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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Is there any reason for them defederating?
Beehaw.org is a highly maintained instance with careful moderation and rules for their instance and communities.
The explosion of new users this month has overwhelmed their moderation team with having to keep up with now moderating new huge user bases from large instances like sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world. These instances in particular it seems had lots of bad actors causing issues in their communities.
There are plans for them to re-federate at some point with the advent of new modding tools and updates to Lemmy
That honestly does not sound like the worst way to curb the increase in traffic. It’s understandable for communities to “get their house in order”.
But it does put a damper on the growth of every instance. The second people hear one of the biggest instances has cut off from the other biggest instances, they go "this fediverse thing is just too complicated!" and go to one of the centralized replacements.
"The growth" of the fediverse in general or of any platform in it is not responsibility of one server. The only thing Beehaw admins are responsible for is Beehaw.
If you want Lemmy to grow create your own communities and threads, participate in other people's communities and posts, etc.
there are more than 1000 Lemmy servers, many of whom are open to community creation (something that Beehaw never has been)
Go create content on Lemmy if you want it to grow.
BTW, "growth" is not necessarily a good thing on the fediverse. Growing too much can be the death of a server.
I don't mean to the growth of the fediverse is their responsibility, but I feel it is a problem that will affect them along with everyone else. Trolls are an existential threat to a safe space community, but lack of users is too.
You said yourself that Beehaw is one of the largest communities. They aren't struggling for users, despite stricter rules and de-federation. If you actually read the announcement threads about the de-federation, Beehaw users love it and are very supportive of the decision. The outrage seems to be entirely generated by people who aren't members of that community, so who cares? If you're that unhappy make your own community (or cry) but don't pretend it's the responsibility of Beehaw to pander to non-members.
And to the overall growth concerns, again - who cares? Lemmy doesn't have to be a 1:1 reddit replacement. I'd say many of us actually consider it's relatively low user count as a positive.
The issue is the the growth could literally kill the underlying servers. Imagine running an instance on a raspberry pi and all the sudden see a hundred thousand users start hitting your server.
If that was Beehaw's issue, I'd be more sympathetic, but it isn't. They are using it as an incredibly crude moderation tool, not because of some technical limitation.
That's the point! That's the whole point! There are no other tools built yet It IS an incredibly crude moderation tool, because the alternatives are being worked on as we speak
I'm already starting to get pretty tired of people in the fediverse saying shit like this:
Having "multiple avenues to maintain access to the unfiltered fediverse, if you want it" is the most nightmare user experience sentence I can possibly imagine.
A user does not want multiple avenues to maintain access to the unfiltered fediverse with it being unclear when their comments will be shadow banned and not. They want to be able to see a post and go in and comment on it.
Federation is not a feature, it's an implementation detail.
Federation is a feature. If you want to spin up a network of Lemmy instances between universities and ONLY federate with other universities, you could!
Want to spin up a private instance for you and your friends and not federate with anyone? You can do that too!
To me one of the big selling points of federated services is you don't have to be part of the same giant bucket as every other shithead. If you want, you can pick and choose who you federate with.
Beehaw never tried to promote itself as a default instance. It was a toy hobby project started by four friends that through a fluke of where it was listed, had an enormous, unexpected growth spurt.
It's still those four people's server though, and it's totally their prerogative in how they run it. We aren't entitled to it's content, and users don't have to stick around if they don't like the way it's being run.
The fedeverse gives you choice. That means there will be some servers whose choices you don't agree with.
I'm sorry, but no. The point of the fediverse is not to spin up niche communities, since we already have forums. You want to be part of a niche small forum, go spin up your own bb instance and run a niche small forum.
The point of the fediverse is to recreate the global social networks that are twitter / Reddit / etc, but to do so using open source servers that are decentralized and anyone can host.
Again, federation is not a user facing feature, it's an architecture / implementation detail. Fediverse enthusiasts are like train enthusiasts who love every detail of how they're built and their history and how much philosophically better they are than cars, but none of that matters and train networks will fail if they don't provide quick and convenient transportation to their users.
If that were true, then the software wouldn't have the ability to defederate built directly into it in the admin panel. You could write software in a way where defederating from a specific instance is hard to do.
IMO the point of any open source software is the noone really has ownership over what "the point" of it is. Anyone can take that software and use it how they see fit.
A setting in an admin panel is not a user facing feature.
In broad strokes yes, but in more specific and relevant strokes, the point of social networking software is for users to use it to engage with each other, not concern themselves with how it's servers are administrated.
Admins are users too from a developer's point of view.
No, they're not. They're admins.
I develop software for a living. If someone is using my software in any capacity, they are a user from my point of view, even if they have admin privileges.
Oh wow congrats, like half the world writes software, I also write software for a living, but I don't confuse the admins running my software and using my admin portals with the primary users of my software who will determine whether or not it will be popular or a success.
