmy.world when it happened. People went through beehaw's modlog and could only find a handful of actions taken against both communities.

Seems they just want to have their own little bubble.

Safe spaces are pretty much that. I would actually like to join beehaw if I ever need to switch to an instance for my own sanity. I left reddit but it's followed us here so I think a more curated experience would be nice.

That is unless they're nazis, fascists, authoritarian or any other kind of violent extremist faction. I'm sick of having no faith in humanity because of all these backwards ideologies being "expressed". To quote Costanza, these pretzels are making me thirsty.

I also don't like how beehaw has downvotes disabled. I get not wanting there to be brigading, or negativity, but being able to downvote a troll, or a post that is blatantly providing misinformation (purposefully or not), is invaluable.

I think there's value in it. The underlying idea is that if someone is wrong, even if blatantly so, you have to take the effort to explain why. On reddit, the downvote button was just as often used as a community cudgel against dissenting opinion, even when the opinion was 1) genuinely harmless but unpopular, 2) well reasoned and supported by evidence but something that went against the mob mentality, or 3) just something that people didn't understand and their gut reaction to it was negative.

1 more...
1 more...

Yep, I applied to join when I was fresh and it asks about how active applicants are. I was honest and said I wasn't the most active person but that I did participate in the subs that I used the most. Was trying to be honest and didn't see any red flags with that. They still denied me, so fuck beehaw

1 more...

True, but unsubbed from them when it happened because I don't want to see communities I can't interact with.

Why add to the problem and have frustration with wanting to discuss something you are blocked from?

They have every right to protect themselves against spam. But that said, ever since they defederated, their activity and user numbers are down.

Agree that they have every right to handle their instance however they want. I also have the right to not interact with them while they are blocking the instance I call home.

19 more...