The Beehaw project is entering some significant challengeslocked
There is a lot of discussion happening in the background of our project here. We could not anticipate all of the challenges that we were going to face a few years ago. One of the reasons for this was because we had no idea what our choice of a platform would bring.
Specifically, we chose Lemmy as the software that we would use to launch our endeavor to attempt a safe space for marginalized persons online.
In the first year or so, this choice was completely successful for a very small number of users. And then we all experienced an enormous influx of users when Reddit announced/implemented their shutting down of third party apps.
Since then there has been a huge number of people that have joined the Beehaw project. This tsunami of users initiated technical problems, and otherwise, that we could not foresee.
Thankfully and fortunately, we have had a couple of incredibly knowledgeable persons that have swooped in to ’save the day’ and keep this site running.
Unfortunately, these persons will NOT be able to continue to support the Beehaw project much further. They have life commitments and other factors, including careers and family life, that will prevent them from contributing to our project in an ongoing fashion.
All that being said, Lemmy (the software that Beehaw runs on) development is incredibly slow and is riddled with problems that makes administration/moderation very painful.
Therefore, we are left with some options that may feel uncomfortable to us. For example, we may want to consider leaving the Fediverse for another software platform that does NOT include ActivityPub. To explain, Fediverse/ActivityPub are very positive concepts on the foundational level. However, the Beehaw project is struggling to include this because most of our moderation/content/ethos is being jeopardized from OTHER federated instances (i.e. it, mostly, is NOT coming from within our own Beehaw registered user base).
The aforementioned persons, that have ’swooped in to save the day’, have been discussing/working with us to come up with the best solutions that would enable the Beehaw project to continue while NOT needing incredibly experienced/technically adept persons around.
Right now, we are testing alternative software platforms and evaluating them based on everything that we want Beehaw to become in the future.
Thank you all for your continued support of the Beehaw project and entrusting us to make this happen.
If this is an issue with people spinning up malicious instances. Could you switch to a whitelist of federated instances? Beehaw feels like the heart of lemmy and it would be a shame to see it go.
Thanks for the heads up. Short answer for me is that I joined for a civil place on the Threadiverse not a walled garden. So if you guys leave the Threadiverse I will have to find a new home.
So I think you all will need to decide where to take this community. I will understand whatever you all decide. Just please communicate it clearly when the time comes.
Thanks for all of the hard work you all have done and are doing.
It hurts to admit, but my initial reaction is similar. A completely defederated Beehaw is much less appealing.
I feel the same way. I understand that beehaw follows its own path and goals and it's genuinely what I like about this instance. I love the moderation and the fact that you all dont put up with BS from users trying to bait you into semantic wars or drama about free speech. I like that the main rule is just be(e) nice and that as a major instance on lemmy it does help set a tone.
That said I dont know if I'd follow beehaw off the fediverse.
I would just like to throw my voice out there as a mod on the instance.
I truly love beehaw, and will likely stay if this move happened. Beehaw was an amazing place to find after everything happened with reddit. And I love participating here and really like the community I've found here
All that being said. I would be extremely saddened and disappointed if beehaw decided to leave the fediverse. I am fully aware of how some off instance users can behave. It is definitely a problem, especially in some more vulnerable communities. However I also feel like the ability to federate has brought some life to the platform that would be sorely missed.
I would very much hope a white list would be considered before leaving the fediverse entirely.
Ultimately, I know this is not my project. And I have no decision making powers, but I think lemmy would be a much worse place without beehaw. I hope this decision does not come to pass, personally
I second whitelisting, with slrpnk.net and Blahaj.zone at least.
And Lemm.ee.
I just woke up to two messages from Lemm.ee on BeeHaw, yours and this person:
::: spoiler Rude Message Text
[Image description: What a crappy news article. You can’t even read it without the ads shoving the paragraphs together. Your post is shit, OP] :::
I'm sure it's part coincidence, but my experience with Lemm.ee hasn't been much better than with Lemmy.world.
I have an account on lemm.ee and an account on Beehaw. I use lemm.ee as my main for browsing in general and pop in to beehaw a couple of times a week to see what's up. Lemm.ee is a general purpose instance and the admin is very against defederation unless absolutely necessary. He's super cool but sticks to his principles which are not the same as the principles of Beehaw, namely open federation vs a curated safe space. He does deal with issues as they arise but I would caution against viewing that instance as a safe ally because his moral compass so strongly forces him to be tolerant of people he personally finds abhorrent. The paradox of tolerance is strong lol he has personally dealt with issues with hexbear (he is Estonian and they just love Russia for some reason) and ended up staying federated with them. So he'll deal with problem users and is open to communication with admins of other instances but the user mentioned above wasn't using hate speech or trolling or doing anything other than generally being rude so that would be allowed on that instance. Just my 2 cents, it's a good instance but not good in the same ways as Beehaw.
Well, yeah, there are different kinds of people in all places.
I just don't want to miss out when I'm in the fediverse, and lemm.ee does that pretty well as they don't defederate from others without a very hefty reason, I follow some Beehaw communities here and if they decide to leave it would impact my Lemmy usage, to a degree, ultimately I hope the best for the Beehaw admins and I will respect whatever outcome they think is the best.
I understand why you might like that, but it speaks to a culture clash between Lemm.ee and BeeHaw - BeeHaw is acting pre-emptively to protect its mods, and Lemm.ee is prioritizing its users' Fediverse access over other aspects of the user experience.
