Yanno what? Good for them! Not only for swiftly defederating at their discretion (which I support, full stop) but also this open dialogue that is happening.
People forget that defederating can be reversed, but it requires communication and cooperation for that to be an option.
This is a good take. I find it strange that beehaw would be cast as the villains in this situation when an open line of communication exists between the admins with the tentative goal of refederating.
Exactly!!!
I would like to thank /u/thedude for having an open dialogue with other instances.
Edit: (how) can I link to a user? @TheDude /u/TheDude
This is the way.
Btw thanks guys
[@TheDude@sh.itjust.works](https://sh.itjust.works/u/TheDude)
I think you over complicated it?Let’s test @TheDude@sh.itjust.works@thedude@sh.itjust.works
Hmm. Maybe it doesn’t work on Lemmy.
After you type in
@the, wait for the context menu. Otherwise you need to use the URL https://example.com/u/username; you can hyperlink it using the format I showed you: [text](URL)
works
deleted by creator
Nope
Well, maybe I misinterpreted the other commenters then.
@ericjmorey @can like this @dude
Like an email with @ before
Great to hear that there is a dialog open between the admins. Hopefully it is all sorted swiftly. Federating with all of the large instances is important for the continued growth of the platform.
cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/594843
hey folks, here’s a quick update on our decision to defederate from sh.itjust.works! (and here’s sh.itjust.works’s side of this update)
we got in touch with the head admin over there, The Dude, and we had a pretty good chat about our concerns and reason for defederating. while immediate re-federation is just bluntly off the table with the rudimentary state of Lemmy’s moderation tools, we now have a pretty good idea of the roadmap to refederating with them. we think we’ll eventually be able to do this, although we don’t have a timetable on when yet.
we’re also now collaborating with him on how to move forward–and in the weeks and months to come we’ll be pushing to expedite the process of developing some of the necessary tools. this decision has really helped us make connections that can hopefully realize those tools both on the desktop side and in apps being developed for Lemmy. we’re also hoping to collaborate with other Lemmy administrators who have needs like our own, or just generally want more granular tools at their disposal.
we did also get in touch with the lemmy.world owner prior to defederating to share the concerns that prompted us to defederate[1]–but we have not received any communication from him since it was levied, so there’s no roadmap at all there as of now. we’re always open to reconsidering and collaborating to end the defederation with him, but for now the earliest i can give you is “when mod tools are in a better state”.
that’s all for now folks. if any new significant developments take place we’ll announce them as needed.
we’re only bringing this up now because it was just not useful information in the context of our announcement. it almost certainly would have been interpreted as some sort of callousness and/or brought unnecessary sectarianism and grief to him. at the end of the day he has his reasons and desires for running lemmy.world how he does, and we have ours for running Beehaw as we do. because of social and technological circumstances those are just incompatible right now, and that’s fine. ↩︎
Why did Beehive decide to defederate?
Since lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works didn’t have any restrictions on making accounts they were getting a lot of trolls coming from those 2 instances so they defederated from them until the moderation tools become more advanced.
Given that kbin (or at least kbin.social) generally doesn’t have restrictions on making accounts either I would assume we’re next, eventually.
And if they do, nothing of value is lost.
The community in Beehaw are all cool people, but their weird rules and heavy filtering puts me off.
Beehaw admins give me vibes of a power-hungry reddit mods or overbearing parent who thinks they know better than me.
I’ll stick with other instances that allow adults to speak with adult language. I’m sick of the fucking nanny caretaker censoring bullshit that forums tend to eventually become.
I can understand the value of making your community a more tight-knit one with a proactive stance on moderation, that’s how Tildes operate and they’re doing fine. The thing is I’m not sure I understand why, given this goal, Beehaw is part of the Fediverse in the first place, where there isn’t much preventing someone from an outside group coming in. This sounds like a case where a centralized instance makes more sense. Maybe they’re trying to see if such a community can exist on the Fediverse, in which case fair enough, but this seems like an uphill road.
The community in Beehaw are all cool people, but their weird rules and heavy filtering puts me off.
Not surprising. From looking around it seem like they want to turn beehaw into a business they can profit off of in the long run.
https://beehaw.org/post/452132
in the very, very long term, we aspire to become a co-op or similar, as a part of fulfilling our ethos.
That’s the beautiful thing about federation though, is that as users we can choose not to subscribe and engage with communities that don’t share our values.
That is ignoring that instance owners can decide for their users what instances they can and cannot engage with. Which is fine, it is their server they can manage it how they like. That is not the user deciding how to interact with other instances and communities.
