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.
The alternative it looks like for now is to subscribe to an instance thats both not blocked by beehaw and doesnt block lemmy.world
it looks like there is no reddit alternative to a reliable subscription feed right now.
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.
I don’t mean so much in activity. Just the subscription to communities part.
Like knowing I could subscribe to like gamedeals and pcgaming and knowing that I can rely on my feed to contain posts from those communities as opposed one of them defeding from each so now having to subscribe to separate instances of pcgaming and gamedeals to see activity from those communities in my subscription feed. So now having two subscription feeds as opposed to one unified one to keep track of.
I wish we could federate our own user accounts on unrelated instances with each other, separate from the instance federation? So beehaw and lemmy.world can be unfederated, but if I have an account on beehaw and another account on lemmy.world, then I can connect those two accounts so that I can see the posts from both accounts in each one? Is something like this possible?
That way individual users wouldn’t be so inconvenienced, but beehaw would still be isolated from lemmy.world’s unrestricted signups/different culture in the same way.
I think you might just not be interested in federated services. The whole point is that it’s a network of independent services, not a single unified platform. For some people that works well and for others it doesn’t. The fediverse solution would be to create a new account on an instance that federates with both instances, but you’re probably going to end up playing whack-a-mole until things settle down and I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to do that.
In the olden days I was part of several Usenet communities that got destroyed by trolls and spam, so I completely understand - and support - this action.
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 was seeing that, too. And it was turning me off. I’ve definitely been spending more time on more discussion-based platforms, instead of on Beehaw. I’m tired of reddit’s constant one-like jokes and drive-by memeing that’s so common, even in more discussion-based subs.
There’s certainly a time and place for having some fun – and I’ve done my fair share of memeing on reddit – but it doesn’t have to be everywhere. It is disappointing since it’s a loss of easily accessible content, but I’m sure we’ll be able to find that elsewhere. Even if it means going to those instances on a separate account.
I think I’m starting to observe that I define lurking and contributing differently than a lot of redditfugees. To me lurking is browsing, reading, and consuming without ever commenting or submitting. That was how we used the term back in 2010, 2011 anyway. And it seems like the call to action to contribute is interpreted by many to just dump all the thoughts, memes, shitposts, and whatever else into the threadiverse regardless of quality.
I want to make it abundantly clear, if that’s what people want, that’s great, I’m glad they can find that (196 on blahaj seems particularly hot for that) but it’s not what I want. I’ve immediately noticed myself far more engaged with beehaw than I’ve been with reddit in a long time and I attribute that to the thoughtful nature of the community that’s been cultivated by the administrators. I can understand that people who were on beehaw and were subscribed to communities on these other instances are frustrated and disappointed. I’m one of those people. But I’d rather create an alt on another instance to interact with those communities than have administrators not build the communities they want.
And to anyone saying that beehaw is engaging in censorship, let me ask you this. Would you like it if anyone and everyone could enter your backyard and say anything they want to you? These online communities are an expression of our human right to associate. All beehaw is going is saying there’s a particular vibe they want in their backyard and that to walk through the gate you have to abide by certain rules. That’s not censorship. That’s community building
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God, I. I don’t know why, but just you bringing up the ability to have a post last for more than a few hours… It hit me for some reason.
I never really realized, but reddit always felt so fast, looking back. A constant, unending stream of novelty. And the only way to be heard was to get in before the rushing tide. It’s nice here. I can reply to the people who talk. I’ll post and people will engage, I can engage. It’s obvious now but I can’t believe I didn’t notice for so long.
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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.
@alyaza I think the “solution” here is worse than the problem.
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. 👋
Count me in the “support” column. Beehaw has always been very open about what it is and isn’t, and all of the people who are bringing up how freedom of speech is more important than anything can find some level of explanation in Gaywallet’s post/essay “Beehaw is a community”. Beehaw admins/mods don’t have the tools to moderate more even-handedly, so the decision to defederate for now and re-assess when more resources are available makes perfect sense to me. I’m also in the camp of “smaller and higher quality is more important than growth at any cost.” This is how you can have a community where dissenting voices are allowed, such as how I’ve seen opinions I personally disagree with allowed to be discussed in more detail than they probably would be elsewhere. I also saw a post by someone that I believe was from one of these instances (it was either deleted or isn’t viewable due to the defederation), and it was pretty clear that they were purely operating in bad faith - essentially saying that the users here are silenced and oppressed by heavy-handed moderation. For context, they also made a post elsewhere that shared information that essentially boiled down to “North Korea actually isn’t bad, it’s all imperialist propaganda!”
In the end, the federated nature of Lemmy means I can just create another account elsewhere if I feel the need to interact with the defederated instances. Jerboa (my main way of using Lemmy) makes it pretty quick and easy to add multiple accounts, so it really wouldn’t be much of a hassle.
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.
users can move between them freely
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
we are not out to build a space that grows at any cost. we want a better space
Fully agreed. I’d personally rather have less overall content, if it means that the sense of community remains strong.
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.
This has quickly become my favorite instance and this is yet another example of exactly why.
I applaud what you’re doing here, and the community you’re working to build. Thank you!
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)
So you miss the cyber suburbia safe space of reddit and find the rest of the net is scary and sad.
Reddit really has ruined a generation of internet users.
Support – “Good online communities die primarily by refusing to defend themselves.” from Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism
Plenty of responses here but adding mine in the spirit of open discussion. I appreciate this step. Was starting to see too many posts that I didn’t want and worried that this was going to do the way of other socials I’ve already left. I’m looking forward to tracking the growth of the fediverse and appreciate the thoughtful approach.
“we have a list of improvements we’d like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and federation if at all possible” so out of curiosity whats on that list
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, it’s not an insult, it’s new to many of us.
The idea isn’t 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.
You’re 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 what’s 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 don’t like how Beehaw is run, it’s probably going to be a better experience for you, as well as the people here who do like how it’s run, if you find an instance that more closely aligns with what you’re looking for.
But coming onto someone else’s instance and aggressively demanding things conform to your desires or trying to inform the owners of what you will or won’t “stand for” is rude, though. There’s a better way to communicate with people, and in the future I hope you choose grace.