Seems like a lovely person...
Naw, lemm.ee is more of a blacklist-worthy place. And kbin.social.
So is the real issue not technical? More of a social/moderation issue? The post makes it sound like there are technical reasons that only experienced technical persons can solve. I'm not much of a sysadmin, but I'd be curious what the underlying technical difficulties were.
I think whitelisting would be the way to do. Over time a set of rule could be established and federation would only be possible with other instances with compatibles rules.
A lot of beehaw users would probably leave but it's fine, this will take off a bit a pressure and allow the admin to focus on keeping this safe space safe for the users that really needs it.
As a relatively non-marginalized person, I think it's important to focus on this. Beehaw has grown beyond the marginalized group. If Beehaw were to leave Lemmy, the non-marginalized would be fine and can switch to different instances. The marginalized would follow Beehaw for that safe space.
It comes down to the purpose of a safe space. There's the group of people that want to avoid bigots, and there's the group that want to be a light unto the world, to effect change.
An example of a little bit of positive Beehaw has had outside of their community would be the influence it has had on me. I've read posts from the LGBT+ community that enlightened me to things I've never thought about. But I'm also not a bigot, just naive.
The negative is what has prompted these discussions: the bigoted trolls. It's just not sustainable for the small Beehaw team to moderate everything.
My view is that it's of utmost importance to maintain the safe space for the marginalized. Of those marginalized who want to connect outside the safe space, they are free to engage in Lemmy/Reddit and spread their light.
What would I do? I would find a new instance and continue to be receptive to LBGT+ discussions that come up on Lemmy. I don't feel right asking Beehaw to stay on Lemmy at the cost of keeping marginalized people safe from bigots. They deserve to be able to talk about things without having bigots come at them; to be able to laugh and cry and vent and have others understand—especially with the US Right becoming more brazen in their persecution of this community.
Just my 2 cents.
Another non-marginalized person here.
Restricted spaces are necessarily smaller than non-restricted. Less content. Less interaction. Less everything. If hateful content is really rampant, then that can be a valid tradeoff, but separate systems are never equal, and it is always the minority/marginalized system that suffers. You've described exactly why: "I would find a new instance and continue to be receptive to LBGT+ discussions that come up on Lemmy."
As I look elsewhere in this thread, the comments I see people reference as "against Beehaw goals" are just people being rude assholes, not misogynist, racist, or homo-/trans-phobic. Creating a space where everyone is polite and universally friendly seems a very different objective than creating a space where marginalized people feel safe. If that - universal friendship - is the real goal, then Beehaw very definitely needs to close off interactions with non-vetted, pseudonymous users, and accept that it will look like a virtual ghost town. In that case, it doesn't matter whether it stays with defederated-by-default lemmy or moves to some other forum platform.
The middle ground, where you accept that some people are just rude, but still provide a forum where marginalized people feel they can share their experiences without threats or repercussions, needs strong, active, focussed moderation. Have to be able to block users and communities from other instances, delete posts/comments that originate from other instances, and do local moderation of communities hosted on other instances. Have to have enough moderators to respond quickly to user reports, and probably an automod-like system to catch serious issues before users do. It sounds like that is not within the current capabilities of lemmy. So, I can see why the admins think that the lemmy framework is incompatible with their objectives. Probably, a lot of the people who joined post-Reddit are incompatible and uninterested in those objectives.
I can see where the lemmy framework worked when no one used it, and I can see why it would immediately fail in the face of hundreds of thousands of new users. If millions are coming, it will only get worse. No doubt, the admins are aware that they'll lose 80, maybe 90% of their userbase if they leave Lemmy, but it's not so long ago that their userbase was only 10-20% of what it is today.
If I lose this little window into cultures I would not otherwise see, I will be a lesser person for it, but I can accept that it was not meant for me in the first place.
Thanks, you put into clear words a lot of my jumbled thoughts and expanded on it. It's a tough choice for the Beehaw admins with pros and cons either way; a tug-of-war on whether the community is strong enough / has what they need to handle this far from perfect world. It would be a loss from the wider Lemmy community, but based on a few outspoken comments we can see there are also people with a "good riddance" stance.
I think Beehaw needs to do what's best for them first, as an administrative team and for their core community. When they're stronger, I'm sure we'll feel and see their presence on the wider stage. After all, time is intrinsic to progress.
Take my 2 cents too. Well put.
Online gathering spaces not hostile to trans and gnc folks seem to be evaporating. It’s concerning with KOSA in the works in the US.
You make a very, very good point. I’m glad you posted.
Also,
is so much me it’s ridiculous.
Hey all,
Apologies if this scares anyone, or feels like a cold/calculated move, or one in which your feedback isn't being taken into consideration. That was not the intent. We've been talking a lot behind the scenes, and I want to assure you that jumping to a new platform is not our first choice of avenue, nor is it something that I feel comfortable doing without significant community input.
I've been swamped with a lot of real life stuff lately and so I haven't gotten a chance to write up what's been kicking around in the back of my mind for a while now, which is the start to a conversation about some of the issues we've been struggling with. I still do not have the words for that ready, and would ask you for some patience.
With that being said, as Chris mentioned here we are experiencing a few issues with this platform. More information about these issues will be forthcoming soon. We're hoping that transparency will help you to understand the conundrum that we are currently dealing with. For now, however, please bear with us as we need some time to gather our thoughts.
