what does it mean that Beehaw "defederated" from lemmy.world?

Dick Justice@lemmy.world to Lemmy.World Announcements@lemmy.world – 171 points –

I thought I understood, but I still have Beehaw content in my feed, so I guess I don't understand after all... Can someone dumb it down for me?

96

wait why did they defederate us?

lemmy.world and and sh.itjust.works have a lot of users and it seems like beehaw was getting too much content from them. There are apparently only 4 people running beehaw and they felt they couldn't moderate all the content and felt like it was a vulnerability that lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works just let anyone sign up.

participate the effort to create an alternative to Reddit people leave Reddit to join the alternative be unable to handle the influx of people trying to use the alternative to a website with millions of users

Their reasons are much more selfish than that. They insist on only having 4 moderators while never scaling up, and they don't like how federation allows users from other instances to post on their instance because it disrupts their rigid ideal community vibe. According to their suggestions on "improving moderation tooling", the ideal federation setup is that their users can post on other instances, but other instances' users can't post on theirs, so they can save time on moderation work. The moderation work of other instance admins for their users doesn't matter, clearly.

I read their post explaining the decision, but it seems like it is at odds with itself. If your goal is to create a safe space, why are you using a federated service? I understand you have the option to defederate, but at that point why didn't you just setup a standalone message board. It just feels that their use case doesn't fit the system.

Isn't this like... the whole point of the Federated Universe? The mods do Beehaw want their server to be a "safe space". They're perfectly within their rights to restrict who can post in their own community. But you, the user, are not in any way beholden to their whims, and can make an account on any other Lemmy instance, or create your own and make it as restricted or unrestricted as you please.

It seems logical to me that the creators of a safe space for marginalized communities would restrict their community from the internet at large because people on the Internet feel emboldened by anonymity to attack others.

Yes, the point of the Fediverse is that everyone is free to associate with groups they choose. There is nothing wrong with creating instances that are very isolated. What Beehaw wants with the "improving moderation tooling", however, is a safe space where the network is restricted from them, but they still have full access to the rest of the network. That suggestion is what I was calling selfish, because this way their users would be parasiting off the content and moderation of other instances while giving nothing back.

I still don't see how this is not in line with the ideals and values of the Fediverse. If other instances don't want to take on the extra moderation you are referring to, they can simplify defederate from Beehaw, too.

Every instance can do whatever it wants, and if other instances don't like that then they can both go their own ways.

I don't like the idea of one way defederation, that seems like it would open the door for larger instances to try to shut down smaller ones.

I wouldn't call it selfish. They want tools for more granular control on their instance. That's perfectly fine. If they limit who can post or comment based on the instance they are from. The other instances are perfectly free to limit their users as well in response or for their own arbitrary reasons.

There seems to be a distinct lack of controls across lemmy as a whole. The only option for them is all or nothing at the moment.

I think the big take away is for users to think about what instance they create their accounts and communities on.

Ya I think a big part of the pushback is that I think a lot of people chose their "home" instance based on the guidance provided by the instance admins and then lost access to a lot of the network because of other decisions made by those same admins

Thank you, you put in words my thoughts exactly. Not all communities need to have the same rules as the others, not all need to be as open as others and that is more than fine.
Homogenization of the internet led us to a handful of corporations dominating social media websites and that is awful.

Exactly. Instead of being a reddit user and admins ban a bunch of subs that can no longer be accessed at all, you can still access those instances with another account.

Reddit can in the future ban NSFW content and there is nothing you can do to view those subreddits ever again.

Not the case here.

The community vibe is definitely a huge motivation. They want to be able to control the sort of people on their instance which they can't do if the mass user bases from lemmy.world etc. that are (relatively) neutral have access. It's a shame because they had some good communities established.

Yeah, I don't believe for one second that those 4 admins have actually, meaningfully, personally vetted 11,000+ users. People have posted (sorry, I dont have the link) here that they just filled the "application" out with nonsense and still got approved.

Doesn't surprise me too much tbh. I don't think I'd make an account with Beehaw but I might end up making one with a small instance they federate with to have access. While they have a right to defederate it's not something I like seeing.

Yeah, I don't believe for one second that those 4 admins have actually, meaningfully, personally vetted 11,000+ users.

So, if they are struggling the moderate a community with 11,000+ users, it would make sense for them to limit an even large number of external users for the time being until they feel they have things better in control, correct?

That's not what I'm commenting on, but yeah, naturally. It's their instance, they can do what they want.

@Andreas @sebovzeoueb They new going into this that they would be federated. They waited to get enough people then do stuff like this. People will leave then as there content will get old fast. They sell realize like reddit that people want to be able to search and find new content

According to their suggestions on “improving moderation tooling”, the ideal federation setup is that their users can post on other instances, but other instances’ users can’t post on theirs, so they can save time on moderation work.

So basically they want to have their cake and eat it too. How lovely.

Is that right? That seems not in keeping with the spirit of the thing. If they don't want to moderate large communities, how about you don't host large communities at all. Maybe that's what they're after, but they had seeded the space with a lot of logical communities that people were going to click on from the "find federated communities" pages from around the fverse.

