Interesting bit of news for the threadiverse. All three of these are fairly large lemmy instances
this is interesting!
Certainly so. From a sort of… sociological point I’m wondering what the impacts are of major instances growing independent of each other. I feel like I can already feel it with kbin and lemmy both growing separately during the blackout. I’m wondering if the trend for major instances is going to be where each one has their own unique culture or if they will eventually homogenize.
Only real concern here, although I didn’t participate during the mastodon surge last year, I heard that defederation became a bit of an issue with how common there. Granted, I feel like the impact is probably less here with the fact that you are interacting with topics rather than people.
I’m personally hoping for a unique culture, especially since we currently have quite a good one. Going solo is just going solo – it’s sad and kinda dumb, since it defeats the entire point of the fediverse, but if they’re ok hanging out on a closed forum it’s not like those haven’t existed for decades.
I hadn’t thought something like Mastodon would be able to defederate. Thinking about it, that would be far more disastrous for a platform aimed at following individuals to be able to do. The stress induced from having to choose an instance knowing they block other instances and being unable to even tell if that’s a bad thing or not until you investigate each and every one anyway. Having to look up what your favorite people are on, if you’re on Mastodon, so you can get news without leaving any of them out. What a mess.
They’re not going solo though. They are still connected to hundreds of other instances. Including Lemmy.ml, which is still the biggest instance.
they defederated from Lemmy.world and the other one, that’s it
they’re not closing themselves off; they made it very clear what they were doing and why; people keep just catastrophizing about it over and over for some reason
like they made it clear what they were doing and that it wouldn’t necessarily be permanent
Defederation is inevitable, it will happen on kbin once rules are established, however less harsh measures can also be applied https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#limit-server
Lemmy specifically hasn’t implemented less harsh measures yet. This is a stop-gap action to cut off a trolling problem at its source. The beehaw admins say they will reevaluate when less drastic tools are available, e.g. allow beehaw users to interact with lemmy.world but not the other way around.
I’m not sure I 100% agree, personally, but beehaw’s ethos is “be(e) nice” and if trolls are trolling, it can make it very hard for some people to open up and contribute. So I see where it’s coming from.
I kinda expected that after seeing them purge some threads made by lemmy users. I have to imagine we kbin users are gonna get cut next lmao.
Good riddance. I like the no-downvote style but overzealous mods just create their own pillow fort of the same 5 users regurgitating the same shit over and over.
Perhaps harsh but beehaw strikes me as the tumblr/progressive/sjw types that really wanna build their safe space. Which makes me wonder why they’re federating at all lol.
I’m very glad that kbin seems to have a “let’s get all the content and speak freely” sorta vibe going on right now. hopefully things stay that way.
I got the same sense. Authoritarianism runs on both sides of the political spectrum.
While their FAQ touted an emphasis on empathy, the heavy flowery language while also making a point to refuse to have written rules at all somehow gave me a feeling of double-speak. The idea is nice, but now you’re open to being banned because they felt like it, and you can’t even explain how you weren’t breaking the rules if no rules exist. Refusing to allow anyone but themselves to create communities backs up the authoritarian streak. Not interested. I assume if they don’t, I’ll eventually be banned there anyway. I really like debate and I really dislike dictatorships.
At least if one of the largest instances out there goes full Korea, it will leave other instances a chance to be noticed in their wake. It sounds salty, but I’m still getting used to what federation means for a platform and when we were still initially federating my entire feed was utterly nothing but beehaw. I am salty. I want as much variety as I can get.
That’s fair, buuuuut why are the admins moderating comments? Why shouldn’t the moderators mod their communities and report problematic users to admins so those users can be blocked.
The admins are probably modding the communities because they probably created them but the proper solution should be to find mods, not just defederate
It’s not a permanent defederation, and it’s only with those two instances. There are still hundreds of other instances that they are still federated with.
Like this one I’m on right now.
(Tbh, I’m surprised how much kbin and lemmy are compatible with one another despite using different codebases)
No one on beehaw can create communities except the admins, with the promise that they will personally split the ones they have into more distinct topics as it becomes necessary. As such, that also makes them automatically the mods. It’s one of the reasons I decided against it, as well as… * gestures to headline. *
I was quite curious what removing the downvote button would do to foster actual discussion, since its use is frowned upon in my one remaining reddit kebble sub, and everyone who remains each week is shockingly cordial with one another. Pity to see beehaw crashing and burning so fast like this.
Is it crashing and burning if it aligns with their explicitly stated goals? Seems like they’re sticking to their guns and having a well moderated community by doing this. Some people will want that, some won’t. But if we want this federation thing to work, we can’t start whining about instances making choices about what their users interact with. If anything I’m glad this is happening early so that people can see how the federation stuff will play out and get used to the idea.
