ANNOUNCEMENT: defederating effective immediately from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works

alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgmod to Beehaw Support@beehaw.org – 601 points –

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 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 (or a moral one on the part of either community's owner, i should add--we just have differing interests here and that's fine). 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.

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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;

Doesn't this just lead you down a path of simply defederating most instances? It sounds like you just don't actually want to participate in the larger federated community. Which is admittedly fine if that's the direction you want to take this... but it certainly seems like a first step towards just running a closed-off site with none of the actual benefits of being part of the fediverse.

Doesn’t this just lead you down a path of simply defederating most instances?

no. most instances do not have open registration, and require an application of some kind to be let in. we also don't blanket distrust all places which don't require them. moreover, it's the sum of the parts here--i don't know why you feel a need to extrapolate from one point when the whole point of the post is there are multiple, compounding factors for why we've defederated with these two instances specifically. if we wanted to defederate with everyone and thought it was the best way forward, without exaggeration we'd just do that--we're very open that we care a lot more about making a good space than a big one.

Just seems like a method of dealing with the problem that's mostly antithetical to the inherent connectivity of the platform it's built on. I get that not every instance wants to be a big open social media experience, but when the lemmy website showed you guys on the top of the "suggested instances" list right at the peak of the exodus from Reddit, it certainly feels like a bit of a rug pull when there's such heavy-handed / sweeping admin action with pretty annoying consequences like this. In the end it's your site, and it seems more like this is a response you your lack of ability to respond adequately with the current moderation tools, so I do respect the core issue at play. Still, feels like moving somewhere else is just the more future-proof option here, since this is certainly a red flag for me personally.

I don't really see how it's antithetical, considering how one of the benefits of federated social media is being able to decide how that federated network is built and what nodes are included or excluded from that. A lot of federated software, Lemmy included, come with options for federating based on an include-list rather than an exclude-list, where your instance's federation can be even more handpicked.

Additionally, Beehaw doesn't have control over being shown on Lemmy's website - that's just something that happens. It really just isn't anywhere near the same as pulling up the ladder after climbing to the top - that would give a misleading character to this decision and the factors which motivated it.

It also isn't as black and white as the admins just making a, as you put it, "heavy-handed / sweeping admin action with pretty annoying consequences" - Lemmy quite literally does not have a middle ground, which is as I understand it what the admins, mods, and general community would have preferred. I respect anyone's decision to move instances or create alternate accounts in response, and I hope we can refederate with these instances in the future when Lemmy's software is more matured and allows more granular moderation, but for now, I feel like this is really the best/most anyone can do until then.

Hey!

Additionally, Beehaw doesn’t have control over being shown on Lemmy’s website - that’s just something that happens.

If you mean https//join-lemmy.org, then it's actually totally possible to hide Beehaw from the instances list there. If that's something that Beehaw admins are interested in and think would be useful right now, hit me up and I can help you out (specifically I would like an admin to confirm this, though).

that's kinda the great thing about lemmy though is it not? When you start an instance, you can decide how you want it to be run. Beehaw has had a small, but lovely community for a while now, and they want to keep it that way. It's great they can choose to defederate from specific instances they deem problematic. You too have the power to spin up an instance with very little effort if you want total control and you can federate with whoever you want.

I'm not sure how you see this as a red flag, but it kinda seems to me like a safe, small community like Beehaw isn't really for you if that's the case

Open registration is obviously gonna be the norm and people can just sign up on any other fedi site and comment here.