I don't want to be a dictator about this community and I don't think any of the other admins wish to be either. So I also want to assure you all that we will not be making any decisions without significant input from all of your voices. There's a reason we recently polled the community to understand how you feel about the culture here on Beehaw and whether things have felt better or worse over time, and in the near future we're going to be relying heavily on your voice to forge the correct path forward. Beehaw is a community, and we greatly value your voices.
Beehaw has been online for over 18 months, it was well established when there were only 30 Lemmy servers and then Reddit API change came along in May... the sign-up page and application process couldn't even cope with hundreds of users per day.
Then 1000 new instance servers went online in just a couple months where your 18-month established presence was suddenly getting all kinds of server to server action.
You have been on the front-line of a lot of people motivated by hate of Reddit. Not love of Beehaw.
I'll admit the wording of the post made me react as if these potential changes were imminent. I will respect any decision the admin team makes, and I encourage you to continue to stick to the core ideas of Beehaw to which you've written extensively about, while being able to balance your own lives and mental health.
The idea I'll throw in the ring is to introduce one of the Automod programs (example), which can help keep the designated safe-space communities more tightly moderated, and address some of the issues of moderation granularity. For example, a user/instance whitelist could be instated as to who can post to the protected communities, with all other comments removed. An application process can be instituted to add to the whitelist.
I think isolating is not a good move. I think many people on Lemmy are here to get away from centralization.
I stopped using beehaw about a month ago as too many servers were defederated.
I know beehaw has a great community, but being closed off is not appealing to me and I imagine it’s not appealing to many others as well.
I have two accounts. One for another instance that's mainly local, and one for Beehaw when I don't want to deal with bullshit; which is most of the time.
Me too. I struggle to see why so many don't want to use this option.
This was the case for me as well
Agree it's not a good move. Disagree many are here to get away from centralization.
I prefer centralization. I believe many are ambivalent to centralization. What we are all here for is the community and anything to limit or shrink that community is a bad thing.
Sorry to say I won't be following if you leave the Fediverse
I really hope this doesn't sound extreme (especially since I'm technically a Kbin.social user) but I'm really only interested in Beehaw as part the larger Fediverse. If Beehaw leaves the Fediverse it'll just be another tiny Reddit/Lemmy clone, but without the strengths of either platform, and I truly believe that it won't be long until Beehaw goes the way of the traditional web forum.
I think there is a lot of value (to the community, at least) in Beehaw being a safe and friendly place within the broader Fediverse. The more strictly/seriously you all take that goal, the more moderation is required to achieve it, of course.
In the end, I think that it's probably a lot of work to "clean up" the Fediverse, so I can understand why it may seem easier to just leave. But I also think that it's possible that you've lost a sense of perspective with regards to the positive aspects of federation that made Beehaw appealing in the first place. At the risk of making a bad/cheesy analogy, we've seen examples in history of countries trying to isolate themselves from the rest of the world in order to simplify things or preserve their own ways of living/thinking, and it really doesn't work or benefit them in the long run.
The internet was founded on the basic premise of connecting people, even though we've all seen that doing so brings about various challenges and some potential for conflict. The fediverse brings us back towards a truly open and connected internet, and in my onion that's where technologies like Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, Kbin, etc., derive a lot of their charm and utility. As someone who has dabbled in this stuff for years, I can say that Lemmy was not very useful to me when it was just a handful of small echo chambers, Beehaw was the first "threadiverse" server I joined because I really felt that it was offering something new, different, and much-needed to the ecosystem, and I'll be more than a little bit disappointed if you all decide to leave.
Exactly my thoughts, honestly for me all that ain't Fediverse is a downgrade... if any I'd like old forums to join Activity Pub somehow lol.
I don't this is an extreme take. Lots of Lemmy users would be sad to see Beehaw leave even if the reasons for leaving are understandable to them.
For me, the value of Beehaw was that there was a place on the internet where people could converse with mutual understanding and without judgement. I think such a space still exists here, but has faded a little when mixed in the context that Lemmy as a whole has gotten a bit more combative and falling into the same ragebait kind of traps Reddit conversations tended to go.
Through Beehaw I also became more knowledgeable in the LGBTQ+, disability, neurodivergence and feminism spaces, just by reading the posts and only occasionally adding a comment seeking better understanding, to which my questions were answered openly and honestly. I don't want Beehaw to grow just for the sake of growing, but having Beehaw around I think will help internet users at large be able to learn about and sympathize with these causes simply by being there.
If the goal of beehaw is that the user base remain ever small, then by all means jump ship and move on, I can respect that and I wish you all the best. However unless your good faith "rockstars" are planning on building you a platform, you will likely find out that the grass is not always greener on the other side, and that migrations bring additional tensions and work.
May I suggest pinning this for more visibility?
Whatever the decision is, it’s important that everyone knows what’s going on. Whatever the outcome, I’ll stay/move to wherever Beehaw resides. I enjoy the space and vibe that’s created here.
As a Reddit App-ocalypse refugee, I'm not going back to a centralized forum, much less without an app. Even Lemmy's level of "hub-"alization is somewhat unnerving, but Beehaw has been a good compromise between moderation, federation, and app accessibility.
I would rather you could work out the kinks of the platform, instead of switching to another. I think Beehaw is highly positive for the Lemmy space, and that it would be best for everyone if the platform could be adapted to include meeting Beehaw's needs.
Losing Beehaw would definitely hurt Lemmy. This was not my first home on Lemmy, but I quickly saw that all of the good communities seemed to belong to this place.
