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.

  • Unsurprisingly this has made some people very ANGY. So much of the anger is coming from the sort of people that it validates to me that I’d rather be a part of a “lib SJW hugbox” run by “dictators” than whatever those people see as their ideal community. Why is it that freedom of speech maximalists are never pleasant people?

    Of course it’s not an ideal solution, but barring better moderation tools it seems like the least bad solution when considering Beehaw’s goals, which don’t include 100% unfettered free speech or having to federate with every single other Lemmy instance out there.

    • I feel like the people complaining haven’t actually bothered reading about what Beehaw is for and the ethos of the administrators. It’s literally all right there in the sidebar, I read it before I made my account. This is completely in line with that. It’s such a nothing burger. You’re not being cEnSoReD because one instance out of thousands has drawn a line in the sand on what it will tolerate and what it won’t.

      • To me, this feels like a sort of Litmus Test moment for the lay user base. As you touched on, I think the Beehaw team has done a remarkable job of being transparent with the foundations of how they do things. This struck me as well within the realm of possibilities, and it was something that I had to think about before signing up here. A place that bills itself as a safe space will need to curate its people and community to a higher degree than looser places, even if sometimes it may mean culling off quite popular places.

        This is definitely one of those moments when those principles have consequences that the users may directly experience. It’s one thing to see principles in a sort of vacuum and not necessarily feel affected by them. It’s another thing to have those principles put into action in an area where you feel that action.

        Put another way, going through the trouble of fulfilling the Beehaw onboarding is talking the talk. But will users be willing to walk the walk? There will be Beehaw users that may disagree with this decision, so much so that they leave the instance all together. It’s unfortunate, but I think such a thinning would have a positive aspect to it: it leaves the users that best reflect what the instance is trying to be.

        I’ve mentioned before that it wouldn’t surprise me if this kind of issue comes up in Beehaw again with another instance. But come to think of it, it wouldn’t surprise me either if this kind of issue comes up in other instances as well, even if they may be inclined to advertise themselves as looser than Beehaw. Despite Lemmy’s billing, it wouldn’t surprise me if I end up with half a dozen or so instance accounts like keys on a keychain. That might not end up being as difficult as it sounds, though. Having each instance run on the same service, federated or not, will hopefully allow the likes of a single app to communicate across instances. Or maybe I need to do the real crazy thing and learn to Stop Worrying and Love Multiple Apps.

    • I think the venn diagram of people who think free speech is the #1 inalienable right that was granted by the cosmos/god and can never be infringed and people who just want to be able to say whatever they want and people can’t get mad at them for it is a circle.

      I enjoy free speech. I think it’s important. I’m still going to distance myself from an those with no control over their mouth. That’s not ignoring their free speech, it’s invoking my right to not hear it.

    •  ngwoo   ( @ngwoo@beehaw.org ) 
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      1 year ago

      I see both sides of the argument. I’m trying to migrate away from reddit because I’m tired of the toxicity. But I’m also trying to migrate away from reddit because I’m tired of people on high dictating how I’m allowed to interact with other people. Hopefully one day Beehaw can have the moderators and community managers necessary to allow federation with as many servers as possible without compromising the community. In the meantime I really can’t see myself wanting my main Lemmy account on an instance that restricts it so much.