- cross-posted to:
- main@dataterm.digital
- cross-posted to:
- main@dataterm.digital
Interesting bit of news for the threadiverse. All three of these are fairly large lemmy instances
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Some of yāall getting angry need to look at yourself in the mirror. The whole point of federation was to allow communities to do things like this if they want.
A lot of new people are going to see this mudslinging and rightfully turn around. Nobody is coming to Lemmy to see drama between instances.
I thought the whole point of federation was that everything from every federated instance was connected and I only need one account to see every part of it. The fact that federation has been the only discussion since the blackout is not good for the alternatives to reddit. My whole life is tech and if itās this distracting to me I canāt imagine any remotely average user being interested. The fact that this was the perfect time to be part of an alternative but the whole experience has mostly just proven reddits āgive it a weekā response true.
I thought the whole point of federation was that everything from every federated instance was connected and I only need one account to see every part of it.
That was never going to happen, not even in the best possible case.
Far left and far right are always going to split off. Do you want to be having discussions about race with neo nazis? I donāt. Let them go to their own dark corner of the internet.
I thought the whole point of federation was that everything from every federated instance was connected and I only need one account to see every part of it.
No. If an instance hosts toxic communities then your instance can choose to defederate from it. You donāt have to wait for the centralized authority to ban them. Itās about being able to choose your admins and form a web of āgoodā communities.
kbin is only live a month or soā¦ of course there will be problems and missing moderation tools - it wont be much better for lemmy.
There is no perfect time - some people will stay some will go back to reddit witout any change. thats a user thing not the fault of beehaw or the federation of servers.
I do think itās fair to criticize the decision to try to be one of the largest instances while only having four moderators. They should have accepted a place as a midsize instance with midsize communities in order to maintain their moderation goals. Or they could have worked to get more moderators. Blaming the defederated instances and mod tools seem disingenuous at best. That said mod tools undoubtedly need improvement.
To be fair, they said the reason they were defederating from those two instances in particular is because most of their moderation involved people from them. They didnāt expand beehaw beyond what they could handle, the rest of lemmy expanded beyond what they could handle. If this really is just a temporary measure, which is also what they said, then I think itās pretty reasonable.
Thatās because they defederated from the two largest competing instances. Iām talking about the communities users not the instances. The issue is that beehaw has the largest and therefore defacto default communities. The timing is bad and will likely affect wider adoption. The biggest problem is that it is entirely foreseeable and solved by either accepting a smaller community (closing signups) or improving moderation capabilities (getting more moderators or investing in an alternative moderation system) before it meant splitting the threadiverse in half.
Iām not denying that it sucks, but if youād told anybody this was going to happen a month ago theyād have just laughed at you. Of course they were unprepared. Everbody has more than they can deal with. Adding more mods isnāt as simple as picking some names out of a hat, and this isnāt a thing anyone was preparing for. There currently are no alternative moderation systems, everything is too new and until recently was all way to small for that to be important, and they just have more work then they can deal with trying to suddenly moderate all of the threadiverse.
This was a bad option that sucked, but every option was a bad option that sucked. Iām more concerned with how they deal with things as they normalize over the coming weeks and months than I am with how theyāre trying to put out the fires in the short term.
But they chose a nonstandard moderation strategy that limited their ability to scale moderation with users. The default system is that communities are moderated independently of admins (not saying admins donāt form communities or that thereās no overlap between admins and mods) whereas on beehaw only the admins can create communities and therefore are the primary moderators.
Now Iām not saying that thereās anything inherently wrong with the system theyāve chosen but the fact that it is nonstandard and in fact built into the core precept of beehaw means that this was easily foreseen.
Easily forseen if you knew that lemmy was suddenly going to have a hundred times as many users in the space of a couple weeks. That was the thing no one was prepared for though.
A couple of weeks is more than enough time to realize where things were headed and act. lemmy.ml managed to do it.
The admins have always been clear that theyāre not trying to replace Reddit, and Iām quite sure they were not trying to be one of the largest instances.
