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.
Thank you.
I know what it’s like to try to build up something good only to have trolls try to take it over. It’s nice to think that kindness and guidance can make everything shiny and happy, but the reality is that sometimes you just have to shut the door to bad actors and lock it behind them.
Some people have a need to try to ruin things for others. There’s no reason to give them a platform. Actions have consequences.
Yeah, I’m perfectly fine with this decision. And if I want to see content from and interact on those instances, I can (and have already) create accounts on those instances. No harm no foul.
Commenting sure. But until some instance agnostic subscription feed comes out it looks like there is no reddit alternative to a reliable subscription feed right now.
Having to juggle multiple accounts to keep track of subscription feeds instead of one unified feed is a pretty big con. Not so much on the commenting end since that I do understand the reasons for.
it looks like there is no reddit alternative to a reliable subscription feed right now.
Lemmy was not built for scale, and the everything from large-community moderation to federation message copying is going through problem identification and optimization.
The Beehaw.org website is regularly malfunctions for me, showing the Lemmy 0.17.x problem of getting the wrong voting data on postings. Hopefully the forthcoming 0.18 removal of websockets will eliminate a lot of that.
Lemmy, as it stands today, really isn’t ready for anything near like the activity of from page /r/all community on Reddit.
To me the point of the fediverse is that these things can happen and if you don’t like them you can just go to another instance.
I understand the reasons behind blocking off those communities. And I’m fine with it since the points made were good.
If this were another platform I’d have no choice and they wouldn’t need to make good arguments.
I’ve been seeing a lot of low-effort content lately, and I suspect it’s coming from users who want their Reddit alternative, and they want it now. So, they see that Beehaw has a large community, and decide it’s a perfect place to start content-barfing.
I think the admins have been clear that they’re not trying to create a replacement for Reddit here, though. Everything under the sun does not have to be re-posted, just content that you actually want to discuss with this community specifically. When I see five posts created by one user in under a minute, I can’t help but think that the intent there is not to spark discussion. And, of course, the volume is problematic for the mods when they don’t have the tools they need to manage it.
I agree. Beehaw has a different goal (which is thoroughly explained in the stickied FAQ post), and it is not to be a Reddit replacement. I’m actually a fan of the environment and goal here - I’ve actually found myself responding to posts from a week or two ago because I actually wanted to contribute, whereas I wouldn’t bother on a Reddit post more than a couple of hours old because it would just get drowned out by a flood of low-effort content.
Yes!! I’ve also found myself actually reading articles that are posted rather than just skimming headlines because people actually seem to want to engage beyond the same few points that were repeatedly made on Reddit
I was seeing that, too. And it was turning me off. I’ve definitely been spending more time on more discussion-based platforms, instead of on Beehaw. I’m tired of reddit’s constant one-like jokes and drive-by memeing that’s so common, even in more discussion-based subs.
There’s certainly a time and place for having some fun – and I’ve done my fair share of memeing on reddit – but it doesn’t have to be everywhere. It is disappointing since it’s a loss of easily accessible content, but I’m sure we’ll be able to find that elsewhere. Even if it means going to those instances on a separate account.
I think I’m starting to observe that I define lurking and contributing differently than a lot of redditfugees. To me lurking is browsing, reading, and consuming without ever commenting or submitting. That was how we used the term back in 2010, 2011 anyway. And it seems like the call to action to contribute is interpreted by many to just dump all the thoughts, memes, shitposts, and whatever else into the threadiverse regardless of quality.
I want to make it abundantly clear, if that’s what people want, that’s great, I’m glad they can find that (196 on blahaj seems particularly hot for that) but it’s not what I want. I’ve immediately noticed myself far more engaged with beehaw than I’ve been with reddit in a long time and I attribute that to the thoughtful nature of the community that’s been cultivated by the administrators. I can understand that people who were on beehaw and were subscribed to communities on these other instances are frustrated and disappointed. I’m one of those people. But I’d rather create an alt on another instance to interact with those communities than have administrators not build the communities they want.
