Alt text:
A three panel meme of someone riding a bike.
- First panel: Someone riding on a bike. “Reddit is imploding, quick let’s get on Lemmy”
- Second panel: The bike starts to tip over on its own. “Oh shit there’s too many of us, we’re being defederated?”
- Third panel: They’ve fallen on the ground by the bike, holding their knee in pain. “Fucking Beehaw”
The Beehaw admins have just been doing exactly what they said they would in their signup page and community guidelines, yet a large number of people seem to have gotten surprised that they kept their word.
We’ve had users from other instances complain about it, not even recognizing that they are doing so on our thread, to our users, on our instance. Every single one of these users is not following our rules - they’re extremely emotionally charged and telling us that we’re terrible people (bad faith, not nice).
I understand that the fediverse can be difficult to understand and that the user interface is not the most user friendly, but also why are they so upset about what’s happening somewhere else that they have no control over? The strength of the emotions they are feeling over such an abstract idea (an instance they are not on defederating from another instance that they are also not on) that doesn’t even effect them, is just bizarre to me.
I can’t speak for everyone on BeeHaw but the reason they do stuff like this is a feature rather than a bug for me, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but the good thing about the fediverse is that the only parade we can really piss on is our own and there’s a diversity of instances to choose from which is a good thing. One ‘master instance’ would defeat the point of federation pretty catastrophically.
I think past 10 years social media has been “grooming” the average internet user into becoming enraged at the slightest deviation from status quo and that’s what we’re seeing here. Rage means clicks means revenue for companies. People now become oddly obsessed with the silliest of things - well MY instance is superior, well MY video game is superior, well MY phone is superior. You get the idea. We all need to take a deep breath and chill the fuck out.
Yeah this is 100% why I signed up for beehaw. This is the sort of administration I was hoping for, not some betrayal.
Yes. This.
Maybe it’s because I have experience in the fediverse but I specifically searched for an instance like beehaw, joined knowing what they were about and what kind of behaviour they allowed and which they didn’t allow, and expected them to follow through and respect their own rules and guideline.
I’m not disappointed nor I’m surprised. This is what I signed for and how I expected the admins to conduce themselves and the instance.
I choose the fediverse over centralised social media owned by corporations and billionaires because instances with administrations like Beehaw’s, that do not accept nor promote shitty behaviour) exist here. Because here it’s easier to avoid people who only want to troll or cause controversy than it is in sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc that facilitate that kind of negative interaction.
I’m not on beehaw, but I’m also not on an instance defederated from beehaw
I read the list of instances blocked by beehaw, and I’ve gotta say you’re not missing anything
it feels like cutting yourself off from the center of the universe.
imagine coming into a lemmy for the first time and finding oh, I have to maintain like 17 accounts to actually see the whole threadiverse
Which is temporary, and due to the overload caused by Reddit’s drama. Nobody is mad at anyone else, the admins of all three instances are working together to get stuff running again.
Crack open a beer, lean back in your favorite comfy chair, and be patient y’all. And if the FOMO is tearing your soul to fragments, mosey over to Reddit for a while. It’s still there.
One instance out of 750+ got overloaded and had to block some of the flood for a bit. Welcome to the Fediverse!
I use Lemmy.world regularly and I have never seen any toxic content. Also, most of the instances have very loose requirements to join so why did it only decide to defederate 2 instances?
I did, when I tried going over there. The discussions definitely felt… redditier, in a bad way, to me. More immediately jumping to rage and personal insults.
But mainly the problem as I understand it is that lemmy.world has open sign-ups, whereas beehaw.org has strict, admin-approval sign-up. Beehaw.org was getting flooded with users from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works who got in through their open sign-up and were then coming into beehaw, being assholes, and creating too much moderation work for the tiny volunteer mod team - they couldn’t moderate such a large and unregulated influx well enough to preserve the safe space or community feel of beehaw communities. Especially when banned individuals could just make new accounts and come right back again.
There was another post though where they said they’ve talked to the sh.itjust.works admin and are likely to work something out with them in the future to allow for re-federating, though not yet. But that the lemmy.world admin (at the time of the post) had not responded, iirc.
If people properly understood the Fediverse and the fact that there are a lot of instances (or communities if you prefer) that cater to certain subject matter and discussion types, this whole attack upon Beehaw would be moot.
Why can’t some people grasp the fact that there are people who want civil and friendly discussions in a welcoming community? I’ll tell you who, those Redditors that made Reddit toxic in the first place!
My initial Lemmy account is on another instance, and some reactions I have seen to Beehaw defederating it have me… Displeased. Maybe it’s because I am an internet grandma who used to use three dozens phpbb forums at the same time, but protecting one’s community is entirely fucking okay and the “snowflakes” talk is exhausting.
100% agree and I just can’t understand why so many are going nuts over it the way they are. They’re so reactionary and ridiculous it makes me wonder if they read the actual reasons why (or even understood them.)
Aaaand that’s why they’re out. boot emoji
The reddit influx brings good but also redditors’ usual bullshit along with it.
I love that beehaw is looking out for us and maintaining a space where it feels like people with differing opinions can actually talk about things with nuance and without feeling like they’ll set off a landmine at any minute.
I think past 10 years social media has been “grooming” the average internet user into becoming enraged at the slightest deviation from status quo and that’s what we’re seeing here. Rage means clicks means revenue for companies. Open internet doesn’t need revenue and doesn’t encourage rage.
To me it feels like the tantrum you see when someone who behaves badly is called out for it. They all almost immediately try to flip it around like they’re the victims. Pretty much just thinking of it as a toddler throwing a tantrum and it’ll make a lot more sense.
I think there’s something to that idea. To my mind, what’s driving that is a kind of internet culture shock. A lot of spaces on the internet do not encourage thoughtful posts and responses, and the culture of communication tends towards negative emotional affect and hostility. A lot of people seem to be entirely unaware of how hostile, reactive and negative they’re being, based on my admittedly anecdotal observations of new users joining spaces where the communication culture is radically different. They think it’s normal, because the spaces they frequent are also hostile, reactive and negative, and when their negativity is pointed out to them, it sparks defensiveness because they’ve not been aware of it until now, or consider it ‘normal’. The de-federation seems to have been interpreted by some as a rejection of their behaviour and has sparked that defensiveness as a result.
I’m sure it’s not news to you, but anytime you see someone trying to squash discussion or the like with terms like “snowflake”, they’re just projecting and letting you know that they’re fragile.
I personally don’t want reddit #2.
Beehaw is all the rave and currently single handedly destroying [insert newest thing here] everywhere all at once, apparently.
It’s weird to me people are upset they can’t come crap it up with their vitriol when there are endless other places to do that. I realize it’s definitely not everyone doing that, but still…
“Lemme in so I can be needlessly hostile while enjoying your nice community but also ignoring everything it stands for / is about.”
No, go away. 🤨
Honestly it’s my… 2nd or 3rd? Day on Beehaw and I’d rather have a community where you need to pass a vibe check instead of a free for all like Reddit and Twitter.
Yup. There are a whole host of awful groups I do not want to interact with even tangentially through a second or tertiary community. I much prefer this setup.