If they werenāt trying to get large then how did that happen? Based on admin comments, beehaw was one of the more active instances when the first wave of migration happened; and a decent amount of the pre-first wave posts about lemmy I saw on Reddit were about how Beehaw was a good instance to join as it was defederated from lemmygrad.
Iām not saying this has anything to do with replacing reddit but it is bad for the larger threadiverse community. Notably there were several other instances that closed registration for the purposes of not growing quicker than they could handle long term (see lemmy.ml). Beehaw has most of the largest (and therefore defacto default) communities. Active steps to avoid that would have allowed them to maintain their moderation goals while growing in an organic and sustainable way that benefits the larger threadiverse community.
I was strictly replying to the part of your comment where you said they made a decision to try to be one of the largest instances ā imo they did not make a explicit decision to try to be that, but rather the growth was a side effect of the circumstances around reddit users checking out the fediverse.
Is closing registrations is better than having an application with questions that weed out low-effort users? IMO itās probably a wash. beehaw has only banned one user from the local instance that I know of, so the application process seems to be working overall. The issue is that other instances are growing too quickly and needing to moderate those users, not their own.
I do agree this isnāt great for the threadiverse and I wish it hadnāt come to this, both on a personal and community level. I was subbed to the knitting community on lemmy.world, it was the most active of those communities that I saw, and now Iām locked out. Idk if I want to move to an alt on a different instance, or self-host my own so that Iām fully in control of what I can see, or what. :S
No the issue is that four moderators for the whole instance was always unsustainable and allowing the communities to become the defacto defaults without growing the mod teams was a bad idea. This was easily foreseen and corrected. Blaming other instances is not at all fair.
you do not understand the problem. The growth was on every server of the fedivers - so moderationg users from different servers was to much work. how should they stop people from other servers? two options - block any individuell(which is to much work with so many open registration servers - they can just spamm new servers) or nuke the server where most of the trolls come from.
I DO understand the problem. They only have an issue with an influx of users because they are the largest (defacto default) communities. A position that was incompatible with their moderation system from the get go. Had they had more sustainably sized communities none of this would have been an issue.
There are 4 admins and 30-something mods.
I mean some people absolutely do love and feed on drama, but is that who we want to attract? Theyāre not the nicest bunch to have around in my experience.
exactly this; the whole point was so instances could pick and choose who they wanted to interact with
Iād always heard that federation was good because if you get an instance infested with fascists, you (and everyone else who doesnāt want anything to do with them) can just cut that instance loose and let it drift away
I guess others thought different?
This simply solidifies my opinion that Iāve had all along that Beehaw is a trash instance full of sensitive censor-happy ninnies and I hope they all resolve the issues they are having to eventually be finally free from trolls and assholes in their humble & beautiful walled-garden paradise echo chamber. All the best for them.
Isnāt the whole point of the fediverse that you get to create and craft your experience for your community? Thereās a really good reason defederating is a feature. I donāt get it, Beehaw decides to use the features of federation so now we: firstly become tribalistic (them vs us), and secondly decide to get angry? Like it or not, this is what you signed up for when you wanted federation.
I donāt see the point of getting angry like this, and really donāt see how this negativity being conducive to a thriving community. Some new people are going to explore fediverse, see tribalistic mudslinging among instances, and say ānot for me.ā
Iād say respect their decision and move on, if itās not for you itās not for you.
Absolutely. Itās disappointing that this person read a post made by the Beehaw admins that was written with nuance and grace, and then decided to respond with vitriol. Thatās exactly the kind of attitude that is so prolific on Reddit, and I am happy to leave it behind. Thank you for your reasoned reply.
OP, I encourage you in the future to choose grace.
This kind of post right here is the gold standard for why I chose Kbin over other instances. Well reasoned, free of vitriol, and looking to build a new culture outside of the one a lot of us left behind on Reddit.
