Techradar Just Shouted Out Beehaw!

dirtmayor@beehaw.org to World News@beehaw.org – 410 points – 7 awesome Reddit alternatives you should try right now
techradar.com

From the article:

"Beehaw is relatively new and relatively small at the moment, but it's one of the closest approximations of what Reddit is that you're going to find, and well worth investigating as a Reddit replacement. The interface even looks a lot like Reddit, albeit without a lot of the on-screen features and furniture that build up over almost two decades of operation.

Have a read of the Beehaw mission statement and you'll see the platform is committed to avoiding the "hate speech" and "disinformation" that's prevalent elsewhere. The communities available right now cover everything from neurodivergence and people of color to literature and gardening, so you're sure to find something of interest here."

68

Interesting that they mentioned Beehaw, but not Lemmy or Kbin as a whole.

probably just a bit of safety there, it is a more carefully controlled and moderated experience.

You drop the average internet user into the wrong random lemmy instance without teaching them how to tune it to their liking and they are going to be turned off by the amount of bizzare shit they see and just assume it's all like that.

I think Beehaw is a great instance who shows what the Fediverse can be and is about.

I love that they actually shout out 1 of the instances instead of Lemmy or Kbin as a whole.

but can you actually register to beehaw? Because I tried days ago, and I still can't log in.

to put it mildly, the email situation behind the scenes is a fiasco right now that we're trying to resolve asap. if you registered a few days ago you're almost certainly in queue and if we had our way you might have a judgement by now, but our email providers kind of threw us a curveball yesterday that means we literally can't send out the emails that'd notify you if we approved or denied you. it's very dumb. we're very tired of it, lol

I registered and got through yes.

I registered just before the influx of users from reddit I assume and I am gonna be honest I didn't put in a full essae.

Nobody needs to write an essay; I wrote two (maybe three?) sentences in mine. You just need to actually be interested in beehaw for what makes it different from other instances and express that. My application wasn't really any longer than this paragraph

Registration happens to be behind right now, mainly for technical reasons as alyaza mentioned, but the admin team is working diligently on it (♥)

You haven't written an essay good enough.

I wrote two phrases. Nobody needs to write an essay, they're just backlogged.

Also don't write anything offensive. I've heard they've gotten some pretty crazy submissions. If you drop any slurs in your application you probably won't make the cut.

Not a fan of the defederation. I’m actually displeased they would shout out an instance that will give new users a BAD experience of what the fediverse is.

Beehaw is the better experience though. I barely use my lemmy.world account.

Can you explain what you mean by bad experience? I can see how the experience on beehaw would be different from other instances, but what is explicitly bad about it?

Yeah ae beehaw has so far been one of the best experiences I've ever had with social media, it's definitely not everybody's cup of tea though I guess!

I guess he means "bad" as in "less active". I think what Beehaw is doing is great, but I also understand why some people would rather refer users to sites that federate with all the largest instances.

Defederation isn't preferable but it's a great feature of the fediverse to keep communities safe. It should only be used as a last resort when all other modding tools have failed. However, Lemmy is so new that those powerful moderation tools don't exist yet. That's the only reason those instances were defederated, they'll be federated again when the mod team can better control the influx of users as better tools are developed.

That being said I've hardly noticed a change in engagement on beehaw tbh. My posts and comments get just as many replies and upvotes as before defederation.

Trying to get an account on here is pretty difficult though. I applied on the first day of the blackout to give lemmy a shot, but never even got an email back. Ive heard similar from other people.

That would make it pretty tough for new users trying to join the community if they dont know they can also make accounts elsewhere thats federated with beehaw.

I think they are still working through some issues and a large backlog. I got emails from my applications. Two - one rejected when I did a low effort answer to the question and then an acceptance. Still some growing pains I think.

Yeah, manually accepting applications seems kinda ridiculous, but I dont know. Its their server.

It's certainly possible they'll have to reassess their strategy in the face of new applications rising so much, but I think up to this point they've just felt that community quality is more important than growth. I just recently joined this server and I didn't find the application to be that onerous. I just spent perhaps 15 minutes or so thinking about why I would want to be a part of a community like this and crafting a response that showed that I do care.

The Fediverse is still a strange concept to a lot of people. They assume only email is federated and the rest of the web is sites with only internally facing channels of communication.

Honestly, it keeps it simpler. The idea of federation and etc can go above the heads of people so it's probably simpler to just focus on one instance and let the users discover the wider world of federation at their own pace.

Personally though, I would have mentioned Lemmy/Kbin in some capacity.

2 more...

They really did recommend Digg as an alternative to Reddit. Some stubborn exec at Digg is punching the air right now.

This has to be a joke, right? Digg is basically just an editor controlled blog that reposts the top of r/all these days.

Also… Slashdot? It’s it 1999?

The comments on Slashdot have been way busier the last few says, and most of the comments aren't even related to the linked story.

I’ve seen seen Digg being recommended in Reddit posts too. I thought it was a joke but I checked it out again anyway. I thought it look like just any other news site 😅

That's really weird that they would recommend just Beehaw specifically. It makes me wonder if the author understands what Lemmy is. (Or maybe I just feel jealous as a filthy Lemmy.One user)

It does sound like they did very little research into the Lemmy verse and slapped the first thing they could find whose sidebar sounded good.

However I do like they mentioned a variety of different platforms including Digg lol.

Really weird you would recommend just lemmy specifically. It makes me wonder if you understand what the fediverse is. ;-)
Regards from kbin.

Out of all the instances I've tried (barring the personal one I setup last night); Beehaw has been the best! The admins seem like really nice people and I vibe with the philosophy of the place. I just made my own because I've always had the idea in the back of my mind, but I wanted to see how well the Fediverse works out before I committed to it. <3 beehaw

Did they really suggest 9gag and slashdot as alternatives? Might as well tell us to go back to digg

I mean, they actually DID suggest digg, too.

Wow, Digg is still around?

Myspace is, too. Seems like these sites rarely just die, they fade into something extant but irrelevant.

Wow, I gave up on the article after seeing slashdot and 9gag. Since I’m too lazy to go back was fark included as an option?

slashdot and 9gag are definitely at different ends of the spectrum afaik
isn't 9gag just a poor man's 8chan

I don't even know what Slashdot really is, but I think for a lot of people 9gag will do well as a Reddit replacement. Some people just want dumb memes, doesn't really matter where they come from.

Slashdot is the pre-cursor to digg and reddit in a lot of ways. It's problem was people wanted freedom to create communities and submit posts whereas /. wanted to be able to control what appeared on their site. Both digg and reddit were responses to that aspect of slashdot. That, and their moderation system tried to be democratic, sharing the load amongst users, rather than installing mods (which ultimately was a failure imo).

9gag is a decent alternative if all you used reddit for was browsing meme subs and never commented. But like, I'm pretty sure that that demographic has already been using the official app.

Their last suggestion is actually Digg, so it looks like they got that covered lmao

I did not even know Digg still existed. Use to be my go to place until they ruined the site. I think that was a monetization thing too. Cannot remember much about it or why I left.

Having a news article finally promote a fediverse instance is a win in my book.

Only issue is that lemmy and kbin should have still been mentioned as a whole, especially since registering to beehaw seems to take some time.

Another non federated alternative that seems to have some traction with reddit refugees is squabbles. Sad that it didn't get mentioned since it also reached ~17k users. This could end up a good alternative for people that find the fediverse too complicated. Though i myself prefer kbin so far.

Cool they did. But as a sources of tech news and reviews I wouldn't recommend Techradar. They're not that thorough and their phone or pc hardware reviews are not that useful to be honest.