As this #RedditBlackout accelerates the Fediverse experiment, I feel the urge… the need… to chime in with my 2-cents.
My summary of the current lay of the land: Beehaw saw a wave of pornography spam and decided to shut Lemmy.world off and Defederate from this server. I’m too new to this community to fully understand the wants/needs of each individual server, but I’ve been around the internet long enough to recognize that porn-spam is an age-old trolling technique and will occur again in the future. Especially as small, boutique, hobbyist servers pop up and online drama/rivalries increase, online harassment campaigns (like coordinated porn spam attacks) are simply an inevitability.
Lemmy.world wants open registrations. Beehaw does not: Beehaw wants users to be verified before posting. This is normal: many old /r/subreddits would simply shadowban all 1-year old accounts and earlier… giving the illusion that everything is well for 5+ or 10+ year old accounts, but cut out on the vast majority of spam accounts with short lives. This works for Reddit where you have a huge number of long-lived accounts, but its still not a perfect technique: you can pay poor people in 3rd world countries to create accounts, post on them for a year, and the these now verified accounts can be paid for by spammers to invade various subreddits.
I digress. My main point is that many subreddits, and now Lemmy-instances/communities, want a “trusted user”. Akin to the 1±year-old account on Reddit. Its not a perfect solution by any means, but accounts that have some “weight” to them, that have passed even a crude time-based selection process, are far easier to manage for small moderation teams.
We don’t have the benefit of time however, so how do we quickly build trust on the Fediverse? It seems impossible to solve this problem on lemmy.world and Beehaw.org alone. At least, not with our current toolset.
A 3rd Server appears: ImNotAnAsshole.net
But lets add the 3rd server, which I’ll hypothetically name “ImNotAnAsshole.net”, or INAA.net for short.
INAA.net would be an instance that focuses on building a userbase that follows a large set of different instances recruiting needs. This has the following benefits.
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Decentralization – Beehaw.org is famously only run by 4 administrators on their spare time. They cannot verify hundreds of thousands of new users who appear due to #RedditBlackout. INAA.net would allow another team to focus on the verification problem.
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Access to both lemmy.world and Beehaw.org with one login – As long as INAA.net remains in the good graces of other servers (aka: assuming their user filtering model works), any user who registers on INAA.net will be able to access both lemmy.world and Beehaw.org with one login.
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Custom Moderation tools – INAA.net could add additional features independently of the core github.com/LemmyNet programming team and experiment. It is their own instance afterall.
Because of #2, users would be encouraged to join INAA.net, especially if they want access to Beehaw.org. Lemmy.world can remain how it is, low-moderation / less curated users and communities (which is a more appropriate staging grounds for #RedditBlackout refugees). Beehaw.org works with the INAA.net team on the proper rules for INAA.net to federate with Beehaw.org and everyone’s happy.
Or is it? I am new to the Fediverse and have missed out on Mastodon.social drama. Hopefully older members of this community can chime in with where my logic has gone awry.
My much simpler stance is: they don’t want lemmy.world users on their instance, I’ll respect that, I unsubbed from their communities and found the same elsewhere.
They’re not the only Lemmy servers in the world, Lemmy is still new overall, I don’t see any problem in “rebuilding” the 2 big subs they have somewhere else, I’m already putting my effort in contributing to make it so.
edit: typo
I think one thing that hasn’t been mentioned here is the huge gap in the size of the communities. The largest beehaw communities have almost 20k subscribers while the largest I’ve seen from other instances seem to cap out at about 5k. I think the problem is that most of the users who still federate with beehaw will undoubtedly end up there. This presents serious difficulties for growing competing communities.
Beehaw’s limited registration will turn off many users and eventually instances with open registration will catch up.
Forgetting about beehaw, the idea isn’t bad at all, if it can be added as a module to Lemmy core code and admins of instances then gain the option to verify users allowed for posting and commenting on their instance, by reading a 3rd party verified userlist.
