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.
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
kbin.social is just fine, too. At the time of my reply, I thought this was a kbin thread and so advocated for one of the other kbin-based instances, but it’s actually a Beehaw thread. Just one of the learning pains!
Agreed. It sucks that a lack of good mod tools forced this to happen. Having multiple passwords and accounts isn’t 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.
Oh wow, I never thought about it this way! Makes perfect sense. Thanks for the insight :)
ETA: Although I get that there is also the drawback of frequently “resetting” your account that you have to prove again and again that you are a trusted user. How do you deal with this?
open an account elsewhere and get a client with multi account support
Does such a tool exist already?
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.
I believe Jerboa on android has a feature to let you have multiple accounts signed in, although I haven’t messed with it yet
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.
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.
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 have a smaller community for the sake of my mental health, and im sure a lot of my folks who are queer and neurodivergent would rather not as well (im cishet). trolling calls for attention by bending a discourse to their will. lets just not?
Especially when you can’t create communities on Beehaw and Beehaw is the only instance I know that have no downvote button
At least 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.
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.
Do you know if there is an issue on lemmy github about this feature you talk about (more flexible federation options) ? So we can follow or maybe contribute
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.
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.
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
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.