Vitriol is a strong word to describe what I said about Beehaw. I do not hold a bitter spite to what Beehaw did, in fact I understand and accept their decision as prudent and appropriate for their community.
I simply hate how they act benevolent where the reality is the opposite; that their admins are legitimately overlords akin to a full-time power-abusing reddit moderator.
Regarding your comment that I need to act with more grace, my apologies. You are correct, I should be less aggressive in my opinions and will self-censor henceforth to protect and maintain the humility of the discussions that occur here.
I simply hate how they act benevolent where the reality is the opposite; that their admins are legitimately overlords akin to a full-time power-abusing reddit moderator.
What do you mean by this? Do you have examples? Maybe youāre correct and I just havenāt seen it, but every example Iāve seen of them responding to something has been great.
Regarding your comment that I need to act with more grace, my apologies. You are correct, I should be less aggressive in my opinions and will self-censor henceforth to protect and maintain the humility of the discussions that occur here.
Donāt sweat it, brother. <3
yeah, this is the weird thing; Beehawās reasonings are incredibly reasonable, and theyāre not saying that the other parts of Lemmy arenāt good enough for them, which is what I think a lot of people are getting mad at
that and thinking that theyāre entitled to access to Beehaw
Yeah, theyāre saying ālook, we only have four mods, have a highly targeted type of community we are trying to build, and have had to disproportionately moderate users from these instancesā which seems reasonable on itās face.
Thatās kind of the beauty of Lemmy/Kbin right? You can spin up an instance with whatever rules you want. I think people are reacting to the fact that during the Reddit exodus Beehaw kind of looked like a ādefaultā general instance, including me.
But thatās a misreading on our part, not them going back on that.
Its both a value add and a negative. For those more focused on their own community (Like beehaw) itās an obvious positive. But for many users, losing access to certain communities on your own instance of choice is going to be a negative. I personally donāt blame Beehaw for favoring the former. I think improved moderation tools and more granular federation would at least make the move less of a blow to users.
100% - the beauty of the fedivers is that everybody can chose to federatre OR NOT!
If people wanne follow beehaw they can switch server or even go to some other fedivers project and follow from there.
Isnāt the whole point of the fediverse that you get to create and craft your experience for your community? Thereās a really good reason defederating is a feature. I donāt get it, Beehaw decides to use the features of federation so now we: firstly become tribalistic (them vs us), and secondly decide to get angry? Like it or not, this is what you signed up for when you wanted federation.
Yes, exactly
like weāre not owed Beehawās cooperation; itās their instance and if the users want to do this then thatās their perogative
Regardless, this is being blown out of proportion; Beehaw outright said that this was temporary
Yeah I donāt feel quite as harshly but as soon as I saw they didnāt allow downvotes I knew their philosophy wasnāt for me. Too bad about losing their gaming group though.
After reading that post, Iām actually pretty glad theyāre leaving.
Iāll be honest, itās weird to not allow downvotes but be on a federated site. Idk if Iām weird or if thatās just me tho. Like if you go to beehaw from another Lemmy instance you can downvote them.
most of the fedivers has no downvote - please be respectfulll of the diferences.
I think you may downvote it but it wonāt be visible on their side.
I have a beehaw account. Iāve only experienced one user whoās a bit too intense about their thoughts. Everyone else has just been chill. The admin arenāt defederating from lemmy.ml, the other big instance, and have no plans to do so. They really were just overwhelmed by the two feds they blocked because of trollish users. Itās not as intense as you make it sound.
Thatās been my view too. Thereās definitely a need for moderation, but Iāve been on the internet for quite some time and the vibe from Beehaw is very much concerning. Any time Iāve seen a community run like that, it always always ends up feeling like an echochamber run by a dictator. I want an internet thatās mostly wholesome, not a āhappy fun camp where thereās all smiles and you had better not frown!ā
You are now banned from beehaw.org
I think itās great. I want an account there for the occassions when I want to visit a safe space or a SFW website. It doesnt have to be your identity. You can go to different instances in different contexts, for different modes of interaction. And a third unrelated instance can remain federated with them both, if thatās amenable to all parties.
deleted by creator
The sad reality is that during the reddit blackout, people were pushing lemmy (specifically Beehaw) as the reddit replacement because yay decentralized, federated, fun!