Back up and examine the context of the conversation and then stop with this pointless semantic distinction. In the context of whether or not your social network software will be successful, an admin setting that allows one instance to connect to other is not a user facing feature.
People do not open Reddit to examine how the Reddit admins configured their kubernetes clusters, so stop with this dumb bullshit pretending like users care about federation. They want somewhere to come have a discussion with everyone else interested in the same thing. That's it.
First off, cool your jets; you're being kinda rude for no reason here. Just because we disagree doesn't mean either of us is an idiot.
My point is just that you still develop features specifically for your admin-privileged users right? That's the only thing I'm trying to say by calling admins users, that they still belong to the bucket of people you consider when adding features to your software, even if they are only admin-facing features. You're right that it's just a semantic difference, so let me rephrase using your terminology then;
Admins of the software may want to create and promote their own private sites using the lemmy software that federate with only a subset of other lemmy instances. For instance, a network of 'academic' lemmy instances run by universities -- with high moderation requirements -- that do not federate with the 'popular' fedeverse.
In that sense federation is a feature, to admins.
I'm also not 100% sold on it not mattering to end-users. Like I'm a user by your metric, and I like that Kbin can de-federate from extremist instances or instances run by corporations like Meta, and will likely move homes if it doesn't and I start seeing too much content from those instances. It's a feature I specifically appreciate about this platform.
First off, cool your jets; you're being kinda rude for no reason here. Just because we disagree doesn't mean either of us is an idiot.
My point is just that you still develop features specifically for your admin-privileged users right? That's the only thing I'm trying to say by calling admins users, that they still belong to the bucket of people you consider when adding features to your software, even if they are only admin-facing features. You're right that it's just a semantic difference, so let me rephrase using your terminology then;
Admins may want to create and promote their own private sites -- using the lemmy software -- that federate with only a subset of other lemmy instances. For instance, a network of 'academic' lemmy instances run by universities -- with high moderation requirements -- that do not federate with the 'popular' fedeverse.
In that sense federation is a feature, to admins.
I'm also not 100% sold on it not mattering to end-users. Like I'm a user by your metric, and I like that Kbin can de-federate from extremist instances or instances run by corporations like Meta, and will likely move homes if it doesn't and I start seeing too much content from those instances. It's a feature I specifically appreciate about this platform.
This is my read on the situation, but my view is different - if BeeHaw want to have what is functionally just a private Reddit-like forum, let them. But we should stop acting like BeeHaw is a part of the Fediverse with the same goals as Lemmy-at-large.
Of course, lemmygrad.ml is my home instance and I'm pretty sure BeeHaw has never federated with us so I'm not really missing anything.
Most of the complaints seem to come from people who assumed BeeHaw was just like any other Lemmy instance and have sort of made it, or a community on it, their home; or tried to join and almost bounced off Lemmy because they assumed BeeHaw was just what Lemmy was like.
I think the best move going forward would be to either de-list BeeHaw from Lemmy directories or make sure it is properly signposted what kind of server it is. I think this will all naturally become less of an issue once big, generic instances like Lemmy.world blow up and become the defaults, and traffic to BeeHaw slows down.
User experience is not the primary motivator for the development of the Fediverse. The features you dislike are the core features of the Fediverse and are the main reasons it exists.
Software exist to solve a user's problem. All software's primary motivator should be user experience.
It's quite frankly asinine to spend your time building a social network that user's don't want to use (see: Reddit's official app / new site).
Ignoring psychology, network effects, and how social networks work while instead trying to build one based on naiive dogma is doomed to failure.
It may be the point, but it makes the UX terrible. Lemmy is really struggling from a UX perspective, enough to make me question if it’s worth sticking with.
The new user experience is pretty terrible because 90%+ have no interest in trying to figure of “federation”, they just want shit that works.
The most trolls came from those two instances since they have no criteria to joining and they have so many users, and beehaw prides itself on being a nice, safe space. Lemmy currently doesn't have the moderating tools to empower them to take care of all the new, toxic redditors, but they said they're willing to federate with them when it does, which I'm sure it will eventually.
They want an echo chamber
I thought it was because they lacked the ability to effectively moderate.
That is the direct reason, yes, but the larger problem is that without effective moderation they are unable to curate the type of community they want. "Safe space" is a loaded term, but if you actually read Beehaw's documents (particularly the 'spirit of the rules' one) it is quite clear that they are attempting to create an online community where people feel safe and can be themselves free from attack and/or ridicule. The de-federation is because they are unable to deliver on this "safe space" promise at the moment. In my opinion that's absolutely fine and they should be praised for taking quick and decisive action to protect their community. It doesn't need to be some controversial thing that people attempt PR spin over. Just call it what it is. If people have a problem with it, unlucky.
Which effectively creates an echo chamber, be it good or bad
If the echo chamber I’m a part of prevents nazi and fascist ideology from becoming normal than I’m all for it.