Having thought it over, I think the only two ways this can go are that beehaw defederates with almost everyone who isn’t a carbon copy of themselves in order to lighten the load, or they put more admins/mods in control (is this possible? I assume it is). Nothing else is going to stem interaction between y’all’s instance and every person and post on the fediverse that breaks the rules. What they wanted to do is admirable, but really doesn’t scale well with the amount of interaction being seen now.
Temporary measures while they expand their abilities would be the much more expected way for this to go. If instead their solution is to just defederate everything all the time forever because people not signed up for beehaw didn’t sign up for beehaw’s rules, they might as well have built a wordpress forum for way less money than they’re spending. There’s going to be too much.
This simply solidifies my opinion that I’ve had all along that Beehaw is a trash instance full of sensitive censor-happy ninnies and I hope they all resolve the issues they are having to eventually be finally free from trolls and assholes in their humble & beautiful walled-garden paradise echo chamber. All the best for them.
Yeah I don’t feel quite as harshly but as soon as I saw they didn’t allow downvotes I knew their philosophy wasn’t for me. Too bad about losing their gaming group though.
I’ll be honest, it’s weird to not allow downvotes but be on a federated site. Idk if I’m weird or if that’s just me tho. Like if you go to beehaw from another Lemmy instance you can downvote them.
Isn’t the whole point of the fediverse that you get to create and craft your experience for your community? There’s a really good reason defederating is a feature. I don’t get it, Beehaw decides to use the features of federation so now we: firstly become tribalistic (them vs us), and secondly decide to get angry? Like it or not, this is what you signed up for when you wanted federation.
I don’t see the point of getting angry like this, and really don’t see how this negativity being conducive to a thriving community. Some new people are going to explore fediverse, see tribalistic mudslinging among instances, and say “not for me.”
I’d say respect their decision and move on, if it’s not for you it’s not for you.
Its both a value add and a negative. For those more focused on their own community (Like beehaw) it’s an obvious positive. But for many users, losing access to certain communities on your own instance of choice is going to be a negative. I personally don’t blame Beehaw for favoring the former. I think improved moderation tools and more granular federation would at least make the move less of a blow to users.
Yeah, they’re saying “look, we only have four mods, have a highly targeted type of community we are trying to build, and have had to disproportionately moderate users from these instances” which seems reasonable on it’s face.
That’s kind of the beauty of Lemmy/Kbin right? You can spin up an instance with whatever rules you want. I think people are reacting to the fact that during the Reddit exodus Beehaw kind of looked like a “default” general instance, including me.
But that’s a misreading on our part, not them going back on that.
Absolutely. It’s disappointing that this person read a post made by the Beehaw admins that was written with nuance and grace, and then decided to respond with vitriol. That’s exactly the kind of attitude that is so prolific on Reddit, and I am happy to leave it behind. Thank you for your reasoned reply.
OP, I encourage you in the future to choose grace.
Vitriol is a strong word to describe what I said about Beehaw. I do not hold a bitter spite to what Beehaw did, in fact I understand and accept their decision as prudent and appropriate for their community.
I simply hate how they act benevolent where the reality is the opposite; that their admins are legitimately overlords akin to a full-time power-abusing reddit moderator.
Regarding your comment that I need to act with more grace, my apologies. You are correct, I should be less aggressive in my opinions and will self-censor henceforth to protect and maintain the humility of the discussions that occur here.
yeah, this is the weird thing; Beehaw’s reasonings are incredibly reasonable, and they’re not saying that the other parts of Lemmy aren’t good enough for them, which is what I think a lot of people are getting mad at
that and thinking that they’re entitled to access to Beehaw
Isn’t the whole point of the fediverse that you get to create and craft your experience for your community? There’s a really good reason defederating is a feature. I don’t get it, Beehaw decides to use the features of federation so now we: firstly become tribalistic (them vs us), and secondly decide to get angry? Like it or not, this is what you signed up for when you wanted federation.
Yes, exactly
like we’re not owed Beehaw’s cooperation; it’s their instance and if the users want to do this then that’s their perogative
Regardless, this is being blown out of proportion; Beehaw outright said that this was temporary
I have a beehaw account. I’ve only experienced one user who’s a bit too intense about their thoughts. Everyone else has just been chill. The admin aren’t defederating from lemmy.ml, the other big instance, and have no plans to do so. They really were just overwhelmed by the two feds they blocked because of trollish users. It’s not as intense as you make it sound.
I think it’s great. I want an account there for the occassions when I want to visit a safe space or a SFW website. It doesnt have to be your identity. You can go to different instances in different contexts, for different modes of interaction. And a third unrelated instance can remain federated with them both, if that’s amenable to all parties.
They should be running a standard forum software, but are already in too deep to fix the actual problem.