ANNOUNCEMENT: defederating effective immediately from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works
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.
Thank you.
I know what it's like to try to build up something good only to have trolls try to take it over. It's nice to think that kindness and guidance can make everything shiny and happy, but the reality is that sometimes you just have to shut the door to bad actors and lock it behind them.
Some people have a need to try to ruin things for others. There's no reason to give them a platform. Actions have consequences.
Yeah, I'm perfectly fine with this decision. And if I want to see content from and interact on those instances, I can (and have already) create accounts on those instances. No harm no foul.
Commenting sure. But until some instance agnostic subscription feed comes out it looks like there is no reddit alternative to a reliable subscription feed right now.
Having to juggle multiple accounts to keep track of subscription feeds instead of one unified feed is a pretty big con. Not so much on the commenting end since that I do understand the reasons for.
Lemmy was not built for scale, and the everything from large-community moderation to federation message copying is going through problem identification and optimization.
The Beehaw.org website is regularly malfunctions for me, showing the Lemmy 0.17.x problem of getting the wrong voting data on postings. Hopefully the forthcoming 0.18 removal of websockets will eliminate a lot of that.
Lemmy, as it stands today, really isn't ready for anything near like the activity of from page /r/all community on Reddit.
To me the point of the fediverse is that these things can happen and if you don't like them you can just go to another instance.
I understand the reasons behind blocking off those communities. And I'm fine with it since the points made were good.
If this were another platform I'd have no choice and they wouldn't need to make good arguments.
I've been seeing a lot of low-effort content lately, and I suspect it's coming from users who want their Reddit alternative, and they want it now. So, they see that Beehaw has a large community, and decide it's a perfect place to start content-barfing.
I think the admins have been clear that they're not trying to create a replacement for Reddit here, though. Everything under the sun does not have to be re-posted, just content that you actually want to discuss with this community specifically. When I see five posts created by one user in under a minute, I can't help but think that the intent there is not to spark discussion. And, of course, the volume is problematic for the mods when they don't have the tools they need to manage it.
I agree. Beehaw has a different goal (which is thoroughly explained in the stickied FAQ post), and it is not to be a Reddit replacement. I'm actually a fan of the environment and goal here - I've actually found myself responding to posts from a week or two ago because I actually wanted to contribute, whereas I wouldn't bother on a Reddit post more than a couple of hours old because it would just get drowned out by a flood of low-effort content.
Yes!! Iβve also found myself actually reading articles that are posted rather than just skimming headlines because people actually seem to want to engage beyond the same few points that were repeatedly made on Reddit
Dang this really sucks :/ i understand why it's important from a modding perspective. I guess I'll need to open an account elsewhere and get a client with multi account support
Yea. I'm going to be honest, I disagree with this decision immensely. There just aren't enough posts and comments here alone to really keep my whole lemmy experience here.
The whole point of federation is to be able to branch out as I see it. Half of the communities I'm subbed to are on the places being banned, so it sorta breaks the whole point of federation to me at least. I get why mods are doing it and think it's definitely their right to do so, but as an end user, it reaaaally sucks and will likely make me make an account elsewhere as my primary.
There are a lot of assholes on the internet, and I get wanting to have a space free of that. As a trans woman of 10 years now, trust me, I have gotten harassment online and off it. For me at least, I personally err on the side of having more freedom to look into places even if that means dealing with a couple of assholes. The mods say that strangers don't walk in off the street and start trolling - from experience, I can say that is just not quite true. At some point, people really have to just roll with it and keep a positive attitude in the face of it. It's better to deal with assholes from time to time to go out and have fun rather than sit at home.
I worry that a space like this can stifle a good thing by wanting to be too thorough. Shit always slips thru cracks, and while I get that it can suck for some, heavy restriction just kills the whole thing. In some ways, it just feels like some of the decisions here are very kid-glovey. Like, at least in subs like asktrans or mtf or other parts on reddit where trolls loved to comgregate, downvotes were how the community itself self regulated trolls - we don't even have that option here. I'm not sure how I feel about such hands on moderation - it doesn't give good faith users a ton of freedom
They have the right to do so, but it probably shows I don't quite fit with the ethos of the instance.
This decision was about users from other instances coming here and causing trouble, not beehaw users going elsewhere. The intent isn't to keep users siloed in here. Unfortunately, lemmy currently only supports two modes of interaction between instances: either you federate, or you don't. More technologically mature fediverse platforms like mastodon have more nuanced options, and hopefully we'll get similar options in lemmy soon that will allow, e.g., beehaw users out onto these instances without letting everyone on those instances in here.
yeah to be clear: we don't want this either! it sucks! but that's how it is and we're willing to ultimately bite that bullet and any potential consequences.
Is there a way for us to see all the instances you have defederated from? As a new user, it's really confusing that I can still go to a community and post a comment there without knowing that we're defederated from them and they will never see it.
I just fail to see how this solves anything, people can easily sign up here or another non-blocked instance to troll.
It requires approval to sign up here and a lot of the other instances Beehaw is federated with, because of that filter it will drastically cut down on trolls and make moderation much easier for the small team here.
The beauty of the fediverse is that we can go make a lemmy.world account and enjoy all that content if we want. I have an account there already, and a kbin.social account because it's temporarily defederated from just about everyone.
The two blocked instances in particular allow signup without application. To sign up here you need to show you are of good character. Sure, other instances' applications aren't as rigorous but due to waiting periods it will still discourage people from making spam/troll accounts and evade user bans.
One particular thing in the modlog I spotted was a username lgbtslayer from a now-defederated instance making a stupid and nasty post in the LGBTQ+ community on here. No self-respecting admin reviewing applications would allow a username with a clear meaning to be hurtful to others. Seems like the Beehaw admins are plugging this hole earlier rather than later before it becomes too much for the handful of them to handle.
I know the intent isn't to keep us siloed here, but unfortunately that's the end result. Personally, I'd rather deal with trolls than defeat the whole purpose of the fediverse. If I wanted a small walled garden, I'd have gone to raddle.me or tildes. The mods absolutely have good intentions here, but it's a bit smothering
If you have jerboa you can have the multi accounts feature to still access what ever instances you would like pretty seamlessly. I think the long term goal is more mod tools so that there doesn't need to be a giant wall but maybe some boarder patrol to keep the trolls out.
Hm, sure the effect is as you describe (if you don't go multi-account). However, I have experienced over and over again how only a few bad actors can totally ruin an otherwise safe and welcoming community. The only solution so far was always to restrict ourselves to fewer but trusted users. And this happened even in trans only spaces where other trans people were bigots themselves.
Maybe, as pointed out above, it is a difference in interest and priorities. If your priority is to see more content but with the drawback of more bigoted behavior, probably an account in the now de-federated instances is a good idea. However, as I understand it, the reason for many people to join here was specifically to create this protected space where we err rather on the safe site.
And btw I would love to see more queer and specifically trans spaces on Beehaw ;)
I would also rather deal with the occasional troll or rude comment than to close off this community from the outside world. But, I recognize that it's very difficult for our four(?) admins here, because they would rather try to talk out individual cases instead of blanketting beehaw with a boatload of very specific rules. And it's a tightrope walk here when people can say (maybe just to waste time or not, but we should rather not err on the side of malice) "Why do i get punished but you allowed xyz the other day?".
I'm just going to trust them here that there was a really big income of clear-as-day bad actors. Since they do not get paid at all for their services here, I see how it's easier to defederate for the time being, seeing how they already have their hands full just trying to keep the instance up and running while working "proper jobs" and managing their own health.
So ya, for now, stay defederated. But as soon as you guys get more tools to play with, please tear down those walls again.
I would rather NOT have to deal with trolls and narcissists and would rather have a smaller community for the sake of my mental health, and im sure a lot of my queer and folks would rather not as well (im cishet). trolling calls for attention by bending a discourse to their will. lets just not?
I'm a woman too, but I have the opposite opinion. The world is already a tough place right now, especially living in the southern US like I do, and maybe it's just because my ND can make emotional regulation difficult, but sometimes I really just want a safe space where I can let my guard down and be myself without a constant fight.
For the same reason, there were certain subreddits that I frequented often on reddit and certain ones I absolutely did not go to. I don't mind l blocking the occasional user or even blocking an entire community myself if it means protecting my mental health, but it sounds like the adminis here were getting an unusual influx of trolls that were making it difficult to moderate this community. That's even more difficult if each individual troll can just go make another account at one of those instances every time they get blocked here.
If people want to access those instances, they can create secondary accounts and visit them. There's no reason we can't have the best of both worlds. Plus, I don't get the feeling they want this to be a permanent decision. It seems like just a stop-gap until they can find a more permanent solution whether that's more moderators, more rules, or more mod tools.
Agreed. It sucks that a lack of good mod tools forced this to happen. Having multiple passwords and accounts isnβt a great experience.
I think multiple accounts is a great idea.
I work in tech security and I cringe in pain when I see people post their 10 year accounts. The amount you can deduce and learn from mined social media data is absurd. I migrate to a new account every 6 months and that's the longest you should keep an account. This of course doesn't apply to your public brand account.