It seems like they really just want the well made, actively developed message boards software, but they dont truly want the federation stuff. They wanted (and got) the user boost from all the reddit nonsense (and no, I do not believe that four people personally, meaningfully vetted thousands of users in the course of a couple days) and now they want to wall themselves off.

They have 30 something mods, they are 4 admins.
It's not about being selfish, it's about creating a space that they think can be a safe space. That's what's cool about federation, you just use other instances and that's it.

It seems to me that beehaw could already accomplish something along these lines with an "automod" equivalent that just insta-rejects any outsider posts on their hosted communities. So having that built into the protocol as a flag of some sort may actually be a good idea, because then other instances would be able to more easily see that behaviour and choose to not federate with them in return. If I was running a Lemmy or Kbin instance I wouldn't want to bother my users with communities that they could see but not interact with.

Lemmy.world still has all the content it pulled from beehaw before they defederated, but they won't sync anymore, so you won't see new beehaw updates, and they won't see any updates from lemmy.world

Was there a reason why they defederated??

Apparently the 4 admins are having trouble dealing with the influx of new users, so they defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works because their open registration policies are giving them the most problems.

https://beehaw.org/post/567170

Ok I'm one of the new users and it looks like I've commented on communities hosted there maybe a half dozen times. I guess I'm part of the problem 😔

But I'm a little unclear about the role an admin plays on an instance? Are they actually taking on mod responsibilities, in which case I can certainly understand how 4 would be totally swamped?

I guess in my head I sort of imagined each community has its own mod(s) and the admins would only step in as a kind of "supreme court" if some dispute gets out of hand? I've probably got this totally wrong.

Yeah that's what I was wondering. I'm just going off what they said. I know they don't allow communities to be created except what they did themselves, so maybe they are taking on all the mod responsibilities?

Yes but this is a nonstandard approach. For most instances it works as you had originally described.

someone got butthurt it sounds like.

Maybe we need to write them an apology letter in their sign-up to rejoin.

So I guess the next question is do we now recreate beehaw communities that were popular and fragment the community, or do we make accounts on a smaller instance that has access to beehaw.org and lemmy.world? I’m not about to start logging in and out of multiple accounts because beehaw mods are getting butt hurt…

@Jessica @Dick_Justice

That's the thing, though. Since any accounts would be on different servers, you don't have to log out of one to log into another. You don't have to log out of Gmail to log into ProtonMail, you can be in both at the same time in the same browser.

I think we should definitely be working on new communities. Beehaw certainly has a place in the fediverse but it's not as the instance with the largest communities. It's simply incompatible with their moderation policies.

From what I understand, if you, using a lemmy.world account, post something on a beehaw instance, only people from lemmy.world would be able to see it.

Man, This is so cool, Not related to the topic but im able to see yall talk about lemmy from lemmy instances while im on kbin

In my Info Sci classes we talked about federated search and how it could work. Unfortunately, very few instances existed at the time…. in 2010.

fr, fr. Every time I see an entire different instance I can't help but go "Awww, look at them have their own lil discussion/drama over there, how cute" and the fact that I can also interact with them makes it even more adorable.

Correct me if I’m wrong but pretty sure we can see them on kbin but they can’t see us on Lemmy yet. Boss man Ernest is working on it.

On reddit you could get banned from many subs for posting in a sub that its moderators didn't like. And in the fediverse it's exactly the same. So what's the point? I'm here, because I hoped that it won't be like reddit.

That's just the nature of any site that allows community moderation. If you're looking for something different, try fark.com

Just post quality content here and hope the communities move here.

Let the powermod wannabes have their own little barren exclave on Beehaw.

On reddit you could get banned from many subs for posting in a sub that its moderators didn’t like. And in the fediverse it’s exactly the same. So what’s the point? I’m here, because I hoped that it won’t be like reddit.

That's not what caused the migration of the past two weeks. What you described was a thing all the time, yet something different and special seemed to have happened, which caused me, you and many others to move right now.

That special event was a small group of people deciding for the whole platform. This cannot happen here. Instance admins can decide for their own instance, and that's it. The other instances can make other decisions and no lemmy has to change platform (but maybe instance).

In defense of preemptive bans, some subs do it when you participate in documented hate-subs. Didn't know the practice existed until I got a bunch of automessages. lul

You have Beehaw content that was synced before they defederated.

Federation isn't accessing remote content on remote instances, it's content mirroring. So, anything that was mirrored before Beehaw defederated will stay exactly where it is. You just won't see any updates to it.

At least, not from Beehaw.

It's weird because I still see posts from the News@beehaw in my feed.

Source: https://lemmy.world/post/168259

Basically we can post new content, but only people on lemmy.world can see it. It doesn't get sent to any other instance. Any old posts will still be there but any new interactions will not get sent outside of lemmy.world.

Suppose there was a comment thread containing a back-and-forth conversation between a kbin.social user and a lemmy.world user. What would a user on beehaw.org see, given that they are federated with one but not the other?

