Regarding Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, this post goes into detail on the why and the philosophy behind that decision. Additionally, there is an update specific to sh.itjust.works here.
For now, let’s talk about what federation is and what defederation means for members of Beehaw or the above two communities interacting with each other, as well as the broader fediverse.
Federation is not something new on the internet. Most users use federated services every day (for instance, the url used to access instances uses a federated service known as DNS, and email is another system that functions through federation.) Just like those services, you elect to use a service provider that allows you to communicate with the rest of the world. That service provider is your window to work with others.
When you federate, you mutually agree to share your content. This means that posting something to a site can be seen by another and all comments are shared. Even users from other sites can post to your site.
Now when you defederate, this results in content to be no longer shared. It didn’t reverse any previous sharing or posts, it just stops the information from flowing with the selected instance. This only impacts the site’s that are called out.
What this means to you is when a user within one instance (e.g. Beehaw) that’s chosen to defederate with another (e.g. lemmy.world), they can no longer interact with content on another instance, and vice versa. Other instances can still see the content of both servers as though nothing has happened.
- A user is not limited to how many instances they can join (technically at least - some instance have more stringent requirements for joining than others do)
- A user can interact with Lemmy content without being a user of any Lemmy instance - e.g. Mastodon (UI for doing so is limited, but it is still possible.)
Considering the above, it is important to understand just how much autonomy we, as users have. For example, as the larger instances are flooded with users and their respective admins and mods try to keep up, many, smaller instances not only thrive, but emerge, regularly (and even single user instances - I have one for just myself!) The act of defederation does not serve to lock individual users out of anything as there are multiple avenues to constantly maintain access to, if you want it, the entirety of the unfiltered fediverse.
On that last point, another consideration at the individual level is - what do you want out of Lemmy? Do you want to find and connect with like-minded people, share information, and connect at a social and community level? Do you want to casually browse content and not really interact with anyone? These questions and the questions that they lead to are critical. There is no direct benefit to being on the biggest instance. In fact, as we all deal with this mass influx, figure out what that means for our own instances and interactions with others, I would argue that a smaller instance is actually much better suited for those who just want to casually browse everything.
Lastly, and tangential, another concern I have seen related to this conversation is people feeling afraid of being locked out of the content and conversation from the “main” communities around big topics starting to form across the Lemmiverse (think memes, gaming, tech, politics, news, etc.) Over time, certain communities will certainly become a default for some people just given the community size (there will always be a biggest or most active - it’s just a numbers game.) This, again though, all comes down to personal preference and what each individual is looking to get from their Lemmy experience. While there may, eventually, be a “main” sub for <topic xyz> (again, by the numbers), there will also always be quite a few other options for targeted discussions on <topic xyz>, within different communities, on different instances, each with their own culture and vibe. This can certainly feel overwhelming and daunting (and at the moment, honestly it is.) Reddit and other non-federated platforms provided the illusion of choice, but this is what actual choice looks and feels like.
[edit: grammar and spelling]
Unfortunately, the inconvenience is something of a catch 22. Do we allow everything through for the sake of convenience? What happens when extreme content that is NSFL gets posted? What happens when illegal content is federated, or hate speech that indicates action will be taken is made? What happens when you observe a pattern of this behavior from a common source? Content must be moderated for things to be “safe” and the rate that unsafe, nonaligned content was coming in wasn’t sustainable.
Choosing to defederate wasn’t taken lightly and it was done reluctantly. It was discussed for two days after observing systemic effects from those instances and after reaching out to the instance admins for alternatives.
I see you’re posting not from a beehaw account, which means you likely haven’t seen @Gaywallet@beehaw.org 's post on what it is to be a community and the framework to get there. This posts may help you understand this instances stance on things and what our instances users are hoping for is to build.
All in all, sorry you’re not happy, but we’re being careful for our community.
I do use beehaw and saw those posts. I do not support the overall goal of beehaw, though that is not related to the content of what I posted above. Imo, Beehaw as a curated communities should not try to play both sides and handle the situation poorly - which does confuse the overall communities here. If they choose to go walled garden mode, then they should commit to it.
Regards your first point, and partly why I do not agree with beehaw overall goal, I do not think all of what you listed (and what I heard a lot from beehaw or similar closed communities) are such a problem as people are making it out to be. Reddit itself is terribly vile as all of the contents you listed there already exist on the platform. The reasons why you do not see those on reddit on daily basis are 2 folds. One, the tools on reddit that filter those contents are rather decent - which is something lemmy does not have, yet. And two, those types of contents do get naturally filtered by the internet communities itself - something that happened on reddit many many times.
i mean this respectfully but… why would you use a place you don’t support the overall goal of? from my perspective all of this just seems like a waste of your time, because you could just be putting all the energy you have in this thread behind a community you actually support
Because Beehaw is not the entirety of the federation? I am not sure if I follow your question. I am not on Beehaw.
I support the exploration of federation concept (which at this point, the tool and experience are not yet developed to that point), and support the people and communities going through the transition from reddit to this deferation system (which a very small percentage of people went through to here).
Beehaw supports neither of these. They backed out, and they want to create curated communities specifically.
My energy is spend on the many communities I do engage with… on reddit. Those communities have barely any post here because the majority of people do not trust these platforms. It makes sense that I want the federation as a whole (ignoring beehaw) to not sink before the people can move to these spaces.
The entire post is on Beehaw.org: https://beehaw.org/post/615042. It’s a bug on kbin to show it with kbin.social in the parenthesis.
I realize the confusion now. I forgot that from the perspective of people on Beehaw, they would not see me posting from kbin immediately without checking the handle.
To paraphrase my point: I support the development of lemmy as a federated project, but I do not support the goal of Beehaw (which they do have on the sidebar and I read it more than one). This purely comes from my own experience and preference with curated communities.
I do not have a problem with Beehaw defederate from others.
However, I do not see defederate is a solution to the many issues with lemmy as a whole. I disagree with the original post on federation, but I do agree with a lot of their replies about the technical limitation.
I still think you’re not getting it. This post is on Beehaw. You’re in a thread on Beehaw talking about the goals of the community here saying that “it isn’t for you.”
Fair enough. But then… why are you here? You don’t have a horse in this race. Beehaw defederating with them didn’t affect you at all.
Not trying to be a dick, but if you don’t agree with what’s being built here, then shouldn’t you not follow the communities here? Or, at least, not join the discussion with strong opinions against the community’s goals?
Maybe it’s stretching a metaphor too hard, but it’s like criticizing your friends’ homes when they invite you in.
I, for one, fully support Beehaw’s very simple mandate to “Bee Kind”, and I’m very glad the admins took the steps to protect that mandate from outside parties.
I think you are the one who does not get it. Unless Beehaw completely defederate from everyone, posts on Beehaw is a part of the federation, meaning all federate communities that beehaw agrees to connect with.
This is why I said the whole defederate/federate thing Beehaw people do not seem to get or do not want to understand. You are part of this, we are not part of you. If you want your own community, commit to it and disconnect. If you want the benefit of the federation, you do have to work with other and deal with consequence.
For transparency - I’ve given you a temporary ban. You’re all over this thread. We understand you are upset about this, we’ve heard your voice, it’s time to disengage.
I think the question about “being on Beehaw” is because you’ve been commenting on a post in a Beehaw community.