Yeah I totally get the decision but I gotta say I'm disappointed. Maybe it's naive but I loved the idea that one of the premiere instances of lemmy had a core ethos that was a bit different and hopefully less toxic. Now instead of being a core driver for the developing culture of the lemmyverse were kinda just going to end up a niche walled garden. But again, from a mod perspective it get it. It sucks the tools simply don't exist to deal with the massive influx of reddit users.
Realistically, I'll probably end up with a main account elsewhere and hopefully continue to participate here occasionally.
Does such a tool exist already?
I believe Jerboa on android has a feature to let you have multiple accounts signed in, although I haven't messed with it yet
I have, it works great!
It sure does! I've been using it frequently the last few days! The mass migration has made many instances slow or a crawl, so it's super handy to be able to just pop to a different account on a different instance.
This is correct, it does
Mlem has multi login, Iβve been using it for a bit now, not too bad
You can have it on jerboa, the Android app. I don't but i see.the option on my navigation bar
Not yet unfortunately, but I believe there are people working on it - and this may already be a feature Jerboa and Mlem devs are looking at.
I guess it kinda defeats the purpose of federation - having everything in one place that it gathers for you.
Maybe in future admins should get an option to restrict external voting, commenting and posting, which might help.
Or maybe have an additional ubersubscription option that allows external users deeper participation in exchange for additional vetting. But that would mean that community mods have to vett these ubersubscribers, not the instance admits.
Jerboa already supports it. I've been using it for a couple months now
This is going to be a learning process I think for a lot of people. Not just on federation, but on community building as well. You all seem to be trying to build something here, and I am willing to be patient and participate while it grows. If we get down the road and it just isn't working, I have faith that there will be open discussion on how to make this community grow while maintaining its ethos and we'll be here to figure out what is best for each of us individually.
Good on you for taking decisive action at these early stages while we figure out what we want, where we want to go, and how we want to get there on this relatively new platform.
I agree, at first my knee-jerk reaction was against defederation, but I think actually this is one of the cool things about Lemmy and the way it works; you can have relatively isolated pockets and very open spaces, and users can move between them freely. It's not like leaving Reddit and coming to Lemmy, for example. You can use Beehaw and other instances, and both can serve a specific purpose. I really appreciate this write up because without it I would not have felt good about this decision, but after having read it I get it and I appreciate it.
Defederation wouldnβt bother me so much if there was one decent unified user experience that would allow me to quickly pogo stick between separate instances and inboxes.
Iβm on iOS, and Mlem is building that out, but the experience is still pretty early in development.
In Android you can use an app to clone apps so you can sign in to different accounts, maybe something like that exists for iOS also? I appreciate the frustration wrt not being able to see a fair amount of content, however I do think it's a temporary issue -- as you say Mlem is already working on that.
but.. they really cant though can they? atm, every community on beehaw just lost a massive chunk of their userbase, and they can't even move to a diff instance. Masto allows you to automatically move your followers to a new account on a new instance, but there just isn't that option on Lemmy
I mean, you can create two accounts. I have my Beehaw account as well as my startrek.website account, for example. I use them both for different things, and they both have different vibes. I quite like it tbh.
kinda defeats the purpose of federation though.
Does it, though? Federation is not aggregation. It's a model of interaction in which a community can curate what other communities they interact with. It can be more nuanced with limiting, as mastodon does, but that's not an option here yet. I think this is precisely what federation is at its core
agreed, as someone who's used fediverse platforms for a few years & seen cases of large scale raiding as well as just general infestation between some normal & some pretty bad servers, defederation is one of the main pros of the fediverse. without effective moderation, a community like ours cannot exist for long, & the only way to effectively moderate a foreign server full of literal tens of thousands of users who abide to a completely different law is to cut them off. while having to make an alt can be slightly inconvenient to some, the only alternative for a popular server like ours is to count down until it becomes too large to effectively moderate
Sure, but maybe every instance doesn't have to be tightly federated. There will be some instances where broad federation is their guiding principle, and some instances like Beehaw where their guiding principle is creating and maintaining a particular atmosphere.
Can someone explain like Iβm 5 for the new folks here what this means in terms of the user experience?
What are the restrictions around viewing and commenting on posts?
Does this impact, for example, beehaw to lemmy.world the same way as lemmy.world to beehaw?
What mod tools would beehaw need to remain federated?
Beehaw is still federated, it's just not federated with those specific instances which means that you can't access content posted on them through your Beehaw account and accounts on those instances can't post/comment on Beehaw.
lemmy.world & sh.itjust.works are two huge (well, compared to many other lemmy instances) communities, so this effectively means being cut off from part of the lemmy fediverse.
the servers won't be allowed to federate with us anymore. federation is the term for when an instance downloads posts, comments, profiles, upvotes, etc from another. this change means we simply won't see posts & comments from those instances at all.
not sure, but if i had to guess i'd say probably not, unless they also defederate. i'll log into my lemmy.world backup account & test.EDIT: seems to affect them just the same actually, i can't see any new posts or comments. i thought it'd only block them from posting but seems like it's a total severance.
the admins & mods here can answer this much better than me, but from the post it seems like it's more a problem of size & numbers than something a mod tool can solve.
Defederation completely cuts the ties between instances, so no connection in either direction: lemmy.world users can't see or post here (which is why this was done), and beehaw users can't see or post there. The latter is less than ideal, but it's the only lever of control lemmy has at this point for inter-instance relations. Hopefully things will change as better tooling / more granular controls are implemented.
I think the mods want kind of a one way gate so since beehaw has more restrictions, beehaw users could venture out unhindered but the lemmy world users wouldn't be able to post or comment here unrestricted. I dont know what will be possible but it would be nice to have some sort of whitelist where posters from other instances could be white listed. With no entry requirements, the two instances removed are really easy for trolls to create as many accounts as they would like to harass.
This is the side I'm on. My initial reaction was alarm, but the most exciting thing for me when I first came over here from reddit was the prospect of higher-quality community participation. Negativity, generalizations, and just general unoriginality were so commonplace over there and it had been bothering me for a while well before the API drama.
I don't want this to be an approximation of reddit, I want it to be better. And I think taking decisive action like this, like you said, works toward that goal, at least until Lemmy provides greater moderation control and the admins here can refine their approach.
Fully agreed. I'd personally rather have less overall content, if it means that the sense of community remains strong.
Yeah I'm in agreement with this. I've found the community here pretty engaged, and the content keeps coming. I think the hard part is recognizing that bigger isn't always better, especially when you lack the tools to customize it. Between this and artifact, I'm pretty content with my discussion/news outlets.
Same here. Less content is just fine with me if it means better community interactions, because the community has been my favorite thing about being here so far, as new as I am.
As a minor aside I'm working on another philosophy post about moderating specifically - what I've observed over the years, what I think works well in our vision, what extra work is needed in safe spaces and to prevent evaporative cooling, what I'm almost certain we need to do, and where my blind spots are.
Wallet take all these posts and turn them into a zine or pdf or somethin I'd read it
If someone wants to interview me for a podcast I'm more than happy to blabber for some amount of time. My brain is full of plenty of useless ideas π
Not a podcast, but Iβm an author and editor with a small audience that may well be interested in a text interview, would you be interested in that?
That's a really well considered post, and I'm happy to see someone at the helm with such a good grasp of what it takes to manage a community. Saved and looking forward to reading more.
That was a really good read and it made a lot of things click for me regarding social media and my relationship with it. Thank you!
Thanks for the Evaporative Cooling link, that was a great read!
Very apt; the whole post managed to put into words things that I was vaguely aware of, but would never be able to connect so succinctly.
You guys are doing a fantastic job, and it's really great to see the level of thought you put into your decisions, as well as comments like this one where we can see some of the thoughts and philosophy behind them.
I hope the Exodus doesn't burn you out; I'm rooting for this community to survive and prosper. Thank you for all the hard work.
@Gaywallet Have you moderated communities before Beehaw? You seem like you have a lot of (bad) experiences with it but are still passionate about it, any specific place it comes from? I'm just being curious, you don't have to answer if you don't want to
Good on ya. I've already blocked several communities from those instances simply due to the sheer volume of low effort content.
The 196 community on shit just works was literally like half of the posts on the all filter yesterday before I blocked it.
Also blocking communities RULES. What a great feature! Like regardless of why, there are tons of things on the internet that I just have no interest in whatsoever! It's cool to be able to very easily filter that stuff out.
I know exactly how you feel β I installed an extension in Chrome the other day for the sole purpose of blocking Quora from Google Search results. Fantastic π
Believe it or not, for some of us, 196 was the reason we came to lemmy in the first place. I can do without reddit, but I can't do without a non-hateful meme stream.
I strongly disagree with this decision -- as lemmy progresses and stabilizes, open registrations will become normal and just blocking open instances will not be a viable solution.
I can't say if this is just a need for better mod tooling or a fundamental problem with federation, but it's certainly concerning.
This is absolutely a mod tooling issue. There's about ten other ways I would have liked to handle this first, but none of them exist.
Ideally there'd be options other than what's essentially a binary on/off for inter-instance relations. Something like mastodon has: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#limit-server
There just isn't an equivalent in lemmy yet. Hopefully that will change sooner than later
They said in the post that this is because of inssuficient mod tools a Mastodon for instance is far better in that regard but even then when it exploded instances blocked mastodon.social and other due to moderation concerns once the reddit wave is given time to settle down and better tools are made available i think they will refederate with those instances
The decision is not an easy one - in large part this is due to the massive moderation overhead which federating with those two instances brought and the lack of tools available to address that. It's an extreme maneuver, but it's either that or nothing until Lemmy as a software improves.