Excuse me if you misunderstood my initial comment but it doesn't argue against your statement at all. Again, a good or a bad one, an echo chamber is an echo chamber
If they wanted an echo chamber they would have defederated from all other instances.
I'm sure they have a reason,whether it's the correct decision is another matter.
Oh, gardens can have diversity without being an echo chamber. As they said they don’t see another way to stop those people who like to shit in carefully created gardens.
Nobody likes shit in their garden.
The flowers do.
(I'll just show myself out).
And this is exactly why they have to defederate. People like you exists.
I mean---maybe? That wouldn't necessarily be malicious, but I think it's fair and appropriate to apply a healthy amount of skepticism and suspicion to their purported goals and reasoning. Beehaw is a self-proclaimed "safe space", and unfortunately that term has become a kind of dog whistle for militant identity politics.
Particularly in instances, like this one, when thinly veiled patronizing is wielded to preemptively paint a large group of strangers with a very broad brush in the purported aim of protecting marginalized persons from "malicious" outsiders, my cynicism radar tends to beep very loudly. It may well in fact be true that the current suite of mod tools makes beehaw's managers powerless against an overwhelming tide of new traffic, but that wouldn't automatically rule out competitive motives.
Federated or not, Lemmy represents an opportunity for wealth for whoever is best positioned if it ends up being a successor to Reddit, and what we're going to see is a round of jockeying and vying for position in the coming (ongoing) chaos. I'll admit that like many of us I'm very new to this platform, but the fact that defederation is possible at all leads me to believe that less scrupulous individuals in positions of ownership could with only small effort leverage it to enlarge their influence at the expense of competing servers.
Maybe I'm dead wrong on a technical level; maybe I'm full of shit--I'll admit I basically don't know what I'm talking about except in the broadest possible terms, so somebody please correct me if I'm wrong--but I wonder if this isn't so much about creating an echo chamber as incentivizing people who identify with beehaw's stated ideology to come under its umbrella (with supposed protections for hate speech), and defederation is just a way to force people to make the same kind of unhappy, unnecessary choices many of us just made with Reddit.
EDIT: I really can't thank y'all enough for this. It feels like I'm right back on Reddit. From the accusations that I must be a secret conservative because I dared to question motives to the folks unable to actually engage in discourse without manufactured disdain, it's like nothing has changed at all.
Maybe beehaw doesn't have an axe to grind, but somebody sure does.
My god, this post was unnecessarily long. I think they just don't weirdos posting dick pics and bombarding it with questionable content. Not everything is a culture war.
I’m voting for full of shit based on the dotted line you drew between any safe space and militantism.
Okay. To be clear, I wouldn't automatically assume anybody who wants to be free from hate speech has bad intentions, but I also think it's fair to be critical of any effort to stifle dissenting opinion--even uncomfortable opinion--with the justification that the censorship is to a third party's benefit, and it's immaterial whether the third party is children, a historically disadvantaged group, or any other class. That is, I don't say all this to accuse beehaw of ulterior motives--but I also wouldn't put it past anybody, and skepticism is appropriate (like always). More and more frequently, "safe space" really just means: We want an echo chamber, but it's okay because we know best. That's a red flag.
When it comes to racism, sexism, and transphobia, the “dissenting opinions” are things like “you do not exist” and “you are sub human” and “you do not deserve rights.”
You’re fooling yourself if you think that not tolerating hate == stifling dissenting opinion. How should one stand up for human rights? Moderately? Or militantly?
Sounds like you’ve bought the old conservative line of bullshit on all this. “Oh they don’t permit sexism? We should be highly skeptical of this!! What about freedom of speech??”
Le sigh
The problem with defederation is the same problem with the position you're taking, that it conflates all opinion with whatever worst thing you can imagine, enabling you to insist that because some people are awful, everyone who doesn't agree with the proposition is (or in beehaw's case, everyone who doesn't join their walled garden). This isn't a case of "they don't permit sexism." They didn't permit sexism when they were still federated. Defederation is an extra step--they want you to use their server or otherwise not participate in their communities at all, and the explanation for why is that the people on lemmy.world are sexist. Maybe they're authentically overwhelmed, and it's certainly their prerogative, but one would be wise to examine their stated basis more critically, because heavy handed owners of platform infrastructure are why Lemmy is in this position in the first place.
Now you’re just not reading. Look at this thread. It’s been clearly shown and stated publicly that they are simply overwhelmed by the explosive growth coming at them from instances like lemmy.world that have added millions of members overnight. They have a more intentionally managed community with high standards and hands on moderators and they cannot right now handle the sudden explosive volume. They are trying to scale up and their desire and intention is to refederate. Meanwhile you have spun up all kinds of tales in your head about how they want to control speech or ban it because of their militant identity politics. You’re making all of that up, when the actual explanations are right there in public for you to read. Try gathering more information and forming fewer judgments based on your internal biases.
He says, in an instance that banned downvotes.
...but he has 62 downvotes?
He can't see them