I’m new to the Fediverse, but I’ve been primarily using it to try and wean myself off a decade+ long reddit addiction.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is how people on Lemmy seem to have a misconception about how difficult it is to administer and moderate these platforms. I’ve read a lot of people talking about how the ability to host your own Lemmy instance gives you the experience of Reddit, but without needing to worry about mods or admins. They are quick to talk about how easy it is to move on from an instance, saying things like “just create your own instance and move on.”

I think it’s true as a lurker that migrating instances is easy and low investment. But losing all the content and community is a huge price to pay. Yes, it’s relatively simple to set up an instance, but the difficult thing is keeping it up despite prices and wild fluctuations in users.

The owner of the nsfw Lemmy instance, for example, already has thrown in the towel this week, just two weeks after opening a relatively successful instance. He gave up moderating, but couldn’t get anyone else to take over hosting the instance. So he is now stuck with that. Honestly, I would be surprised to see that instance sticking around in the same form for much longer.

My point is simply that stewarding a community takes a massive amount of time, effort and money on behalf of those hosting and moderating. It takes a lot of trust for people to feel safe investing the time and energy to put down roots. It requires content creators and good engagement.

I’ve chosen Beehaw as my home instance because I find that the admin’s mission and commitment to stewarding a specific culture to have the best chance of building a worthwhile community.

So thank you to the admins for your work, and I look forward to my time here with you all. Let’s create a culture worth fighting for - one that we wouldn’t want to leave and move on from at the first sign of drama.