This is a pivotal moment in the Lemmyverse, and I'm not sure if this will be better overall or not.
It might be a fundamental flaw of federated servers, or just something that should be expected and welcomed.
I guess time will tell.
A similar transition took place with mastodon.social and mstdn.social when they both grew prohibitively large; however, in that case, Mastodon now offers much better tooling for moderating and managing federation. Until Lemmy's software similarly matures, this is the best solution that Beehaw can put up.
We expect we'll be able to refederate as soon as we get an adequate level of granularity in moderation tools to prevent bad actors like this. If you're a developer looking for a good target for what is needed, it's precisely this.
Mastodon has a better solution for this in my opinion - it's not completely black or white like lemmy's system. See : https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#limit-server
Hopefully this will be implemented soon on Lemmy, so people can find the content they want even if the instance is limited.
Mastodon really has top tier moderation and federation controls. Unfortunately Lemmy was very niche before the recent surge in users, so the project never got the attention it needed to get these tools ready for the current surge in activity.
Absolutely - mastodon had similar moments in the big twitter waves where some pretty large instances defederated from some other large ones (some of them even mastodon.social) over moderation policy. Defederation like this is also a means of moderating the fediverse as a whole - if the admins of an instance are unwilling to moderate their users, other instances can encourage action like this.
I think this is an advantage of the system. On something like reddit, a subreddit has to make use of heavy automation tools or a lot of manpower to create a culture, ultimately any sub on reddit is subject to the overall reddit culture, it can be hard to grow something of your own.
Federation gives power to communities to separate themselves to be more selective. If someone wants something more similar to reddit, those mass-connected instances will always exist. It gives choice to communities in how they want to grow and present themselves.
I think ultimately the flaws are in the tools that are available currently.
Not a beehaw user directly, but I use many beehaw communities.
I appreciate the forwardness and transparency in this matter. As you've outlined, both in this post and in subsequent comments, this seems to be, rather than a full defederation, a conditional one. I'm totally for that, and I think the ability to do so is one of the key concepts that makes Federation such a useful and powerful tool. Those instances who cannot or do not moderate content that your instance doesn't believe in can simply be removed from the equation.
I hope to see more of this accountability being held between instances in the future. At the end of the day, our communities are fragmented by nature, and there are times we should remove separate communities explicitly. A good example I can think of is on Mastodon all the instances with CSAM or nazis.
The Fediverse gives us a greater ability to fine-tune our communities and curate the experience members thereof get to have, as well as what content they can be exposed to. I'm glad to see people taking strong action in favour of their community, and so long as it comes from this perspective, with genuine communication with the community, everything will work out.
/rant
Just a heads up so you can try to plan ahead: on Reddit one of the tactics used by those with hateful agendas was to shut down progressive threads by purposely creating drama in that thread to overwhelm the moderators so that they had to lock the thread thus stopping all discussion. Sometimes they did this by being awful and dragging in well meaning users into fights, other times I theyβd drop a few βIβm just asking questionsβ comments focussing on hot-button ideas that they knew would rile up arguments. It was very deliberate tactic and one that I donβt think moderators ever figured out how to deal with effectively, because short of babysitting the thread with their full attention from start to finish there was no way to prevent entire threads from devolving into attacks and arguments.
The crazy thing was how effectively one or two people with hateful agendas could derail an entire comment section of well meaning people and, by getting the thread locked, shut down the discussion and spread of progressive ideas.
I bring this up because Beehaw is perhaps uniquely vulnerable to this sort of βattackβ, and you should expect to see it in the future. By joining other federated instances and using these tactics to stir up drama in Beehaw threads they can, by forcing your hand to defederalize, restrict the access of those other communities to the progressive ideals and ideas posted on Beehaw. The end result is isolating progressive ideas inside our walled garden, while users of the rest of the Lemmy instances start to only see more right-wing extremist views, normalizing them to otherwise everyday people.
I donβt have a solution to this. But itβs something to be aware of in discussions with the moderators of other instances, that a handful of people with this exact agenda can make their community look bad in order to restrict their usersβ access to progressive ideas.
You are absolutely right both that this is an issue, and that it is difficult to fix. The divide keeps growing, and the more we separate our conversations the easier it is for both sides to convince us all that it's the other party that is the problem.
I went back and was looking at the early days of Fark just to see how much things had changed. What struck me the most was how mixed the community was, sure there were extremists on both sides, but there was so much more discussion happening in the middle. So many more people realizing it's the system that is the problem and neither party cares about the people.
They didn't even have to divide us, we were all so willing to do it to ourselves as soon as we could. How do we combat this? How do we talk across the lines and have real discussions again?
This does much more harm than good IMO - splintering the community at such a sensitive time of growth is a bad idea.
Hopefully there'll be the ability to block images in comments and posts, and better tools for blocking / detecting spammers, and cross-instance bans, auto-moderating hyperlinks, etc. soon.
But the demand for unilateral access to other communities' content is disturbing. The Lemmy federation works because of reciprocity.
Definitely won't be recommending beehaw for new users now.
So, not to be cold to this decision (because I totally understand that this didn't come lightly and don't want to "well ackshually" the mod team) but given I'm new to the fediverse as a concept, what does this mean for me as an end-user? Can I no longer engage with those communities at all? Or rather, what does defederating mean overall?
It means you can't view their content through your Beehaw account, but you can create another account on another instance to see content that is defederated from Beehaw.
For Lemmy, right now, this is basically the nuclear option. You will have to create an account on another to interact with content on lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. Although this could change in the future, what's needed right now is for improvements in the Lemmy codebase to allow for more granular control.
To add to this, here's something that Mastodon allows which is not possible in Lemmy: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#limit-server
Defederating means that you as the user cannot interact or see comunities on those instances from this one and would need another account on a instance that is federated with them
Thanks team - this is a big decision to make and I'm sure it's a challenging one, but I think it's the right one - both for beehaw and its users and the wider fed/lemmyverse as a whole. I'm really appreciating beehaw's values and how we're sticking to them, here.
As a temporary solution de-federation is a fine idea. Permanently, I fear you guys may be shooting yourself in the foot. I joined a few days ago after seeing you were federated with most of the larger instances, and you had a decent number of communities similar to subreddits. Again, I understand how you can see this as necessary to maintain a safe space, but it will most definitely be the death of Beehaw in the long run. I'll probably swap to another instance for now.
I think this is very disappointing, and exceptionally selfish, to split up some of the largest Lemmy communities while a mass Reddit exodus is ongoing. We should be sticking together and trying to grow the Fediverse as a whole, rather than trying to wall off any one single community at this point. That said, I hope this is the end of this approach, and that smaller instances, particularly ones that support a particular community wonβt be pushed aside as well (hello from Lemmy Portugal).
Completely agree with this decision, and it actually comes as a bit of a relief; I saw a statistically significant number of lemmy.world users who admitted to being denied from Beehaw because they didn't want to "write an essay" or aggressively disagreed with the disabled downvotes (something that I've grown to appreciate).
I'm expect that the large influx of disruptive users is from the reddit migration, and I'm hopeful that the majority of the users will either adapt to the culture we're trying to build here, or find their own niches in other communities. As you noted in your post, and in my own experience moderating real life groups, allowing a disruptive influence in a safe space can have serious negative effects on group cohesion that can persist for a long time, if it doesn't alter the culture outright.
I agree with the general consensus in this thread that, though regrettable, I appreciate what you are trying to do with this. It is fairly straightforward to create an account on another instance to see other content if we want to, and I appreciate Beehaw being its own, special thing.
I was about to say the same, I have only been here a couple of days, but I like the community here, regrettably I also like the communities on some other instances. I really wish there were better solutions for this because as long as another instance can still interact with Beehaw then I may end up using that one more often. Hard to tell right now, since I expect many other instances are dealing with similar issues right now.
Disappointing to see the largest lemmy instances fracturing so early. But this also confirms my decision to self host my own instance - to avoid this sort of thing.
If anyone has an issue with defederating to reduce stress (and worse) for our volunteer mods, please watch the Documentary "The Cleaners" (2018) about how moderators in Manila for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter & Co. got PTSD (and worse) from moderating content. Or at least this video about the traumatic life of a Facebook moderator by The Verge.
Thank you for both your labor, and for caring.
This is really hard to process.
I came to beehaw because it seemed to very welcoming and the fediverse provided freedom which was excellent. It is difficult to process because now users on beehaw are being told "you can be open and welcoming as long as you don't dare integrate your beehaw and lemmy world experience". Hopefully the beehaw staff understand that ultimately, users desire freedom to choose how they want their online experience.
I can only see this hurting beehaw in the future and hopefully this is a short misstep and not a permanent decision. The only reason that beehaw has seen massive growth is because of the association with lemmy world and other popular instances. This fragmentation will only hurt Lemmy when Reddit was seen as a "one stop shop" for all posts.
That's kinda sad, because it reinforces the clutter of decentralisation even more :(
Firstly, I want to say I appreciate your dedication to creating a well moderated and maintained community.