However, I would probably never have found this place if you weren't federated. I would naively assume others are in the same boat as me.
I did initially come to Lemmy only as an alternative to reddit, but I've stayed because of the ActivityPub protocol. I'd probably not stay active on Beehaw on another protocol, and I'd definitely still keep a Lemmy account on another instance.
I do understand your concerns, and what you wish to achieve. Personally I would have just hoped you tried to achieve it here for longer. Though I do get the struggles with moderation.
Whatever you decide I wish the best for this community in the long term! I hope that regardless of it staying here, or moving elsewhere, it thrives and keeps the content and discussions that its members would like to have.
Is finding a new sysadmin an impossible task?
Selfishly, I would like to see beehaw remain on the fediverse. I enjoy the community, the curation, and desire for strong moderation. It is a great window to the broader fediverse link aggregator community. Beehaw's ideals and structure clearly appealed to many Redditors and the like. The concept of federated communities seemed appealing, and beehaw is an important voice in the evolution of the moderation of a federated network.
However, the sacrifice that the admins have had to put into making the platform survive while the software finds its uncertain way through a mountain of growing pains seems unsustainable (just my pov through the last 3 months) - not just on the technical side. There's that saying - when you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. It's hard to see how moving from Lemmy to something more sustainable, if it exists, would be the wrong move.
Painful decisions rarely come with a flashing light that scream "now's the time" - but the loss of your major technical contributors sounds stunningly close.
Edit> fixed a typo or two
I'd hate to see y'all go but the growing pains are quite obvious and I would understand the departure. Lemmy has become the only social media platform that I use and I'll be sticking around here for time being.
Agreed. I like the positive vibe of beehaw, but I'm really here for the Reddit alternative and for the fediverse. I don't want a walled garden, I want to be exposed to other communities, I just want them to be civil is all.
I already have accounts on other instances, so I'll likely switch to an alternative instance and be very sad for it. But I respect the admin's right to do it.
I don't have much of a stake in this but isolation is probably not the way forward.
I completely agree, I had a beehaw account and it was my main server until they defederated with Lemmy.ml
Too many communities were blocked, so I just switched to make my alt my main account.
I'm on lemmy.ml, looks to still be federated?
Yup, or at least re-federated.
Another .ml user here, and yeah it looks like it
It'd honestly suck to lose beehaw again, it's such a standout server with a really lovely community
But if the devs and the technology just can't keep up, then I guess there isn't much that we can do
We still can't even block instances yet, as far as I'm aware
Might be wrong, but my understanding is that we have never defenerated with Lemmy.ml. I think there may have been or are technical issues. Not tried recently but I am on Behaw since June and lemmy.ml has never accepted any of my subscriptions which is a huge issue.
They may have refederated already. But I noticed I was missing a lot of communities that I followed and then saw that they stopped federating.
It seems each week there is another community they dropped, and for the most part it didn’t affect the communities I followed, but when it did o decided to drop it.
??? Beehaw is still federated with lemmy.ml
Are you talking about Lemmy.world?
Same here, I started out in Beehaw but left to a smaller instance because of all the defedersting. This way I have a feed with all the instances I like mixed together.
I think everything laid out here is perfectly reasonable. Lemmy hasn't made it easy and easy doesnt seem to be on the horizon for that development team.
My personal thoughts is that I don't think that the currrent implementation of lemmy is going to reach a point where the capabilities of the platform is going to meet the requirements of the beehaw project. Definitely not in the near term, and low probability in the scale of years.
If the worse comes about ill probably follow along to where ever beehaw ends up and ill just set up an lemmy acc elsewhere.
I don't envy the situation
// the commenter gives yet another unsolicited solution
I think it would be interesting if yall and other like minded instance admins were to start a federation pact/ code of conduct which would layout the requirements for federation. In my opinion, fostering the kind of online community that beehaw strives to be (as I see it anyways), requires acting outside of the capabilities of the lemmy the platform. Granted, this would require a critical mass of instances willing to sign to such a pact but this may ease the workload from a moderation point of view.
If there's not going to be federation via activitypub I will not continue to use beehaw at all, so, this was very unfortunate to read.
If there is no ActivityPub integration, may as well kill the project right there.
It'd be a huge disappointment to see beehaw defederate everything. I'd be even more disappointed if it moved to common web forums or something else. One thing that's lost is the ability to let other communities in.
I don't know if it's possible but you could deny federation by default for every other instance until their mod team sets up a communication line to make moderation easier towards both communities.
That said I suspect this response comes from the recent federation poll where it sounded like a lot of people wanted to federate back into the larger instances again. Beehaw doesn't have the mod team to really do that and in some ways it's counter to keeping the space nice since those instances aren't moderate with being nice as a priority.
we're working on coding the results and i'll just say that no, this was neither prompted by the survey nor are its results informing what's being talked about here.
I've seen this suggested a few times throughout this thread, so I'll just add my support for considering defederating instances that don't follow similar behavioural expectations to Beehaw. The best thing about Beehaw, and what drew me here rather than any other instance, was the Be(e) nice rules, and the fact that it's a safe place to be myself.
While I do think the majority of users from other instances are good people who are fine with following Beehaw's rules when they're visiting this space, the fact that Lemmy as a platform doesn't have adequate moderation tools for dealing with bad actors (as I understand it, the issue is that you can't block specific users from Beehaw, which means you're continuously chasing down bad actors' individual comments?) means it comes down to a question of what's more important: being federated with other instances, regardless of whether their values align with Beehaw's; or being more protective of the vibes of this space, even though it means becoming a more isolated space.
