I am one of the admins of Beehaw and I’m trying to get some feedback on our potential move.
Let’s start out with a little Beehaw history before judgements are passed, please.
A handful of us were beta testing Tildes when we decided to have discussions on a Discord server.
We decided that our ‘Northern Star’ or guiding principle would culminate as ‘Be Nice’ with purposefully vague/flexible interpretations. Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.
We talked for a little over a year and some of our members became impatient. Then someone stepped in to suggest a couple of platforms that we could consider getting started with.
One of those platforms was Lemmy. None of us knew, at that time, anything about ActivityPub.
During the Reddit exodus (surrounding the API outcry and blackout), our instance exploded. We were, initially, crippled by the mass amounts of users seeking refuge.
Thankfully, someone stepped in and volunteered hundreds of hours of work to stabilize our instance and refine it further.
After many hours of talks, it became clear to us that our overall goal could be achieved outside of Lemmy/ActivityPub.
Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.
Beehaw is hardly and echo chamber. Generally defederation is done because of significant trolling or other negative behavior from an instance, not a disagreement with a philosophy.
I think an excellent example of how Beehaw allows opposing opinions is that you and I, who clearly disagree, are still able to talk about it.
The thing we want at Beehaw is respectful discourse. So long as neither party is insulting the other and conversation is productive it doesn’t matter if the opinions differ.
That said, I myself would probably not follow Beehaw off of ActivityPub. I prefer the content on Beehaw to most of the content in the fediverse, but I don’t want to maintain multiple accounts and Beehaw would definitely have less content if it moved off of the fediverse.
The problem is group dynamics. When you try to found something based on how different you are, things go well until you don’t have the external threat anymore. Now, the purity tests start.
I bear y’all no ill will I’ve just been on the internet long enough to know what’s likely to happen. In theory it’s such a nice concept. Good luck.