However, I feel like this is an overall bad decision.
Essentially what I'm thinking is, how is this sustainable?
The amount of control that youre trying to achieve here is going to create an increasingly small and insular community. Also, there is a serious risk of burn out on the moderation end if you're attempting to currate this much, the more this server grows the harder this is going to be to maintain.
With the type of platform that this is, we're going to have a wide variety of people. A lot of them are just going to be bad people. Simply defederating won't fix this, and it will also be a problem here even with manually approved sign ups.
If people want to, they will just lie to get in. Essentially your system right now relies on people not lying to you when they sign up. A targeted harassment campaign could easily overcome that.
What's next? Are we going to deferate kbin.social and mastodon.social? Why don't we just defederate every instance? Even the biggest social media platforms have a seriously hard time moderating content they actually don't want on their platform. You can literally find porn on Youtube.
Tipping your hand on the scales this much is really stressful for a small team, and often doesn't lead to the outcomes that you thought you wanted. I hope in the near future you refederate, but I understand if you don't.
Just want to point out, in early Mastodon days - People did defederate from mastodon.social because the moderation tools were not good enough.
With time and with better moderation tools, we believe we will refederate.
As someone who used to moderate default communities on Reddit, I can see how you can reach this conclusion. I agree with many of your points in that it isn't possible to completely block attack vectors, but I don't agree with the idea that we need to interact with a lot of "bad" people. I think the feeling that we need to interact with a lot of "bad" people comes from so much experience with bad platforms and the cultures that originate from these places. I think it's also important to note that we are not here for growth at all costs. We do not intend to be at the scale of YouTube or anywhere close. In the end our experiment may be a failure, but I'd rather try something new than give up before I even try.
I think you've got valid concerns here, and while it doesn't completely address them I think it's worth keeping in mind that Beehaw isn't here to be the next reddit, and growth for the sake of growth isn't the goal of this instance. Having a smaller scope and a more tightly knit community here is probably actually desirable, in the long run. Also, I don't think there's too much concern about people making fake applications to get in, as that's a much higher effort (and thus lower volume) vector of attack for bad actors.
With respect to sustainability, we'll hopefully get better moderation tools in the (near) future to solve these problems in a way besides total defederation, but at the moment lemmy doesn't support that kind of granularity. As better tools become available, refederation is not off the table.
In my opinion this might have a bad effect too, trolls will see this as a reaction, a reaction that they maybe were looking for.
Beehaw is showing that trolls have a huge effect in its mods, making them go out of their way to troll more.
I understand and respect your decision here. Are there any plans to defederate from the porn instances?
This is not something we've considered, is there anything in particular you find problematic over there? You can disable all NSFW content in your account settings if that's the issue
Ah cool, I didn't realize there was an option to just turn it off on the account level. That works for me, cheers!
Before I turned off NSFW I was getting stuff from a community called βteensβ. I doubt theyβre doing age verificationβ¦
not as of now, no. while we can't personally accommodate porn (in part for the same moderation reasons lined out here), we don't have an objection to NSFW so we've only defederated with instances that host content that's illegal or legally dubious
Wait, wdym by "illegal"? Does that include piracy instances?
no, we very literally do just mean like, porn communities that allow for shotacon/lolicon and similar--the context here is porn instances
Unsurprisingly this has made some people very ANGY. So much of the anger is coming from the sort of people that validates to me that I'd rather be a part of an "lib SJW hugbox" run by "dictators" than whatever those people see as their ideal community. Why is it that freedom of speech maximalists are never pleasant people?
Of course it's not an ideal solution, but barring better moderation tools it seems like the least bad solution when considering Beehaw's goals, which don't include 100% unfettered free speech or having to federate with every single other Lemmy instance out there.
I feel like the people complaining havenβt actually bothered reading about what Beehaw is for and the ethos of the administrators. Itβs literally all right there in the sidebar, I read it before I made my account. This is completely in line with that. Itβs such a nothing burger. Youβre not being cEnSoReD because one instance out of thousands has drawn a line in the sand on what it will tolerate and what it wonβt.
βYou have the freedom to speak, and I have the freedom to stop listening.β
Exactly. Freedom of speech doesnβt mean that anyone is obliged to allocate their server resources to you.
I definitely do find this a little disappointing as I think the Lemmy community is too small at the moment to create unnecessary divides and schisms. Success in my mind is predicated on many communities from Reddit coming to servers and forming a common denominator community that achieves critical mass.
Itβs clear to me that some of the communities on the 2 you are defederating from you instance have become more popular and are already the defacto βplace to beβ for certain subreddits.
All that said, Iβm happy that my main server (infosec.pub) has not unfederated from those 2 instances so I am able to still participate on those 2 servers AND interact here on my βmainβ account. This lets me get the best of both worlds. Itβs very exciting to see the Lemmy model working in that regard!
There are various definitions of βsuccessβ. One instanceβs definition may well be βreplace Redditβ, and anotherβs might be βcreate a welcoming community where users feel safeβ.
It isn't really unnecessary - as mentioned in the post, this is for the very explicit purpose of making Beehaw easier to moderate so that it can stay closer to its intended vision, and these two instances' explosive growth is what made moderating incoming traffic from them so difficult.
In any case, the goal is here is not necessarily continuous growth, to revolutionize social media, or to replace Reddit - it is to build an intentional community which users find nice and inviting to participate in. Besides, there are still other vectors external to Beehaw through which one might interact with this pocket of the Lemmyverse. Like you said, you'll still be able to interact from other places like infosec.pub.
I resonate with what @gaywallet said about how we shut ourselves off in environments we canβt trust. I think I forgot how βeasyβ it can be to engage when you expect others to assume positive intent. Iβve wasted so much time writing and rewriting Reddit comments because I was worried it would be taken the wrong way. And then half the time Iβd decide to just scrap it because it wasnβt worth the sweat.
This place has been a breath of fresh air in contrast.
Well I was worried, but I can still access the communities I'm subscribed to from those instances so I can appreciate this more.
My biggest issue with Reddit has been the lack of nuanced discussion. Everything is just black or white. If we can keep that element out of this instance I'll be happy.
It looks like I can still see new beehaw content in instances like LW. Also, I can POST to beehaw communities in LW. For example: Beehaw folks didn't see this post to beehaw News, but LW folks did.
https://lemmy.world/post/158352
Isn't this super dangerous? Couldn't I post a bunch of hateful content under a beehaw community flag that a large portion of the Lemmy user base would see. What's stopping trolls from posting !lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org and making it look like c/lgbtq_plus is a place for lgbtq+ hate?
Wow. Yeah this seems like big oversight
The posts and communities are frozen from the time the defederation took place onwards - only a "local" Beehaw copy remains.
@alyaza I think the "solution" here is worse than the problem.
How ironic! I had just subscribed to several communities on those instances this evening. Go figure. I guess I should reproduce my community subscriptions over on kbin. But wait, does this mean I can't even SEE that I subscribed to those communities here?
yeah it sucks. the ideal here for us would be an intermediary step of some kind between total defederation and federation that does something like let Beehaw users go out, but doesn't let lemmy.world users come in, but that's far off if it's even possible
Same. I just got here and already I'm seeing obstacles. That doesn't give me warm, fuzzy feelings.
I'm hoping that kbin won't pull the trigger. And that eventually this will be worked out. And also that eventually there will be some way to cross-connect accounts across the Fediverse, so I can (for example) share my community subscriptions across all my accounts...or whichever accounts I want, anyway.
Well I won't fault you but that seriously hampers my experience using Lemmy so guess I'll go make another account on another instance.
Edit: the more I recreate my account the more annoyed I am by this, you literally have the communities everyone joined and just ripped them away from most of Lemmy's user base. Not cool.
yeah ngl this is kind of a dick move. the fediverse is just starting out and the worst thing anyone can do is pull thousands of users out rn. admins should have asked for help with moderating instead of doing this.
I'm personally gonna block all beehaw communities. I want the fediverse as a whole to thrive.
It's certainly not cool. They could have just put out the call for some help instead of deciding to fuck a bunch of Lemmy users who've just been joining the biggest community for a given topic - a community frequently on beehaw. But they want a walled garden so I guess that's what they're going to get. It sucks because I joined this instance specifically because I felt like it wouldn't be infested with fuckin' Nazis and hateful people like every other reddit alternative since forever, I didn't think that meant it would be walled off because of that pursuit. Here we are though, I personally will avoid beehaw communities from now on even when they refederate with the instance I've moved to, I don't want to post a bunch in the music community (like I have been) just to wake up and find it gone. I know I said I don't fault them but the more I get into moving and seeing how it affects non beehaw users the more yeah I really kinda do.
That's kind of surprising, especially since there are communities that exist in those instances that do not exist here. I hope that at least, communities can sprout up here (pro wrestling or Green Bay Packers, anyone?)
While Beehaw generally won't spin up more granular communities without a guarantee that (a) they can be properly moderated and (b) they will have a reasonable large of participants to warrant their existence - in the vein of keeping a more tightly wound, intentionally built community - you may still participate in communities on any of the instances Beehaw still federates with, or join other instances to start such communities there.
I think this is a good point. While open community creation might not be desired, perhaps some sort of poll system to find things people want but are unsure where they belong.