And to anyone saying that beehaw is engaging in censorship, let me ask you this. Would you like it if anyone and everyone could enter your backyard and say anything they want to you? These online communities are an expression of our human right to associate. All beehaw is going is saying there’s a particular vibe they want in their backyard and that to walk through the gate you have to abide by certain rules. That’s not censorship. That’s community building
A few years back, there was a short-lived site that attempted to be a better site like Reddit. Unfortunately, they started up around the time that The_Dipsht and alt-reich subreddits were starting to get quarantined. Amusingly, many of them tried to move to Voat, who by then had become so toxic that they were called poseurs and told to go away.
So they showed up at the door of the new site - who handled them very gracefully. There were suddenly a pile of alt-reich white supremacy communities on the site. The admins basically told them and their creators, “Gee, thanks for stopping by. We’re so glad you thought of us. Here’s your hat. Sorry you can’t stay longer. Bye now, have a nice day!” and deleted all the communities, the people who created them, and those who had subscribed. And that was that.
Unfortunately, people weren’t yet fed up enough with Reddit and the new site didn’t get enough people to stick around. It was a lovely little place, not unlike what Beehaw is trying to do.
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
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.
Agreed. It sucks that a lack of good mod tools forced this to happen. Having multiple passwords and accounts isn’t a great experience.
This is going to be a learning process I think for a lot of people. Not just on federation, but on community building as well. You all seem to be trying to build something here, and I am willing to be patient and participate while it grows. If we get down the road and it just isn’t working, I have faith that there will be open discussion on how to make this community grow while maintaining its ethos and we’ll be here to figure out what is best for each of us individually.
Good on you for taking decisive action at these early stages while we figure out what we want, where we want to go, and how we want to get there on this relatively new platform.
we are not out to build a space that grows at any cost. we want a better space
Fully agreed. I’d personally rather have less overall content, if it means that the sense of community remains strong.
Yeah I’m in agreement with this. I’ve found the community here pretty engaged, and the content keeps coming. I think the hard part is recognizing that bigger isn’t always better, especially when you lack the tools to customize it. Between this and artifact, I’m pretty content with my discussion/news outlets.
As a minor aside I’m working on another philosophy post about moderating specifically - what I’ve observed over the years, what I think works well in our vision, what extra work is needed in safe spaces and to prevent evaporative cooling, what I’m almost certain we need to do, and where my blind spots are.
Wallet take all these posts and turn them into a zine or pdf or somethin I’d read it
If someone wants to interview me for a podcast I’m more than happy to blabber for some amount of time. My brain is full of plenty of useless ideas 😄
Not a podcast, but I’m an author and editor with a small audience that may well be interested in a text interview, would you be interested in that?
@mmasnick any interest in getting one of the beehaw.org admins on the podcast or something?
From @Gaywallet
Thanks for the Evaporative Cooling link, that was a great read!
The trick is that human behavior, and especially human language, are very… squishy.
Very apt; the whole post managed to put into words things that I was vaguely aware of, but would never be able to connect so succinctly.
You guys are doing a fantastic job, and it’s really great to see the level of thought you put into your decisions, as well as comments like this one where we can see some of the thoughts and philosophy behind them.
I hope the Exodus doesn’t burn you out; I’m rooting for this community to survive and prosper. Thank you for all the hard work.
@Gaywallet Have you moderated communities before Beehaw? You seem like you have a lot of (bad) experiences with it but are still passionate about it, any specific place it comes from? I’m just being curious, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to
Yes I’ve moderated plenty of reddit subs, including defaults. I moderate twitch streams for a few big name artists. I moderate discords and facebook groups of various sizes. In real life I’ve moderated plenty of talks, served on leadership or mediated in various forms of activism, professional groups, and social ones. I wouldn’t say my experiences are bad, they’ve all been learning experiences. Each one has taught me something different about what is and is not effective.
@Gaywallet @Kaldo why would you want to do that lol, I can’t even get paid to be an internet janitor