Coming from the perspective of someone who's part of a marginalised community, I favour the latter. There are lots of big, hostile spaces out there, where bigots can run free and say whatever they like without consequences. There's a lot fewer spaces that require everyone to treat others with respect. Defederate with the instances that don't share our values, with a view to being open to re-federating with them at a later date when Lemmy's moderation tools eventually catch up.
Edited for typos.
Beehaw is a big part of the fediverse. May I suggest you have a look at fediseer? It's the principle of public private key cryptography applied to lemmy whitelists. I can help you set it up - just reach out!
Just unticking the federation option would allow for a lot more direct control in itself. Pethaps more of a discussion of what the challenges of losing a couple technical resources are could help bring out some solutions. Maintaining an instance at a base level is pretty easy, performance is another matter perhaps.
The developers of Lemmy have been running it on the Internet for over 4.5 years, but they only had a few thousands posts in 4 years... it lacks moderation (and spam) tools and it drops and alters data silently that shows they really don't use it or focus on the data.
kbin is newer, but it is only now starting to have an API - so Lemmy has attracted all the app developers because of API - and kbin also struggles with moderation and spam.
I can entirely understand that. Reinventing the wheel of basic forum features ties up a lot of kbin and lemmy development - and federation is the wild west. People can participate in your forum without having the context or understanding, or worse, to do attacks at an entire server to server level - manipulating votes and having wildly different policies.
Thank you for sharing your thinking.
Locking this post for now because it's quickly going off the rails. We will have more for you soon. Please be patient.
Beehaw is wonderful and I will follow wherever it ends up. I have another lemmy account, and accounts on other sites for when I'm looking for memes and nonsense.
Beehaw will go back to being a very small platform if you move away from the fediverse
Would be cool if Beehaw switched to old school forums, like Invision or phpBB. Invision have now moved to a hosted forum model, so you don't need any technical knowledge to set it up.
Forums are cool!
I don't get the prevailing hatred of old school forums on the threadiverse. Forums are great!
As a kbin.social user, we would all be diminished if Beehaw were to defederate. If I were to ever move instances from a kbin to a lemmy platform, it would be over to you guys. I hope that you guys are able to find the help you need to keep going as part of the wider fediverse.
FWIW, I'm appreciating the space for what it is and don't see the immediate benefits of federation. Hang in there.
If there are moderation issues, wouldn’t it be easier to recruit more moderators?
The current number of moderators is small and I am sure a lot of people might want to step up to help.
No. The tools needed for successfully moderating Lemmy federated items, is severely lacking. The primary devs do not seem interested in making this area a priority either from their own efforts, or others submitting PRs for such. More moderators won't help when the ability to moderate isn't there.
Makes me wonder if a fork will happen in the future. Wonder if offerings will be much different a year from now, and if options like kbin will be more polished by then.
Everyone wants a fork. Nobody wants to be the fork.
We need a small group of motivated and skilled developers to get together and decide "we're doing this", and actually go beyond announcing an empty Git repo. (i.e. actually have some usable code to show for)
Dealing with a codebase as janky and large as Lemmy is unfortunately beyond my skillset, otherwise I'd love to get involved myself.
Rust and ORM makes changes incredibly slow and even recent editions like sanitizing for JavaScript exploits have been buggy.
Lemmy had one major thing that kbin and other apps did not have in 2023... a working API. And that happened to be what Reddit decided to start charging for in May. Kbin is right now adding an API, but it isn't compatible with Lemmy. Lemmy could also use a streamlined API, there is opportunity right now to make a combined Lemmy and kbin API since federation normalizes a lot of the features between the two. I hope people see this opportunity that is open right now and the one big strength.
I don't think an API is the thing that matters here. There are quite a lot of things you can't hack on with a client alone and actually needs server side support to function (actual moderation tooling is a prime example)
Also most APIs aren't "designed" per se and just expose the internal representations of the projects they're of. A "common" API would either be too "wide" enough to be unusable (hello, ActivityPub C2S) or would severely limit experimentation and innovation (good luck on building microblogs in the Lemmy API) without having so many extensions that essentially end up being a third, completely different API.
because of the negatives in your statement, it isn't clear what you mean.
I think the API is why June 2023 there was a huge surge of users coming to Beehaw and Lemmy platform. There were tons of forum software out there, and even kbin, but Lemmy took off because it had an API
fixed that part, words are hard
The thing I'm trying to say is that "having an API" does not matter in the long term if the API does not expose the functionality needed to use it properly.
And TBF if someone joined Lemmy only because it had an API and nothing else then they're gonna be in for a very rude awakening sooner or later as the troubles of federation that previous (mostly microblogging) platforms have encountered and attempted to solve (not to mention novel problems due to the community oriented nature of Lemmy) start to show up.
This is only going to get worse, and throwing "more API" into the fire won't fix any of the important problems at hand.
Your entirely reply seems to dismiss the entire purpose of an API.
An API is a way to allow other developers to work almost entirely independent, and even create compatible servers with wildly different implementation - while still servicing clients.
You seem to be advocating a model that predates API, back in the 1980's or something. As right now kbin users are having to resort to scraping content off off HTML pages as a form of API.
All fediverse code is weird. Lemmy is extra weird on account of being written in a systems language
Picking a fedi server software is just picking how much (and what kind of) jank you're willing to tolerate. The features are always secondary.