The Beehaw admins are currently working on sending out a survey, which will most likely include questions about creating new communities.
Wonderful, I look forward to filling it out!
I understand, and appreciate the move.
My very first post on lemmy.world was raided by trolls from an alt-right instance(?). It was not a good experience, and a big reason why I immediately migrated here to beehaw.
I hope we get the ability to block instances on the user level, too, like we can on Mastodon. I tried looking for a way when sh.itjust.works blew up because I had a feeling it was going to attract a lot of impolite trolls just for the fact that they would have profanity in their domain name. It comes across as a bit antisocial to me.
I'm sure some people picked it because they thought it was silly word play rather than offensive, but it's not like there's an easy way to parse out the easily amused people from the ones who are out to push boundaries.
This makes sense considering the current state of Lemmy's moderation tooling. I briefly ran an instance with open registrations a while back, and quickly got blocked by other instances. The frustrating thing was that there was no place in Lemmy's UI where I had any visibility in what local users on my instance were doing on other instances. No local activity log, notifications of reports or external moderation actions taken against my users like how mastodon forwards reports to the original server, no way to see what potential abuse users who registered on my instance were engaged in unless they engaged in that behavior locally on my instance, which had remained empty. After realizing how bad the tooling was I just shut it down.
Hopefully things improve. I am at least more hopeful here because everything is open source, we can take this feedback to the devs and design moderation and abuse prevention tooling together as a community, collaboratively, and hopefully build better moderation tools than reddit ever had.
I am not going to stand for this.
I didn't come here into the fediverse to have instances dictate on their whim that I'll not have access to something.
This goes completely against the idea of having an unified platform. You can of course do whatever you want, but I'll not be part of a closed garden.
I think your idea of what federation should look like is not quite right, which is okay, itβs not an insult, itβs new to many of us.
The idea isnβt that everything is open, with a unified platform that shares everything, everywhere. The Lemmy software is open source, but the way instances are moderated is highly customizable, and that is an intentional design decision.
Youβre probably used to common moderation styles on Reddit, where users have more control over content via up/downvotes, and some Lemmy instances may run just like that, taking a more hands-off approach to moderation. But Beehaw is not like that. The goals and moderation style here are different. Beehaw is looking to create a different kind of space, with more control over whatβs posted. There are pros and cons to this, which are beyond the scope of this comment to explore. The point is this: different Lemmy instances are run by different people, with different visions and styles. If you donβt like how Beehaw is run, itβs probably going to be a better experience for you, as well as the people here who do like how itβs run, if you find an instance that more closely aligns with what youβre looking for.
But coming onto someone elseβs instance and aggressively demanding things conform to your desires or trying to inform the owners of what you will or wonβt βstand forβ is rude, though. Thereβs a better way to communicate with people, and in the future I hope you choose grace.
I think that the whole point of federation is that you, the end user, have the option of choosing where you want to go. You want to use those other instances, nobody is stopping you. You can actually use as many as you want. The instance owner gets to choose what is displayed on their instance, and that's OK as well. You even have the option of making your very own instance and displaying everything from everywhere. Nobody is dictating what you can or can't see. They're just choosing not to be the ones to show it to you.
I support this decision overall. If this space is meant to be a safe and strongly moderated one, it makes a lot of sense. For now I'll be maintaining an alt account on another instance that allows more free for all content and treating this as my safety blanket zone for when it all gets too crazy.
It's not what I would want from my home instance, but if you're explicitly trying to create a safe space, it seems like the only way to do so. I think it's a good decision insofar as it aligns with the goals of their instance.
This sucks as I am a member of many Lemmy.world subs
I hear you. Make an alt account for those. Slightly inconvenient, but the pros outweigh the cons.
I am a moderator on the lemmy.world sailing community through my Beehaw acct. Will this affect that?
oh dear, probably yeah. you might have to register over there and get re-appointed
Fuck this. Now is a time for that downvote button.
I'm one of those new members of this community. I have been welcomed in and am thankful for being given the benefit of the doubt. And I can appreciate how much work it must be to maintain a safe space for everyone.
I stopped using reddit, and uninstalled RIF from my devices this last Sunday, and very quickly realized how much time I was putting into doom scrolling and reading discussions that would end up making my blood boil. Shortly after that, I began to feel a sense of freedom, and I realized how much toxicity was on reddit from a new perspective.
On Tuesday I joined lemmy.world. I was intrigued by the concept of federated software, and was hopeful I could find a community of people there. At first, everything was great (I may have been only noticing the good), and I started to look for specific communities that I might have an active interest in. I also saw a post from beehaw, explaining what they're about. I thought, "That's neat", but I didn't pursue it at the time.
On Wednesday morning, I started to notice some of the things @alaza is referring to, and it was disheartening. I tried to ignore them, but once they were noticed, they couldn't be unnoticed. I asked to join beehaw that same afternoon, and was accepted shortly thereafter. I look forward to growing with this community. And am grateful that one with these goals exist.
I'll bet defederating was a tough decision, and one that wasn't taken lightly. Having moved from one network to the next, only to find the same toxicity I was running away from in such a short time, I am thankful that careful decisions like these were made when necessary to preserve the spirit of acceptance and a safe space for everyone. I hope, as this software matures, that we can begin growing more than sheltering, but I can see how both will be necessary at times for our community itself to grow and thrive.
PS: I'll inevitably use the wrong terms (community, instance, federated...). I've got a sliver of a grasp when to use each one. I'll be cheerfully learning more about it going forward.
This is disappointing considering how popular some of the beehaw communities are (for instance beehaw.org/c/gaming) and now they have been completely ostracized from part of the lemmy community. Or at least the fastest growing part. (mostly because they have open registration). Personally I think this will only hurt the platform as a whole and fragment further, what is by nature, an already fragmented community.
I get why it is being done though. Especially with there being no verification for those servers. They become easy ways to make troll accounts.
Lemmy needs better federated mod tools to say the least (or so it appears to be). There has to be a better way to do this.
You are being incredibly selfish and should revert this change immediately
Thatβs just like, your opinion man.
The mods will make that decision when itβs feasible for them as volunteers. Not when itβs demanded.
Pragmadialectics, mate. It would improve your posts.
I made a comment earlier that I was disappointed by this decision, but after looking through other instances, I have changed my mind and now approve of this move. I'm glad to be here on beehaw where the integrity of the community comes first and is guarded with the best of intentions.
New users: "I'm tired of Reddit telling me what I can't see! Top-down decision-making is ridiculous! I'm going to check out Lemmy!"
Beehaw: "Hold my beer and watch this."
This is a false dilemma. With reddit you had no choice but to accept the top-down decision. With federation you are free to take your activity and traffic elsewhere. If you don't approve of the decision being made here you're not beholden to this community and the choices of its administration.
I swear people have completely forgotten how the internet worked before Reddit. If you didnβt like a platform you could justβ¦leave. Walk away and make your own and if enough people shared your feelings on the matter, another community would form. It happened all the time, there wasnβt really a monopoly. The fact that we can feasibly do that again (even better in a lot of ways) and people still act like one volunteer-run community drawing a line in the sand over what is acceptable and what isnβt is some catastrophic blow to freedom of expression truly shows how deep the centralised social media brain worms have burrowed.
For real the choice used to be "swallow it and be happy" or "just don't use reddit". If 60% of people are happy with this decision they're making (for very pragmatic reasons, I might add), then the other 40% can choose to stay or start accounts in other instances; or both.
Thank you all for what you are doing to build up this nice, safe, open, and fun community space for all of us!
Well. Guess I'll have to go and spin my own self-hosted version of Kbin just to be able to follow everything, without being at the mercy of third-party admins cutting my subscriptions in a whim. Also, I sure hope that the communities either move into Beehaw or outside of it, fragmentation out of the users' control makes the entire point of federation moot.
Thatβs always your choice. I think the consensus for the community is that we support the admins because Beehaw isnβt intended to replace Reddit or Twitter. Weβre all here to have a more intimate community, like a local coffee shop where you know everyone. My experience has been that these kinds of intimate gatherings allow for more diversity, while maintaining a safer space. We can have respectful differences of opinion without worrying about the hostility that often follows disagreements online. Like a coffee shop, the desire for social cohesion has more of an influence than the desire to be right at all costs like on Twitter/Reddit. Just my two cents. Iβm supportive of this, because I know if I ever have a concern I can talk to my friends (Beehaw team) about it. If we canβt agree, I can always find a new friend group and neither party will have hard feelings. Iβd like to think it wonβt come to that, because of the kind of community Beehaw is. This is exactly the same decision I would make if it were my call.
That is completely reasonable and fair enough.
What drew me to Beehaw in the first place is the philosophy of vetted registrations and "be(e) nice" rules. I think so far that's worked excellently so far to grow this platform into a warm community. If we need to deferate to maintain Beehaw's vibe, so be it.
I have to agree - I was here just on the crest of the first ex-Redditors and it had a really cozy vibe. It's helped a lot by a community and a userbase which is passionate about maintaining a positive culture. I'm glad that you also enjoy it!
Maybe one day we can let those other instances back in on a more limited basis, but it really depends on if/when Lemmy will have better tools for sysadmins.
I'm in support of temporary defederation, if just to hold out until better tools come around to moderate things coming from outside Beehaw.