For a lot of those reddit refugees the effort they put into making content and trying to make Beehaw their home is gone now.
Theyāre not going to want to start all over at a new instance and rebuild yet again.
Theyāre just going to go back to reddit
I feel like the concept of ādecentralisationā is good for the consuming users and people who want to discuss an interesting topic/subject, but not really for OC/content craetorsā¦ They just want their work to be as exposed to as many people as possible (exposure -> more clients -> bigger brand/value -> profit???), and defederalisating goes against that principle.
Exactly. Iāve been trying to rebuild my account on lemmy.world but itās disenheartening and honestly makes me want to not bother. The answer isnt defederating, the answer is find some mods.
I think the issue is that everyoneās so focused on seeing Lemmy as a ānotRedditā that they outright get pissed when it doesnāt work the way they think it should (like Reddit except the parts they think are bad)
Lemmy (and kbin, and other similar platforms) and Reddit have the same niche, but theyāre not the same thing
I think this is a fair choice for Beehaw to make, but I am frustrated that now I have less content to read. I wish we had better community discovery tools.
All this talk of defederation and blocklists makes me generally uneasy. I understand how itās easy to fall into. Nobody wants political extremists and criminals and bad actors and stuff on their instance, so it makes sense you might want to ban trollfactory dot xyz, nazihq dot us, and/or uncompromisingmarxist dot boats, or whatever.
But I think the stupidest shit I saw on reddit were the subreddits that would ban you for even posting on an ideologically competing subreddit, with no consideration for the message youād written. This is worse than that because itās the opposite, and includes even reading the content.
Imagine if when you went to post on /r/RestaurantOwners, and its AutoMod had the power to then immediately ban you from even looking at /r/antiwork and /r/WorkReform. Imagine posting to /r/conservative to correct someoneās error only to get permanently banned from viewing any āleftistā subs ever again. This is the vibe I get from this and as much as I want to avoid creating nodules of extremism and hatred, I want less to have people grabbing my head, taping my mouth, and averting my eyes from things they donāt like when they donāt even know what my thinking is.
I feel like widespread trigger happy banlists are the death of small instances, too. Maybe one small instance doesnāt catch some newly registered asshole for a day or two but itās too late. The 16-hour a day lifestyle moderator on a massive instance who has gangstalking delusions over nebulous ātrollsā has already blacklisted all 150 of your users permanently and listed your domain for defederation as officially owned by the Nazi party in a massive register shared by the top 100 largest instances. The number of times Iāve heard this story with small Mastodon instances is more than I care for.
Youāre not banned from looking at anything. Just go to their instance, abide by their signup rules and donāt do the shit they defederated to avoid.
Yeah, I personally would understand the decision more if they at least tried having mods. They donāt. Their mods are just the admins. The admins are also the only ones able to make communities (magazines for kbin viewers) on beehaw.
The admins at Beehaw have been explicit that this choice is not about locking their users in but about keeping bad actors out. But all of this is new, so the tools to accomplish that are crude for now.
I guess. That is the whole point right? If you like how a instance is run, you join them. And if any beehaw users donāt like this direction itās taking, they can always make another account on Lemmy.
Fediverse allows for great potential of redundant, diverse, and flexible meta content consumption, but we the users are bearing some of that growing pain right now as this all grows and things get shuffled on the fly.
Ultimately this is because beehaw allowed themselves to become one of the largest instances on the threadiverse with a minimal mod team. Any blame on the other instances/mod tools is deflection. This is poor management at itās core and is bad for the larger community. That said I would love to see more in the way of improved mod tools.
this is interesting!