I don't think a fork would be a solution to this problem. The problem is not that the maintainers don't accept contributions, but that no one is making the necessary contributions.
Thank you for being upfront and honest about the challenges you're facing. I'd like to also put my vote in for going whitelist only rather than moving off the fediverse altogether. However, I'm a big fan of beehaw and would likely follow a migration, but only if there's a good mobile experience on the new site.
I'll still be hanging out on Beehaw regardless of what happens or where it ends up, but in case a migration does happen, are there any good instance recommendations for us that want to keep Lemmy accounts as well but want to have a nicer more moderated experience?
A good bit of the other instances I've tried seem to moderate as a last resort or final straw, which just ends being not very effective overall.
I went with lemmy.one because it is run by /r/privacyguides and is federated with lemmy.world and beehaw with it being the two instances I wanted to be able to participate in.
I like slrpnk.net
I'll follow if it's time to go. I understand. Thank you.
Honestly, I wholeheartedly support this move. For a couple of (obviously subjective) reasons:
Lemmy/kbin isn't ready. If Beehaw staff were able to fork their own version of the base code with their moderation etc. design preferences in mind, this would be another thing -- though even then it might not be enough to be worth it with the headache of fediverse moderation.
Closed system/community is more personal, hence more productive and less noisy. At least before it outgrows itself.
What I'd hope but is also more work and potentially creates conflicts, is that the new platform provides good moderation logging etc. Which I think is key feature to ensure trust and self policing.
Is a forum site a possibility? I honestly miss internet forums. It does kind of sound like what you're looking for beehaw to be.
And Beehaw doesn't have a huge amount of activity, so the prioritization provided by a Reddit-style ranking system is less useful. I think going to a typical forum/messageboard system just makes sense.
There's a front-end for Lemmy that basically turns it into a php forum.
The issue here isn't the front-end and can't be fixed with a new coat of wax.
What would be the main issues? I can think of some, and it pains me to not be able to help fix them, but maybe others could.
The Reddit-style presentation of topics and ranking comments isn't really conducive to lengthy, quality discussions that persist over a period of time. The Reddit-style works for following current events and posting links to new things etc, but as a result, old topics - topics even a couple of days old - falls off the engagement radar. Once it's gone from the front page, it's gone from people's consciousness. This is bad for a small community with few posts that value quality of discussions over blind sharing of links. For instance, say I create a topic called "share your favorite vegan recipes" - I may get some replies in the first couple of days, but then the topic will fall off the frontpage and completely die. This is further exacerbated by the voting system. On Reddit/Lemmy, topics and comments which have a higher number of votes get more visibility, and this creates two issues - one is it encourages group think and creates an echo chamber, the other is that it drowns out less popular topics or comments. This sort of intentional drowning of posts and comments actually may be a good thing - and even necessary - on high-userbase systems like Reddit, where a single thread could have thousands of comments - but it works against low-traffic communities like Beehaw, where every comment is valuable (unless it's off-topic/spam etc of course).
Whereas in a traditional forum:
With all the above reasons, forums are therefore more conducive for encouraging discussions, over a place which simply acts like a feed aggregator. Traditional forums are the solution to the doomscrolling issues that plague modern social media. Plus, they offer better moderation tools, with better granular permissions granted to mods, so you could grant various levels of access. Also, you can place several restrictions on users to reduce spam, for instance, you could grant a user rights to post a topic only after they've read all the rules, and maybe participated in a quiz or something. You could grant additional rights to people who've gotten a certain number posts in their bag. You could have a "trusted poster" system where a user could have mod-like abilities. There's so many ways a forum is a lot more flexible than a system like Lemmy.
So overall, I think Beehaw's ethos and vision would align better with a traditional forum, over a feed-aggregator style forum like Lemmy.
I don't know whether @Penguincoder@beehaw.org had all these in mind, but as far as lengthy & quality discussions go, everything you wrote to support this sentece, in my experience, seems 100% correct. There was a time, when forums when used more, during which a discussion on a subject would carry on for weeks, even months, between different individuals. Taking the time, thinking over the subject and coming back with a response after days was not at all uncommon.
Reddit grew to a point that the focus became constant refreshes and the most recent 6 hours of postings... and reposts became the normal means of revisiting a topic. And when a topic gets more than 1500 comments, a repost resets that. It's just a machine that rolls the clock constantly in favor of "new".
Tracking on this; I am not alone on the team or community here, but I agree with everything you said. I don't like nor want that in your face, featured, hot ranking content. I want to go view the content that I want and sometimes that is reviewing the discussion I had 3 weeks ago with new eyes and information. I prefer a community like that, but I also really enjoy something like HackerNews. No clutter, presents quality information that's relevant, and only a few flamewars.
After reading your post, I'm more on the side of following beehaw to the format that suits them best. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't finding those quality posts here after a while, and what you said about them being quickly pushed out in favor of new content makes a lot of sense.
Although I came here through the rexodus, I agree that the Reddit style format still carries a lot of problems that I'd rather not keep, and it's important to have a quality space I can post (also because I'm trans and need those spaces too)
I do still feel a need for the dopamine rush of cat pics and memes, so I'm not sure if there's a way to hybridize that with a forum? If not, there's always burner Lemmy accounts (or Tumblr lol) for that
Wholeheartedly agree. Beehaw's vibe always felt more like a forum than a feed aggregator. I think that format would fit it better.