I've visited Lemmy.world and there are people there mocking other instances for having a tighter registration policy and not having an open registration. They say we are gatekeeping. But even if we try to explain, I think they wouldn't understand what the reasons are.
Frankly, they are chaotic there. I will be eager to watch the developments in the coming weeks.
Yeah, I browsed the thread about the defederation on lemmy.world, and I get the same vibe that you do from it. A couple folks who seemed to get where we're coming from commented, but pretty universally their comment responses just demonstrated a total lack of ability to imagine that anyone might want something other than the maximalist experience of the fediverse. By and large they don't seem to understand what were trying to do here, which I guess reenforces that defederation was the right move for now.
Growth comes with growing pains. Sometimes those growing pains mean making tough decisions. I see this decision as thinking of the long game, and I'm fine with that.
I have a separate account at Lemmy.world, and I can log into that if I want, but honestly, I've been enjoying my time here more. There are still some aspects of federation that I haven't gotten my head around, but I'm trying to learn.
Anyhoo, thanks to our admins/moderators for your transparency. It's very much appreciated.
Same, I started over there but the community over here is definitely more in line with what I am looking for. I also have no interest in trying to block dozens of communities because of the openness of their registration. Last night had some legitimately awful crap show up.
respect your decision, and the transparency behind your thought processes. Beehawβs stated values, and the culture that you have grown and maintained were what led me to choose it initially. Iβve enjoyed reading and interacting with the people and content here, and the extra thought and effort that goes into typical posts compared to other similar servers.
I hope youβre able to find people you can trust to share the administrative burden, that improved moderation tools are not far off, and that this decision will be earnestly reconsidered in the coming days/weeks as growth from the Reddit Exodus stabilizes.
I believe the Fedverse as a whole will be a poorer place for being defederated from Beehaw.
That said, based on this decision Iβve decided to migrate my primary account to a regional instance. I want to continue to participate in and interact with the Beehaw community, but Iβd also like the freedom to explore the wider fediverse and find diverse communities for my niche interests and hobbies. I just hope bad actors from my, and other instances donβt cause further defederation and fragmentation.
Seems a bit much. Get moderators.
they have moderators but the situation was just that bad and keep in mind moderators are volunteers and you cant just assign anyone to it either and when given the choice of keep moderator and admin time from other important issues or simply do something about the problem they chose the second its not an ideal solution but it is a solution
I love Beehaw. It was the first general instance that was suggested all over the place, even the top on join-lemmy.org for a long time. I respect what you're doing, and that's why I joined. I like the local communities and cohesiveness. And I know it's just a few instances right now (pending revisits), but I'm worried that might increase. That, and DotWorld is growing quickly and has a lot of the 1:1 communities popping up to match beloved subreddits.
It hasn't made me rethink being a Beehaw member at all, because I do respect the ethos and understand, but it also means I have to make another account to feel like I can truly interact fully across the Fediverse. But between my Beehaw account, my kbin I've decided to leave within the kbin verse for the moment, making a new one will mean 3 accounts I've got to keep up with (really 4 with the NSFW-only one). It's not difficult to do, especially toggling between them in Jerboa, but it kind of defeats the bigger purpose and unification. Just a ramble to vent. Like I said, I get it. Hope everyone has a good rest of their day.
You are free to do whatever you would like with your server, but I won't pretend this is isn't pretty disappointing.
I've enjoyed this community a lot from what I've seen so far, and was very happy to have my main account live here.
However, while I appreciate a place that is focused on being nice, and freely hostile to the hostile, I'm not interested in an experience so sheltered that it feels hidden from the world at large. In regards to your statements that you wanted to avoid an echo chamber, this action seems very contradictory.
To be clear I don't think your issues were small. Trolls flooding your instance from larger instances is terrible and must be overwhelming and unsolvable for your small mod team. However, I see this as growing pains for a platform like this. I expected a response like petitioning your recently grown community for additional moderators. I didn't expect a rejection of the larger lemmy community and the growth it has been experiencing.
I'm not exactly certain how all parts of federation work yet, but I hope I'll be able to find a server that is a 3rd party, and federated with major instances as well as beehaw, where I can make my new account, and see the greater breadth of content I desire, without being cut off from beehaw. If anyone could recommend a server, that would be greatly appreciated. If that isn't how it works and isn't possible, then at least, thank you beehaw for introducing me to the fediverse.
Thank you for the explanation. This makes a lot of sense and I think regardless of how people feel about it, it's a great lesson for newbies on how federation works and what makes federated sites so neat. Like...you can come to beehaw and have a fundamentally different experience because of how they've chosen to federate (or defederate) from other portions of the federation. That may or may not be for everyone, and that's okay!
You have every right to do with your community what you want. But I will cancel my monthly donation on opencollectiv and tell newer users to stay away from your instance. This action will do so much damage for the acceptance and adaption of the fediverse.. It's just mind boggling.
Edit: Oh and it will lead more people to Lemmy.ml. Fantastic /s.
I respect it. I saw someone who said on lemmy.world that Beehaw needing a "Why are you joining?" was requiring an essay. I typed in like 8 words and I got in.
Yeah I think I wrote one sentence that was basically just "I like the vibe you are going for"
At least half the applications are blank or literally just say something along the lines of 'i wanna try out the fediverse'. People aren't reading our docs or paying attention to rules. Many just want a reddit replacement. We explicitly do not want to be a carbon copy of Reddit, that platform has a ton of toxic behavior that we don't want here.
Yeah. My partner thought it was ridiculous when I was looking for the right Mastodon instance for me (I'm not that active on Mastodon, but I still think Fediverse is neat) on any application that required a reason for joining, I put in a big block of text. I'm glad you read those because that's like... The first line of checking if someone will be a good fit for your vibe, you know? Like. For both parties, it's an opportunity to make sure it's a good internet home.
I am grateful for your work, and I think it's nice here
This is a really tough topic and really gets me thinking about this whole system. Until Lemmy moderation tools get better, this is probably for the best. I just don't see a "real" reason to defederate at this point when anyone can make an account from the big list of instances and just sign up with a new account. That's some effort to go through, but I'm sure we all know how dubious and unrelenting trolls can be.
Just earlier today, I saw a post criticizing Beehaw, which lead down a rabbit whole of finding out what some of the more problematic instances are, and the entire premise is just being toxic and name-calling. There's no discussion in there. They just want a forum to type out and spread their hate.
Anyway, it's not definitive so let's just see where it goes from here. If anything, a lemmy.world account + a beehaw account is the best of both worlds.
My ideal wishlist would be to be able to block problematic instances entirely, then a block for specific users of a specific instance that fundamentally makes interaction impossible with Beehaw. Almost like an "okay, @JohnDoe123@123.com has bad activity. @JohnDoe123@123.com can no longer see posts or comments that originate from Beehaw. @JohnDoe123@123.com is automatically added to a global block list for all users @beehaw.org." It would also be nice to have more options like accounts younger than a week old or that don't have a verified email, etc etc can't view or participate in discourse.
I'm the admin over at discuss.online. I'm currently scoping out a plan to build a moderator tool. I'd love to chat to help drive my scope. I'm planning to open-source it. Please, reach out to me if you're open to talking.
I also plan to ping admins of other instances to get input. However, your input seems more immediate as you're dealing with these issues.
A completely understandable and logical step. It's simpler for a member to log into another instance if they want to keep interacting with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works than to deal with the constant violations. I for one appreciate you guys keeping this a friendly community... sometimes it's nice to take a break from toxic content!
This has quickly become my favorite instance and this is yet another example of exactly why.
I applaud what youβre doing here, and the community youβre working to build. Thank you!
I had missed that, and have been spending the past few days wondering why my feed got so serious (and, well, kinda boring). Beehaw has a lot of solid content to be proud of, but a number of the most interesting and thought-provoking subreddits were re-created on lemmy.world's side. This is your prerogative of course, and I support every decision you take as an admin team, you can only do what you can do; but with this, it seems to me like having an account on Beehaw doesn't seem to have much of a point anymore...
I just created my new account on lemmy.world, and I'll keep this one around just in case the decision gets reverted, but this post also serves as my farewell and good luck to this community. π
And now I don't know what communities I've lost off my subscriptions. Great.
My questions are:
Will you defederate from every instance that has an "open registration policy" if it floods beehaw's feed with shitposts?
What type of trolling are you seeing?
What can you tell to mods of magazines/communities or admins of instances to look out for?
I'll leave it to an admin to answer the latter two, but it's nothing wrong necessarily with open registration (that is, letting anyone sign up without an application, for anyone reading this). It's more so just instances getting to a point in size where they boil over, with bad actors starting up accounts on those instances to repeatedly harass/troll/etc. This, at the moment, is very easy to do - especially without email verification (I know that's a soft deterrence, but bear with me) or some other deterring measure.
It's hard for the admins of those instances as well, because there's not as much in the way of seeing outgoing participation from their users either and they can't see their users getting reported or blocked on other instances very easily. At the moment this is just one of two options that exists in Lemmy's software - the other one being doing nothing.
Hmmm; I am new to LemmyNet AND Beehaw.org; but have been falling in love with the platforms. However, I do want to see 'all' of LemmyNet.
