My first account on the fediverse was on Beehaw and I was happy with it, but defederating from two of the largest instances gave me a reason to find a new instance. Personally I understand and respect the decision -that is the point of the fediverse afterall.
They had a lot of good communities that will not be cut off from the fastest growing instances which will make things tough to rebuild I think.
i’m new here but i was on reddit for a long time, and was around during the attempted voat migration.
the main obstacle to a new platform succeeding is that you need a critical mass of content. Of all the people who join, only 10% or so will be actively posting, the rest are just here to consume.
beehaw had a lot of activity, and a few of their subs got to what I consider a critical mass for good discussion. and now they’ve gone rogue.
I understand the mods had a hard time, but… seriously, this is a huge blow to the fediverse. of all the actions anyone could have done, they’ve done the most damage to the success of the fediverse, right at a time when growth and activity here is crucial.
I can’t help but think the mods could have asked for help moderating. it’s a sad sad situation.
i’m personally not going to contribute there anymore, because I want the fediverse as a whole to take off.
I really don’t get why they didn’t bring on more mods from their community. They’ve been around for more than 6 months. There’s no users that have earned the admins’ trust in that time?
Moderation is thankless work that comes with heaping helpings of scorn from the community. Even if you’re doing it purely because you want to see the community succeed, you will be accused of doing it because you’re a petty tyrant who likes to lord it over other people. Plus, of course, moderation itself is work and it’s usually not very fun work. I’ve moderated online discussions before and it really wears you down after a while.
It doesn’t surprise me that it’s hard to find a lot of trusted users who also want to be moderators.