See my other comments on this post for more details about how I propose it could work. Would definitely keep out wankers from most instances if there is a buy in.
But what is the magical ability to achieve step 2? How do you filter and moderate users reliably at scale?
The fundamental issue is that Beehaw wants to eat their cake and have it too. They want their users to be able to read and comment on other instances, but not have to mirror their content, pay for image hosting, etc. or allow other instances’ users access to Beehaw’s content.
They want the benefits of federation without giving anything in return.
I listed Reddit’s “secret rule” amongst long-term moderators and subreddit communities. Just straight up ban accounts that are younger than a certain age. That’s already going to grossly clamp down on porn-spam and troll accounts, because it means that the trolls need to either buy a pre-made account, or the trolls have to wait a week with good behavior before engaging in troll activity.
EDIT: Is that enough for Beehaw.org? I don’t know. But lets say INAA.net is just a time-delay. All accounts less than 1-week are only allowed to post to lemmy.world. All accounts older than that are unlocked to talk with Beehaw.org.
But in your example, everyone would have to sign up to INAA.net rather than lemmy.world. Like I couldn’t use this account, I’d need a separate one because accounts aren’t registered across instances like that (nor transferrable atm).
Theoretically, INAA.net could use ActivityPub federation to keep a database of user accounts from various instances based on their Fediverse address (i.e. @BaldProphet@kbin.social) that Lemmy and Kbin instances can query to check for things like age and reputation. No accounts would necessarily have to be created there.
Yes.
That’s why its become clear to me that the “Trust” of a server is important on the Fediverse. This is an alien concept to Redditors (where there’s only one server so everyone is at the same base level of trust).
Its not a perfect solution, but it seems to be the “Fediverse way”. The nature of the new set of rules that this community has.
Correct me if I’m wrong but that’s not how it works. Beehaw users can’t read and comment on other instances, that Beehaw defederated with.
Indeed, but this was their request for the future. Mastodon has a similar option as instance-wide “silencing”/limiting - https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#limit-server
Go and read their comments, they’re pretty open about it.
Yeah, that’s bad. But i guess they would still load and mirror all content from communities from those instances besides the content from users belonging to those silenced instances (but this content would then not be viewable).
So they are profiting from those communities, but they are also benefitig those communities as well, because all other communitiy members can see their content.
They want their users to be able to read and comment on other instances, but not have to mirror their content, pay for image hosting, etc. or allow other instances’ users access to Beehaw’s content.
This is a totally disingenuous take.
Defederating works both ways. Defederating from another instances also means that Beehaw users can’t access content from that defederated site. And, in fact, that’s exactly the purpose of defederating. They access remote content by having it imported locally, and what’s being imported doesn’t adhere to their site’s guidelines.
They’re not “having their cake and eating it, too”. They’re saying “this cake that keeps showing up on our table is full of turds, and so we’re just not accepting outside cake deliveries anymore”.
They do want similar features that are available on mastodon, that essentially allow their users to interact with the outside world but the ability limit what comes in. It’s still a disingenuous take though, as it has nothing to do with image hosting, not allowing people to view their content, etc. They just don’t want assholes.
Unlikely to occur. Beehaw’s admins hate dissent and anyone questioning them. Well before the blackout, they literally had a “no sources” rule because users kept questioning the mods. Likewise their current “rule set” states what they say, goes, and that everything is up to them, not the rules. They say that with all cases (except obvious trolls), that they will always warn first. I have yet to ever see any kind of warning from any of their admins.
They were being questioned on sh.it and on lemmy.world, so they blocked both. You can check their modlog to see just how little spam they had to deal with.
You can also pop in to look at their discord to see how much they dislike the criticism.
I personally got banned because I got into an argument with the admin there. They wrongly assumed that I was American and made a claim to counter my argument, I then pointed out their mistake that their claim doesn’t apply to my country, and then – Boom, banned.