AFAIK, it depends on where this community originated in which this conversation happens.

  • If it's a beehaw community: lemmy.world users can only talk to other lemmy.world users
  • If it's a lemmy.world community: beehaw users can only talk to other beehaw users
  • If it is hosted anywhere else: I give up, I cannot make sense of it.

Please notify me if someone knows the answer. I tried to understand it using this great explanation with examples.

I also wonder what would technically happen if beehaw users could not see comments from defederated instances in other instances. How would they see a back and forth? Would they see the same level of indentation? Would they see other users from federated instances replying to comments which do not exist?

Users on Beehaw would not see anything from Lemmy.world. If it's still federated with Kbin, then they would see that content.

Likewise, anyone on Lemmy.world would not see content or be able to access communities from Beehaw.

So for a Beehaw user, would they see all of the the Kbinner's comments and it would look as if they were talking to themselves? Or would they only see the top level Kbinner comment and nothing else (due to their instance not seeing the Beehaw comment and therefore not seeing children of that comment either)?

Beehaw can pull in content from other instances, but users from those instances cannot comment or post back to Beehaw. If you were interacting with content coming from Beehaw on a different instance, in practice it would feel like you're shadow-banned as nobody on Beehaw would be able to see or reply to you.

So given participant 1, 2. 1 is on .world, 2 is on kbin

P1: message a
P2: message b
P1: message c
P2: message d

Would a beehaw user see just messages b and d? What would it look like they are replying to?

Would they see the comment chain at all as it was started by P1?

There's two different scenarios, a community not hosted on beehaw:

they wouldn't see the chain at all.

On a community hosted on beehaw:

Message a would only exist on world's local copy of the thread, nobody not on world can see it. (This local copy is also not getting updated by anyone not on world.)

Basically, the true thread exists on the instance that hosts the community. Defederation cuts off communication with one server. If it's the server that hosts it, it's a lot more severe.

So for those who know this better, should Lemmy Kbin users look for alternative to these communities (games/gaming for me)

You should be looking at multiple communities on the same topic just as a matter of course. Single mega-communities really aught to be discouraged, since they actually crush meaningful engagement (most posts don't ever get seen, most comments don't ever get seen, etc.)

If you follow multiple communities on the same topic, you can get the same kind of constant content stream -- if that's what you're concerned about -- while also actually having your contributions noticed.

Plus, not having single points of failure is the lesson everyone should be taking away from Twitter and Reddit.

Not necessarily. From what I understand, it's about lemmy/kbin not vetting users. Because they were a a more heavily moderated community (by design) it's harder for them to keep that standard with other federated instances. Instead of trying to combat the population increase platforms have received, they defederated while the "riff raff" gets sorted out. If they are willing to re-federate in the future, I'm sure they'll be back. It's just the influx of users makes it harder for their small team to moderate content.

This is how federation works, though. It's by design. If you are wanting to see that content, you are able to move to a different instance (or even beehaw, if they are still taking applications), or to one that is still federated with them.

Yeah, I don't really see this as a drama.

Beehaw and lemmy.world have different goals. Beehaw said that this isn't a permanent ruling nor a judgement on said communities - merely a practicality to meet their goals. Lemmy's moderation tools and the moderation staffs are just unable to keep up with the rate of new users currently.

The decision will be revisited in the future, when both of these things have time to catch up. It sucks, but neither side is wrong here.

I'm getting a little bit mixed signals, as it seems beehaw mods are little quick to moderate users, which to be fair, you specifically signed up for. Beehaw can moderate how they want. I think it's just partly because so many came at once, people filtered to what was available regardless of if they agreed with the platform rules heavily or not. You just went where you went to get in. It'll get sorted eventually

Kbin? I thought they were only defederating from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works?

AFAIK it is only lemmy.world and SJW, but I mentioned kbin because it was another instance that was receiving a lot of new users along with those other platforms.

I don't believe any kbin instances have been de-federated by beehaw...

Yeah, but if people were intentionally being trolls, it stands to reason that they'll hop on the next available open registration site and begin their shenanigans there, getting us banned too.

From what I've seen, for the most part the KBin magazines have been great, but we've definitely got a few people that I've seen that might intentionally start harassing trans people for instance and if they make lives difficult for the beehaw mods, we might get banned too just by association.

Open signups aren't novel on the fediverse, lots of places have them. The problem is having them without following up and banning problematic users... but yes I expect that if stricter instance-wide moderation doesn't happen this instance will end up being defederated by most of the fediverse (with mastodon at least that seems to be the norm).

I'm hoping moderation has been been lacking because Ernest is just overwhelmed with the amount of load, and that it is fixed soon, if not I'll end up moving on once admins start defederating it (probably to another kbin instance).

I used to meet artists who made electronic music. I would get permission from as many artists as I could to use their tracks and put together digital mixtape compilation albums for free. It was a good time.

Sometimes, i dream about cheese.

Lol Lemmy has risen and fallen pretty quickly it seems.

Idk if I would say that this is a fall... it more highlights lemmy's robustness imo