Certainly so. From a sort ofā¦ sociological point Iām wondering what the impacts are of major instances growing independent of each other. I feel like I can already feel it with kbin and lemmy both growing separately during the blackout. Iām wondering if the trend for major instances is going to be where each one has their own unique culture or if they will eventually homogenize.
Only real concern here, although I didnāt participate during the mastodon surge last year, I heard that defederation became a bit of an issue with how common there. Granted, I feel like the impact is probably less here with the fact that you are interacting with topics rather than people.
Defederation is inevitable, it will happen on kbin once rules are established, however less harsh measures can also be applied https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#limit-server
Lemmy specifically hasnāt implemented less harsh measures yet. This is a stop-gap action to cut off a trolling problem at its source. The beehaw admins say they will reevaluate when less drastic tools are available, e.g. allow beehaw users to interact with lemmy.world but not the other way around.
Iām not sure I 100% agree, personally, but beehawās ethos is ābe(e) niceā and if trolls are trolling, it can make it very hard for some people to open up and contribute. So I see where itās coming from.
i think it really depends on the admin. I saw many threads on mastodon of hundreds of instances defederated with and listed reasons. some made sense, others did not.
Iām personally hoping for a unique culture, especially since we currently have quite a good one. Going solo is just going solo ā itās sad and kinda dumb, since it defeats the entire point of the fediverse, but if theyāre ok hanging out on a closed forum itās not like those havenāt existed for decades.
I hadnāt thought something like Mastodon would be able to defederate. Thinking about it, that would be far more disastrous for a platform aimed at following individuals to be able to do. The stress induced from having to choose an instance knowing they block other instances and being unable to even tell if thatās a bad thing or not until you investigate each and every one anyway. Having to look up what your favorite people are on, if youāre on Mastodon, so you can get news without leaving any of them out. What a mess.
they defederated from Lemmy.world and the other one, thatās it
theyāre not closing themselves off; they made it very clear what they were doing and why; people keep just catastrophizing about it over and over for some reason
like they made it clear what they were doing and that it wouldnāt necessarily be permanent
Theyāre not going solo though. They are still connected to hundreds of other instances. Including Lemmy.ml, which is still the biggest instance.
Additionally, the Beehaw admins have said theyāre open to refederating with lemmy.world et al if/when Lemmy gets better moderation tools.
They canāt scale. They will die.
Or theyāll just be a smallish instance building the kind of community they want to build. Thereās nothing wrong with knowing what you want to be and not trying to be more.
Ostensibly they donāt wish to scale at the expense of the quality of their community.
They canāt scale. They will survive, though. Other generic Lemmy servers are overshadowing Beehaw as a generic Lemmy server. And it is fine for both them and Beehaw, IMO.
my friend ive been on beehaw since it launched. we dont care for scaling.
What if they donāt want to scale?
I created my first account there but left for lemmy.world once I realised users couldnāt create communities and all the communities were controlled by the same small group of admins.
I had enough of such cabals on Reddit.
No mods, No masters
They did this?
Ok, thatās the definition of a powertrip. And exactly what we want to avoid.
We sse it on some communities here btw, some mods owning 60 empty subs. I hope there is a reseting of subs ownership after a month of zero content and activity.
Sounds like they really need more mods over there
Honestly, this is disappointing, but not particularly surprising. Itās a problem thatās at least as old as Usenet, in terms of different communities not getting along. Itās also not uncommon that people setting up instances are new, inexperienced with moderation, and sometimes even just let people register without any kind of verification because why not?
I think an important point is for admins / mods from various instances to try to get on the same page, in terms of policies. Building that common ground early, and establishing best practices, really helps mitigate a lot of the BS that can happen.
I donāt get the issue here.
This is common in de-centralized social media.
Federation allows the admins of a server to decide what kind of servers they want to federate with, but also to defederate from others.
Itās only two servers that were creating problems with all the trolling and intolerant comments that came from there. Beehaw didnāt isolate itself/blocked everyone else in the fediverse.
I think one of the problems is communities all being created on the same few big instances that allow anyone to create one.