Lemmy and Kbin both lack a lot in moderation and anti-spam measures. Both apps are taking about having features to specifically throttle new local members. And anti-spam in terms of server to server doesn't really exist at all.
Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think moderation grows exponentially with numbers of instances. A single comment may need moderation on each distinct instance. The more instances, the more moderation needs for that comment.
That seems unsustainable. I understand the conundrum.
Comments/posts get moderated at the community level, any instance subscribing to it, will also receive the moderation notification to update its cache, so it doesn't need to be moderated again. In theory, an instance "could" ignore moderation actions for a community it's subscribed to, but that makes little sense.
A problem comes when a community decides not to remove a comment/post, then it gets spread to all instances that subscribe to that community. Only in that case federated instances need to apply additional moderation.
Federated instances subscribed to a community would have the option to either block the user, the comment, the post, the community, or the whole instance (defederate). Fine grained options like blocking a single user's every comment on a post, or on a community, or on an instance... or blocking every post by any user from an instance that they send to a community, or... etc. would be additional options... but Lemmy is lacking most of them.
So moderation isn't inhrently an exponential problem, but right now is limited to a blunt tool that mostly relies on the good faith of everyone for things to work... and it's been shown over and over that there are people acting in bad faith.
Thank you for that thorough explanation!
I'm not sure what it is really, but postmill exists. Another of my favourite post-reddit sites uses it; raddle.me.
It's a shame how much of Lemmy's recent downturn appears to stem from slow and misprioritized development. At this point significant instances are dropping like flies and users are leaving in droves. I do not have high hopes for the future of this platform.
I've been using Lemmy.today and have yet to experience a downtime issue.
I think the threadiverse as a concept has a lot of promise but neither of the threadiverse apps are primetime ready yet, and there's sort of some priority setting issues that make me feel like these two are proofs of concept that some future app will fully realize
I can understand, but this would not be fun at first. I subscribe to a number of beehaw communities because they are the the biggest in their niche like technology. The beehaw communities are often even bigger than the same communities on instances like lemmy.ml.
Possibly something like LemmyBB could be an answer. Stay on Fediverse and get to isolate ( I think).
LemmyBB is just an alternate frontend. It is possible to not federate with any other instances though by turning federation off in the instance settings
Cool, I'm quite fond of the old school format.
I would probably follow beehaw elsewhere as long as it was safe to do so for me. I think this is something important to keep alive wherever it may be. I also think for anyone who wants to stay on lemmy and would miss beehaw, if you can create your own. It may not be the easiest thing thing for everyone to do but I'm sure there are more people out there who want a space that has the simple fundamental rule of be nice. We need more of this online and honestly trying to keep it within the confines of lemmy alone doesn't make sense. Spread kindness and let the spirit of beehaw grow far and wide.
Every single part of Beehaw seems ill-suited to the fediverse. I joined (like many) after Reddit shit the bed by banning 3rd-party apps. I wrote a thoughtful (mandatory) application essay and... silence. Never heard back. Later, I reacted to a particularly bad take in a Beehaw thread and was told that I wasn't "being nice" like the rules required... Bitch, I'm not even a part of the your "community"! You chose to federate with the rest of us! I guess what I'm trying to say is byeeeeeeeee! Go start your own little puritan community somewhere I don't have to encounter it...
You know how on reddit, and many other platforms, subcommunities within those platforms have rules? Like some subreddits had a no image macros rule? If you posted an image macro to one of those subs, and get warned or your post is actioned, that entirely on you and not on the community. it doesn't matter if you're "part" of that community, you should abide by the rules of that community when you post in it.
Of course, you're welcome to wilfully ignore or go against the rules of the communities you post in, but aside from being just a generally dick move, you also put yourself in the sights of the moderation of that community.
And you chose to post in this community - abide by the rules or the moderators have every right to tell you you're breaking the rules, or take action if it continues.
I think, based on the attitude you've displayed here, I can see why you were not deemed a good fit for the community when you applied.
The wording in the parent comment also seems to imply the Fediverse is just Lemmy/kbin, which is a weird self-centric take I see here (i.e. on Lemmy) a lot.
A lot of the broader fedi that has access to adequate moderation tooling are doing just fine and don't seem too "ill-suited". It's really just Lemmy that's like this.
I'm not entirely sure I'll attempt joining "the new Beehaw" wherever it may set up shop (y'all are a bit too serious news-y for my liking, personally), but all the federated interactions I had with the folk from Beehaw had been quite positive, and it's kinda sad to see y'all go. But I can definitely understand the reasons why, and I do have my own gripes with Lemmy (both the software and the unfortunate community it has picked up) as well.
I understand what you said about community rules. But the funny thing about the Fediverse and how people receive their posts is that it's not uniform. I'm in kbin on a phone and I don't see who is posting from what instance unless I click further. Same for the community or magazine someone is posting in - I can see that on my feed but once I click on a post I cannot see it. I've joined many communities and magazines and they are only identified by the topic name in my feed, not the instance. I cannot see any community or magazine rules from my feed or inside the posts.
Just saying that easily identifying a group's rules is more of a challenge in the Fediverse (this is not an argument to ignore rules).
Mmhm, I can empathise with that. Although, it does still fall upon the user to ensure they're abiding by the rules of the communities they interact with, but regardless of that responsibility, I do understand its tricky.
One, there was a point where the application system was bugged and some applications were lost so they had to stop processing applications. This is an issue on lemmy not on the mod team. Additionally, because lemmy is not setup for the sort of application process the mod teams want, there is no way to notify a rejected application. Your application might have been rejected.