What is the lemmyworld 'open registration policy? I ask because all I needed to supply to register HERE is a username/password. ??? Isn't that open registration?
Second, why not allow more moderators - please don't feel like you have to go over old stuff... I'm going to read thru some of Beehaw.org's PAST posts that I'm sure talk about this issue - but it seems like theres a great Beehaw.org community - if yer having issue w/ moderation, hire moderators; I bet the 'cost' is pretty cheap.
Last; what LemmyNet community should one join if they WANT to see the entire LemmyNet? I came aboard Beehaw.org BECAUSE I agreed w/ most of what the site stands for; but since I'm really getting into Lemmy I think I want to be where 'everything' is - good and bad.
Thanks for the explanation - even if confusing for a new user.
The application also had a required question you needed to answer about why you wanted to join this community in particular, which was then read and manually approved by a human.
Monetarily, it's free. We moderate as volunteers. But keep in mind that there's both an overhead to vetting new moderators, as well as the fact that it will always be faster to troll and harass than to clean up the aftermath of that trolling and harassment. That, combined with the fact that there are way more people who'd like to do a little trollin' than there are people willing to volunteer their time to keep tabs on things, and you should be able to see how poorly this solution scales. The admins have addressed this a few times in comments on this thread, which I'm sure you'll probably turn up if you do decide to read through it.
Any instance that still federates with beehaw.org, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works. There are many smaller instances, regional instances, interest-specific instances, etc that fit the bill. I'd recommend looking around and finding one that seems like a good fit for what you're personally going for.
Hope it'll turn to be right decision.
As many pointed out already feeling severed away from part of the network because of an arbitrary decision of someone else surely is going to impact on the sense of agency of that the end users here might be looking for, especially considering that many are refugees from a network where indeed someone just have took a decision for all of them which they didn't like.
So in this sense I hope the admin are taking this hard decision having well pondered the outcome. Sure it will shield from some users of some other instance, but that is also going to segregate us. And more important where will it stop? What if tomorrow there is another big instance with open registration policy where some users post something toxic here on beehaw, will that whole instance be severed too from us because of few bad apples? And where does it stops?
With this I want to say that I hope that this is a temporary decision, I hope that in the short future there will be a more granular way to ban toxic users, or ban all the users from a specific toxic community for instance, but which is not just banning the entire instance where the account of a bad apple is stored.
I know banning on a per-person basis is probably unmanageable with the current mod force, but I hope that the increasing usage of Lemmy will add features to it and also will make naturally sprout all those user made 3rd party tools which made reddit what is... was until few days ago.
Good luck and good work everyone
I personally think this is the wrong descision. The increased users are basically all coming because of the reddit protest and I think most malicious activity will cease when then the influx of reddit refugees dies down. I dont know about sh.itjust.works, but lemmy.world is well moderated, they are just as much struggling with new users as beehaw is, the only difference is that their moderation happens mostly at the community level. There are a lot of good communities on these servers that are worth keeping around. In my opinion we should be a little more patient with them and at least wait a bit until the reddit chaos dies down, because this situation is largely temporary, but our (temporary) defederation will have permanent chilling effects on all of lemmy.
Just to put an additional perspective on this. Beehaw has been and/or had to defederate instances before to become and stay the safe space everyone here's enjoying. The only major difference here is that this time it hit two major instances and not because of actions or goals of the majority of their population or admins but because the sheer size of the instances made the small percentage of their users, who act in what is considered a bad way, made it to much to handle.
According to this list of Awesome Lemmy Instances, there are 5 instances who's count of blocked instances is way above every other instance (like 5 times more). Beehaw is one of those, in fact Beehaw is on top of that list. While this of course isn't desirable, it made the communities we have here possible in first place and helped shape them into what they're now. Just check the blocked instances list.
I think, just closing the valve on certain pipes is a legitimate course of action in a situation where there is more pressure than the receiver can handle, especially in short term while other measures are put into place (like getting better tools to handle the pressure or expecting the general pressure to go down). If the only two options for this valve are "fully open" and "fully closed" it seems to me like the only course of action to prevent overpressure from flooding the whole place.
hey thanks for this, its important to keep bigotry out
Sounds reasonable to me. Thanks for laying out the admin team's rationale in a calm and collected manner.
Personally at least I had no expectations of your team moderating or otherwise being responsible for the content coming from those instances and thought it was enough to use the new icon set to clearly identify content from Beehaw vs the others.
It's a shame because such a move feels very anti-fediverse to me but I am new to the platform so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
It may feel anti-fediverse, but this is actually just a fact of federation: sometimes, there are reasons why you might want to cut off even the biggest instances. Of course, that may feel like Beehaw is becoming more siloed, but we still federate with large instances like kbin.social and a bunch of other smaller instances. We can still refederate in the future, but in the mean time, we stuck waiting for Lemmy to improve as a software - definitely going to need as many devs as we can to work on that problem.
I think the larger issue was users from those external instances interacting with posts / comments in Beehawβs communities. Since theyβre open registration, bad actors could just create new accounts after being banned from Beehaw.
Love that this instance has decided to stick to its guns and take actions that support the mission as a first priority. The nature of the fediverse is such that anyone who wants the content can still go get it, it's as simple as another bookmark in your browser, and this space can remain bully-free. 100% support this decision, well done.
Ok so TLDR for people who don't quite know what this means.
Beehaw are going for a walled garden approach and cutting off our access to content from some of the bigger instances. This is fine, it's their right as instance admins and it creates a safer space for anyone who was only browsing Beehaw local communities anyway. It's best they've done this now before even more people join, but it does suck for those of us who already built a nice feed.
As users we now have a decision to make. If you're an active member of a community on one of these two instances, you'll probably need to migrate your account.
If you're an active member of a community on another instance, bear in mind if that instance grows large you may then be in the same position.
The bad news is there's no easy way to migrate accounts here like there is on Mastodon, and we're going to have to resubscribe to everything all over again from whichever instance we move to. Unless anyone knows any handy tool or anything?
(p.s. It seems like I can still click through to my communities on, say, lemmy.world but presumably they'll no longer update. This is going to really confuse people as there's no visual indicator that the community is blocked from my pov)
Iβm glad to see you telling us and coming forward on this, and that these steps are being taken. Lemmy is a small project, so expecting it to have robust mod tools isnβt realistic. Former Redditors here probably know that some subs have closed indefinitely simply because without good third party mod tools theyβll be near impossible to run safely.
Everything does feel quite new and volatile on this side of the Fediverse. The Mastodon instance I use has a very long list of blocked instances, especially since itβs aimed at LGBTQ+ users. Thereβs some messed up people out there, and I appreciate the action on the part of the admins. Just slapping a βsafe spaceβ sticker on something does not automatically make it one, and it makes me feel really good to be on an instance that understands that.
Hopefully things change for them so we can refederate, as there will be some small communities I miss on those instances. That saud I think saving the mods, admins and community greatly outweighs the impact to me.
This development reinforces my choice to not sign up @beehaw. The risk of mod over-reach is far more serious than my feelings being hurt because someone wrote a mean spirited comment. So long beehaw mods, I hope your impossible goal to keep the internet free from hatred does not drive you totally insane.
Nah, they aren't trying to keep the internet free from hate... Just the part of it that they have control over and that others want to share.
And that isn't impossible
Only read a section of the post but am i getting it correct that youβre basically defederating because of how many users are on the instances?
For now I disagree with this change because of world being the second biggest lemmy instance but I do understand the reasoning. Seeing how you also manage the third biggest instance this is probably gonna change lemmy as well
While yes, there are a ton of users on those instances, it's more so the fact that we don't have adequate tools for moderating them and maintaining the kind of community Beehaw seeks to provide while remaining federated. It isn't an easy call to make, but Lemmy doesn't offer any kind of middle ground from the sysadmin's perspective.
I have no idea whether this is the right decision or the wrong decision, but kudos to you for stepping up and making a decision.
What expectations do you have for other big instances in order to not defederate them in the future?
I am asking specifically as admin of lemm.ee. For context, we don't require applications on sign-ups, but we do:
Do you see a likelihood that you will defederate us if we grow bigger?
if you have all of those i'd strongly doubt it--for what it's worth the number of issues we've had with other communities also drops off precipitously after these two, which also informs that
Support -- "Good online communities die primarily by refusing to defend themselves." from Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism
Hmm
If the issue is mainly moderation tools then here's what I think would be a good way to mitigate bad actors while making the experience seamless for the end user, promotes growth, and doesn't kneecap the fediverse.
Make it so that one can block users from one instance from commenting or posting on an instance. (The users on the former should be notified of this). This way the latter instance is safe and curated.
Add a way to vet users from other instances so that they can participate in the community without having to make a new account. This way, users of good character on other instances can participate in this one without having to make another account. The vetting process can be manual or automated based on factors like account age, if they have an email, etc.
Allow users to block instances entirely. This allows users themselves to have control over what they see.
I don't have much system architect experience but I'll attempt to make a more comprehensive document that takes into account the variety use cases needed in this system after work.
sounds good, but please direct these suggestions not to Beehaw itself because we currently do not routinely contribute code to the software Lemmy. If you have suggestions about the software architecture, reach out to the Lemmy devs here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/
Keep up the good work. Situations like this are complex and messy and sometimes you do what needs doin.
