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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

        • 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).

    • 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.

      • 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

    • 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.