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.

  • mizmoose@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • GuyDudeman@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • GhostMagician@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • BitOneZero@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • GhostMagician@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I don’t mean so much in activity. Just the subscription to communities part.

            Like knowing I could subscribe to like gamedeals and pcgaming and knowing that I can rely on my feed to contain posts from those communities as opposed one of them defeding from each so now having to subscribe to separate instances of pcgaming and gamedeals to see activity from those communities in my subscription feed. So now having two subscription feeds as opposed to one unified one to keep track of.

            • Pigeon@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              I wish we could federate our own user accounts on unrelated instances with each other, separate from the instance federation? So beehaw and lemmy.world can be unfederated, but if I have an account on beehaw and another account on lemmy.world, then I can connect those two accounts so that I can see the posts from both accounts in each one? Is something like this possible?

              That way individual users wouldn’t be so inconvenienced, but beehaw would still be isolated from lemmy.world’s unrestricted signups/different culture in the same way.

              • farmer_bobathan
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                1 year ago

                You could run lemmy/kbin on your own server or VPS and have total control of your user account but that’s more involved than signing up on someone else’s instance.

            • psudo@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              I think you might just not be interested in federated services. The whole point is that it’s a network of independent services, not a single unified platform. For some people that works well and for others it doesn’t. The fediverse solution would be to create a new account on an instance that federates with both instances, but you’re probably going to end up playing whack-a-mole until things settle down and I don’t blame anyone for not wanting to do that.

              • GhostMagician@beehaw.org
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                1 year ago

                I can use feeder to get an rss feed of different websites. Even though they aren’t run by the same people or companies.

                That’s something I want for lemmy where I can set up something like

                lemmy/c/PatientGamers@sh.itjust.works+technology@beehaw.org+Futurama @lemmy.world+Android@lemmy.world+RetroGaming@lemmy.world+PC Gaming@lemmy.ca+Movies and TV Shows@lemmy.film/.rss

                • psudo@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  You should be able to do that. Each community should have an rss feed button. It should give you a feed of all the new posts, but I don’t think it’ll help with comments.

        • lemillionsocks@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The alternative it looks like for now is to subscribe to an instance thats both not blocked by beehaw and doesnt block lemmy.world

    • Cinnamon@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Exaggeration207@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Noonecanknowitsme@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          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

          • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            Exactly - the best way I can think to describe it is that I no longer feel like I’m going to be locked out of discussion because I took too long to actually read what the conversation was about. For me personally, that turned into me becoming a terminal lurker, but others wind up skimming headlines or pieces of longer comments and trying to rush to respond. In the latter case, that wound up translating into shallower, briefer discussion points in an effort to keep up and try to be seen. Overall, it seems like Beehaw is steering more towards longer-form, slower discussions (as demonstrated by the long posts written by the various admins and mods). I won’t say this is an objectively good or bad thing, it’s a matter of personal preference, but it’s definitely more my speed since I try to be deliberate with what I post and tend to take a while to digest what I’m reading and try to form a more substantial response. I do definitely see why that wouldn’t be what people might be looking for though - it’s kind of the difference between quick-witted banter or more meandering navel-gazing (for lack of better descriptions).

            • Noonecanknowitsme@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              Yes!!! I love the longer form more thought out posts, but you perfectly captured the pros of each type! Both can be good for sure

      • JCPhoenix@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • The Cuuuuube@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          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

            • PascalPistachios@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              God, I. I don’t know why, but just you bringing up the ability to have a post last for more than a few hours… It hit me for some reason.

              I never really realized, but reddit always felt so fast, looking back. A constant, unending stream of novelty. And the only way to be heard was to get in before the rushing tide. It’s nice here. I can reply to the people who talk. I’ll post and people will engage, I can engage. It’s obvious now but I can’t believe I didn’t notice for so long.

      • mizmoose@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • julian_t@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      In the olden days I was part of several Usenet communities that got destroyed by trolls and spam, so I completely understand - and support - this action.