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 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.