It might be interesting to know for anyone reading this - kbin.social (Kbin) allows individual users to block instances, unlike on Lemmy where users can only block communities and only admins have the power to defederate with instances.
For example, from my kbin profile, I could go to kbin.social/d/lemmy.world (do for "domain") and then block lemmy.world entirely, like the admins of beehaw here have done.
So if you think these decisions ought to be left up to the individual user, kbin might be a better fit for you than Lemmy in its current state.
Here's what it looks like in my settings (again, on my kbin.social account, not here):
(In Kbin speak, "magazines" are communities, and "domains" are instances.)
While I was subscribers to several .world communities I wholeheartedly agree with this decision. Huge influx of users bringing a lot of reddit meme culture isn't what we need right now.
As a long-time fediverse user, based on your description of the situation here, it sounds like you made a good decision. If and when they get a hand on their moderation issues you can refedederate. As you say current tools are minimal, and defederation is a very blunt tool, but itβs the only option in a situation like this.
seems like a good step to take, probably a difficult one for you guys. props to you!
also the incredible transparency is just... breath of fresh air doesn't do it justice
I see this being a very slippery slope. Part of the nice thing about the fediverse is being able to interact with other communities on other instances. I can easily see Beehaw starting to defederate with more and more instances thereby severely limiting the amount of communities that are accessible. I see the trigger being pulled to defederate from every other instance just to stop any unwanted things from happening.
i'll be completely honest: i don't know where some of you are earning the confidence to speak more on what this instance will do in the future than us, the actual admins who decide what will be done in the future. i made this point elsewhere, but, to reiterate: if we wanted to defederate from everything we'd legitimately just do that and be done with it. we don't really hide what we intend to do here. the most we've even considered is--if things deteriorate for some reason--switching from an explicit blacklist to a whitelist which would still allow federation with other communities, because we like federation and we want to preserve its good use cases while still being able to minimize the ones we're running into here.
I'm not speaking on what the instance is going to do. I gave my opinion on where I could see it going based on this action. That's why I said this is a slippery slope. The more instances that get blocked will cause people to sign up on other ones thus causing the same issue to happen but from a different instance. The only reasonable decision at that point would be to defederate from everything.
Again this is just my opinion and thoughts on the matter. The defensive and slightly hostile tone back reminding me I'm not an admin and therefore shouldn't speak about what I thought might happen wasn't really appreciated. This is supposed to be a place about open dialogue correct?
I want to say thank you, and support the admin team in this decision. I believe this helps keep this community in line with their mantra.
In the spectrum of things, I feel that lemmy.world is closer to the feel of Reddit, not the same, but closer. When I want that, I go there, but I like it here best!
You can see how much crud they filter out for us by going to the communities link at the top of the page, then scrolling all the way to the bottom and clicking instances. Direct link to Beehaw instances
Maybe someday I'll decide to run my own server and determine who I federate with. Until then, I appreciate all their work keeping this community aligned with the sidebar!
You guys outlined good enough reasons for your decision. I hope this will make things easier to work with.
This is why Fediverse can never compete with centralized social media. Mastodon and Lemmy to be specific are obsessed with defederation. Because users on platforms like Reddit and Twitter are used to having access to everything. Not waking up suddenly and realizing they've lost access to a large number of communities they were part of just until last night. All in the name of creating "safe space".
Thanks for working so hard on this community. Iβd like to echo so many here when I say Iβd prefer a strong, helpful community vs a large low-effort post community. Do what you have to do to keep this instance healthy. Thanks again.
I support this, even if I'm not currently part of beehive. I think this is exactly the scenario fediverse is meant for.
I just wonder, if I will still be able to get beehive communities in my feed. What does defederating actually do? Even if I am not able to post and comment in beehive communities, I'd still like to read them.
If you're not on those two instances mentioned, you'll still see Beehaw communities and posts and comments from them! :)
Unfortunate, but I understand. I hope the moderation tools improve enough to refederate down the road.
Thank you for this in the short term. Not gonna lie, I was a little grossed out by all the furry / anime porn / gone wild stuff that was crossing my feed when I hit all. No matter how fast I blocked the communities, I couldn't get them all. I'm not a prude person at all but I also don't come here to surf random porn.
I hadn't seen any of that. Doesn't the unchecking "Show NSFW content" in settings prevent that?
I'm on an instance that has open registration and I haven't seen any "trolling, harassment, and other undesirable behavior;"
Sounds like confirmation bias. Can I see actual statistics?
"safe space" is ambiguous, what are your requirements for a "safe space"
Sounds like confirmation bias. Can I see actual statistics?
Your instance stands for censorship
Thank you for the transparency; I fully support this decision.
I made an account here after reading the mission statement. The very ideals beehaw stands for were the appeal. I support what you are doing, I want this to continue to feel a safe space.
Thank you. I really appreciate what you're trying to build and the work you do. I'm impressed
This was actually my fear when it came to a federated Reddit, I was wondering what was stopping admins from defederating with any instance for any reason, and what would happen when they did. It seemed like communities would become centralised on a few instances, which seemed against the point of a federated internet.
I've since started thinking of this site more as a forum, where you can also access other forums from. And suddenly it clicked as to why I would use this site. And I think Lemmy being hailed as a Reddit replacement has actually done a disservice to its potential.
I do think, however, that there needs to be discussions as a community about what we do and don't want here, and I think the most important one is about what communities we want and how we want to handle them. I don't believe that I was subscribed to any communities on these instances, but I'm sure that there probably would have been some that I would have enjoyed.
I have nothing intelligent to add (except signaling my support) and to remark that defederation and defenestration are incredibly close words.
This feels like the right move, at least for now. Ideally there would be a nicer more seamless way to solve the issue but that's not the situation right now.
Apologies, I'm still learning the ins and outs of the fediverse and I have Cognitive Impairment which makes learning harder - is this one or bi-directional? I have a Lemmy.world account as well so does that mean if I'm on lemmy.world, I won't be able to see Beehaw content? Or the other way around where I'm here and I won't be able to see lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works content? Or both?
It is bi-directional. If you're on Beehaw, you can't see from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. If you're on either of those, you can no longer see on Beehaw.
We wish it was uni-directional where people from those instances could not interact with Beehaw communities but that we could allow people using Beehaw to see and interact on Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works.
I can totally respect that this was a lovely, safe and small community before the reddit influx, and you want to keep it that way. I'm a new reddit refugee and I signed up here because i love the ethos, but ultimately I've made an alt over at lemmy.world so i can view all the content they produce on my main feed.
Not sure where my home will be, or what i'm looking to get out of lemmy, but weather I end up back here or not, I appreciate all beehaw has done to introduce me to lemmy and the lovely interactions i've had here already
I completely understand and support the decision to cut the ties, even if it is unfortunate that it should be necessary. This is a nice instance and I hope it can stay that way, even for the mods. I have no idea how much work and perseverance it takes to run something like this but I know I couldn't do it. If the people running Beehaw say that it is too much to handle, then we should believe them. Without them, this would not be the nice place it is. I'm on Sopuli myself, but I like the vibe here and would hate to see it destroyed by trolls. Just my two cents. Cheers.
Given the stated goals for this community and the tools that are currently available, this seems a reasonable approach. I do hope the need ends up being only temporary, but I think it is more important to preserve the core essence of what you are trying to build than allow it to fail due to outside problems.
Sad to hear, especially at this time of growth. Obviously Beehaw can decide their own path, but for me the values Beehaw stands for have to go hand in hand with federation. Without federation it looses the draw for me. I'll be over on lemmy.world while this sorts itself out.
i think you take a wrong decision : i appreciate beehaw, but whatever you will do, you can't control everything let people use 'block user' feature, that's the purpose of this feature, and focus only on what people report as 'bad user'. Defederate for a toxic instance as 'lemmygrad' is good, but defederate from lemmy.world makes no sense for me. i hope it's just a temporary decision
Do whatever yβall need to do, appreciate the transparency.
Personally, I'm not entirely sure where I stand on this, so it troubles me.
On the one hand, I understand the admins' need to bring trolling and bad faith content under control, and ultimately this instance is theirs to do with as they feel necessary. I'm a mod in a couple of the communities and have yet to see anything troubling, but that's not to say that we won't get inundated with fuckery from people who don't know how to behave.
However, this makes it very difficult to see Lemmy as a useful alternative to Reddit.
I'm subscribed to a number of communities from a range of instances, some of which have just been excised completely from my feed.
AsIunderstandit,overonMastodon,iftheadminoftheinstanceIusechosetodefederatefromaserverwheresomeofmyfollowsare,I'llstillseethosefollows,butgeneralcontentfromtheinstancewon'tmakeitthroughthenet.Andthat'sok.Yeah, I'm wrong on that. I confused instance limitation with defederation.
There doesn't appear to be such nuance here on Lemmy; it's all or nothing. And this could lead to Beehaw becoming a limited, silo'd forum.
But ultimately, this feels mostly like it's a problem for the admins of lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works to address in being more responsible instance runners, and Beehaw is the server that put up with their shit less than the others.
So when all's said and done, I support the admins' decision, but it's not without hesitation.
@alyaza Been a hot minute since I logged into beehaw but I love the team's decisiveness on this. I'm surprised more instances didn't take this route when dealing with mastodon.social