Two, by replying here you are choosing to encounter this community. Don't be surprised when you get moderated for not following rules.
Three, no one will miss these sorts of interactions. It's not puritan to want to avoid something that takes away from your enjoyment rather than adds to it. Clearly at one point you thought so to and wanted to join. Perhaps though you only wanted to be a bad actor in the community and the application process worked as intended.
Your conduct here is indicative of why you might not have been accepted into Beehaw or had mod action taken against you. I can understand your frustration, but federation (as it is right now) is a two-way street: The servers share posts, but users are expected to behave according to the rules of the server they are posting to.
You are capable of not posting in Beehaw, and you are welcome to block Beehaw communities as you wish, if you don't like Beehaw's rules, mods, or expectations we have on your behaviour.
I appreciate the transparency and willingness to discuss with the community.
I was a rexxitor in July, trying out different online communities after deleting my account there. I was very affected by the lack of moderation on Reddit, and subsequently every other platform that I've tried since then.
It's pretty clear to me that safety is an issue that affects all humans who use the internet. A sense of safety and security allows our minds the freedom to create. If Beehaw can find a sustainable way to keep us feeling safe to express ourselves, the people will come. The content will come, I can guarantee it.
Ultimately, the decision is up to the leadership here and I trust and respect that. I have no clue about any of this stuff. I just want to find a place where I can post my art and hopefully? maybe? not have to endure hate.
I'm a big proponent of federation and the Lemmyverse. While it would be sad for me to see Beehaw leave ActivityPub, I've always said that the admin team should do what they think is best for themselves and Beehaw and I will respect such decisions.
I probably wouldn't make a new account on another service because that would require a new app on my phone, but I'm OK with that if the idea of Beehaw prospers in another space.
@PenguinCoder @admin If I may suggest something on Lemmy as a stopgap measure, Beehaw can enlist the help of one of the AutoMod programs of Lemmy, so that any comment not on an approved user or instance list are removed on the specific "safe-space" communities. It might take some testing/tinkering but this may give you some of the granularity in moderation that has been requested.
Wherever it leads I'll follow !
Which features would you need to continue staying federated, possibly limited to white-listed instances?
Just a few thoughts.
Is there a way to configure lemmy to have some private Beehaw only communities and some public ones too. Maybe this is some code changes, but one would not think that this would be crazy hard. Might need to have some user preference settings too about restricting what us in the site feed too.
Would there be a way of running two instances. One federated and one not or the one not only federated with beehaw.
How serious is the adim time issue and the skills gap issue. Maybe worth thinking about what your issues are and what would need to happen to fill them. More people, hiring things out, etc.
I agree too, you guys have to decide personnally your priorities. Not having clear personal limits can eat you up. So do that as well.
I understand some of the negative reception to this, especially from users of other instances, but I also understand the reasoning here.
Don't know if ditching ActivityPub entirely is a great idea, but I do get why. Perhaps a whitelist on another ActivityPub service would be a better option, although I'm struggling to think of any (other than kbin) which exist in this kind of form.
So, my only curiosity is which alternative platforms?
There aren't many in this particular form (social news/link aggregation), as far as I'm aware. Most others are traditional forums, microblogging, and general social networks.
And moving to something new, potentially in alpha/beta, with an equally or just as small dev team may end up just being a horizontal jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, with eventually similar issues when it comes to tools and capabilities of the platform.
Basically, are we looking at something new entirely in terms of UX or something familiar? And are we looking at something centralized or using some other federated service?
Serious question; would it help if some of us left beehaw? I'm part of that influx and i first joined lemmy.world. Then i understood that it would be better to spread out among other instances and i created a few more accounts, one of them here on beehaw, because i really like the spirit of it. But if it would help, i would be willing to leave beehaw to help you cope with the load. If enough people would feel the same, it might lighten the load? Another option might be to close the instance for new people, until these issues are solved? I'm sure people would understand the reasoning for doing so?
If you would leave the fediverse, i would not follow. I'm not that big on social media anyway, the fediverse being the only exception.
No. As noted in the post, the largest aspect of issues are other users and content federating to Beehaw. Less users on Beehaw won't address that.
Reason #7639843 why federation simply doesn't work
This isn't a reason federation doesn't work at all, that implies a fundamental issue with federation, this is why focusing on performance instead of mod tools and helping content filtering doesn't work, the same would've happened to a massive centralized service without proper mod tools.
Well, that's kinda sad.
Sign of federated-not-Reddit-thingle carking it? Maybe. Sign that it's about time for myself to give up and leave? Maybe.
I blame everyone. Boo, us! scowls scoldingly at all, including itself
I like what Beehaw is, and I fully support whatever decision is made in the best interests of this community.
The idea of defederating, for me personally, feels too limiting. But even if Beehaw goes this route, I think I'll stick around and try it out. Either it'll be fine or it won't. And if not, no hard feelings!
Maybe I am the weird one, but I always saw this "federation" as weird. It seems like a halfbaked idea. I don't think much is lost. Only downside is user count might be small
Regarding Federation ... The web, email, Usenet, the internet itself, these are/were all federated platforms. They are also all open and always have issues with bad actors.
The other side of it, it is all a work in progress especially lemmy. So it is all half baked in that sense. Especially in the case of bad actors, there are known things to address but no solutions. People do not even agree in what a bad actor is until things get extreme.