I read the “essays” the beehive have to “join” and take part. In my view they wanted to make a space for their own community and choose a fediverse where they should have picked a closed off forum/discord/redditcopy.
They picked a tool that was fit for purpose. Federation is an option, not a necessity, and not a right.
@Kichae @dragontamer @goat But was it the right tool for what they want?
Has there been a point in time before where an instance was defederated for similar? ie, admins acting out of line with what’s generally considered “acceptable”, but short of stuff like alt-right and/or lemmygrad type stuff?
Just curious, for those who’ve been around longer.
Yeah, the creators of lemmy were removing content critical of communist talking points, like pro-ccp and pro-stalin content. There was a whole mob about it and so the admins splintered off and created lemmy.grad and said they’d be more neutral, though occasionally there’s some slip-ups in their supposed neutrality.
You are just describing joining any one of the dozens on instances that aren’t defederated from Beehaw or Lemmy.world - your INAA.net already exists in the form of all those communities which Beehaw didn’t defederate.
But which of those servers are personal vanity projects, and which servers are explicitly going to try to stay on the good terms of even fragile communities like Beehaw.org?
Server instances need to be clear about their intentions. If randomserver.org gets defederated from Beehaw.org, do they help the Beehaw.org team at moderating themselves? Or do they say “Whatever” and not try to help out?
This isn’t clear. Servers, at least today, are still in the “Don’t care who you sign up for” phase, which is naive and obviously wrong already.
There’s a bunch of other instances. Like mine at discuss.online. Nothing new is needed.
Seems like you’re just suggesting everyone use beehaw with federated accounts.
Oh there’s plenty that’s needed.
The vast majority of users here are from #RedditBlackout and their eyes glaze over at that discussion point. They don’t know what a “federated account” is.
What’s needed is education? Community organization? Etc. etc. People are new to Lemmy and Fediverse. People are trying to figure out what the plan is. A lot of users are already feeling “betrayed” that they “chose the wrong server” when they registered here at lemmy.world.
The platform just needs to mature a bit. It’s new and discovered in desperation. It’s free and not monetized. Everyone is working in their free time to build something wonderful.
The Mlem team went from 2 people to 20. They’re about to drop a huge update to their beta app.
The lemmy team worked on front end improvements in the upcoming 0.18 front end.
I have a beta instance setup if anyone wants to see it.
Don’t feel betrayed. Have two accountants. Move to a new instance. Or just wait for them to federate again when the dust settles.
At minimum, some form of simple Lemmy/Kbin/Fediverse explanation would probably be a good start. It tends to be presented as a big, confusing blob of “here’s a bunch of software you can self-host, and then communicate to other instances”, or “here’s a bunch of servers you can join”.
Your average new user isn’t going to be able to easily wrap their head around all of that at first go, especially if they’re not that tech inclined, or familiar with that kind of thing in the first place. Which server should they go for? Does the size of the server matter? Do they have to have accounts on all of the servers to see all the posts, etc.
Look at Lemmy’s home page, for example. It mentions a whole bunch of what the server runs, and that you can host one, which is neat, but also not what your typical new user is looking for when they just want to figure out the basics. It doesn’t really matter whether Lemmy uses Rust, PHP, or Scratch, since it’s all tech jargon to them.
Communities do effectively have to add their own “How to Lemmy” guides at the current time, since there is no guide for it, and that is entirely contingent on new users being on a server that has one, and being lucky enough/knowing how to use it.
A lot of users are already feeling “betrayed” that they “chose the wrong server” when they registered here at lemmy.world.
Many of those same users have been calling Beehaw admins snowflake dictators since before the block. These are people who want their cake and want to eat it, too. They want to not have to abide by Beehaw’s rules, but also have unfettered access to Beehaw. That’s not a tenable position.
They want “Free speech” but not to bear the consequences.
Ring ring, the world doesn’t work like that indeed.