I see the whole federation as a bit of a paradox. Users are allowed and encouraged to interact with other instances and communities as they please. However, if the instance a user belongs to decides to defederate from another instance. Users now have to create another account to keep interacting with that instance. Which kind of defeats the purpose of federation. Now users are forced to create an account for each instance they want to continue interacting with.
It would not surprise me if Beehaw admins are some of the Reddit powermods just hedging their bets in case Reddit dies or they get banned.
This is what all us kbinauts were thinking and a few of us asked beehaw and their response was literally “who are you? we don’t even think about you” lol. so I think we’re probably fine.
@Otome-chan @onceuponaban @can @sbv @Xathonn i am glad they think they’re important enough to feel superior when they make such a reply. shitty neighboors attract shitty neighboors.
Even if they do defederate us that’s basically just the trash taking itself out.
I’m sure we’d live somehow
If it comes to that… It is what it is!
I don’t need big instances directly piped into my vein to have a good time on the internet.
They only have 4 admins and don’t allow users to create communities. It’s highly curated, but also can’t handle the influx of users from other instances until they have better mod tools, or change their position.
The solution was to ask for more volunteer mods, not the nuclear option.
Its surpassing how much they want to control what other people see.
Which they have been doing. They added a bunch of mods to local communities. But it just wasn’t enough, according to them.
Its surpassing [sic] how much they want to control what other people see.
Well that’s what they’ve said from the beginning. They wanted a more curated and friendly instance, rather than having the old reddit culture.
100% agree, and their need for control is a huge red flag. I don’t really want them federated tbh. Already they are trying to use their control over several large communities to influence other instances policies.
Sounds like they just need to add a few temp mods.
From my understanding, with the slew of new users on lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, moderating comments and posts that were against Beehaw community rules (largely because of bigotry and harassment) became more or less impossible. While there has been an overall explosion in new accounts across the fediverse, almost all of their time was moderating users from those two instances. They were not able to find a compromise using the current mod tools, so went with the nuclear option while they figure out new solutions.
Here’s the truth. They want a safe space. If you question the admins they will ban you. You must be militantly polite or your gone
They explicitly state that they’re making a safe space in their TOS thing, no?
Safe space = dissent disallowed.
Yes? That’s explicitly the purpose. I get it’s shitty but it’s pretty stupid to go to a place where they outright tell you they’re going to censor you and then get mad that they do it
Yeah so I don’t think we’re disagreeing here then. I made the claim that they’re very censor-heavy and toxic and you seem to confirm that yourself. My argument was never about specifically going over there.
You let dogs in, the fleas follow. That’s why.
What does “militantly polite” mean?
Overbearingly respectful, almost groveling, to their admins if you misspeak.
Do you have any examples of this?
Bro look at their description you can pick it up just from that. They straight up say things like “if you say bad things about feminism you’re automatically sexist” like what?
Except… that’s not what they say anywhere. In fact they wrote three nuanced essays that explain in detail their philosophy, and lay out that you CAN be critical of something (i.e. feminism) in a nice way that acknowledges your humanity and the humanity of others, and that if Feminists come in and flame you over it, THOSE are the people who will be getting warnings and bans. They want a mature community that fosters mutual understanding when disagreements arise. So when someone says “feminism bad” like they have a 26 character limit that doesn’t exist, they see it not as disagreement but as disrespect.
Show me where they are accepting of criticism to feminism, links please, because I can source my argument. Nothing in that post encourages criticism of feminism regardless of the type of criticism. It’s funny because they specifically defend modern feminism, which is something many people can find criticism of.
and that if Feminists come in and flame you over it, THOSE are the people who will be getting warnings and bans.
Yeah, for many many reasons I doubt that. If anything, the admins will allow those feminists to flame you, likely giving them a pass to violate TOS, before banning you simply for posting an article.
Big words for someone from exploding heads.
That’s how it is on most internet forums tbh
I find it a bit ironic how so many people are pointing out how “growing is important to federation” specifically in reference to this… but at the same time, beehaw are one of the few sites that are against growth (as can bee seen by their requiring to get approved in order to join their server… which IMO is no better or worse than tilde’s invite requirement)… and, given the timing, it would seem that they are against hosting reddit refugees in particular.
Yes, you can claim it is for keeping beehaw’s site stable or curating users or plenty of other more palatable reasons. But at the end of the day, you are still turning users away. I have a lot of respect for kbin not closing its doors to new users, despite the load it is placing on their infrastructure.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind one bit if kbin/beehaw were defederated from each other (not advocating for it, just saying I wouldn’t care whatsoever if it happened on its own)
You can be for growth and against unchecked growth. The two are not the same.
they’re not against growth, it’s just not their priority and they don’t want to achieve it at any cost.
Which, honestly, I respect. If you know you can’t support growth then don’t push for it. Huge props to Ernest for dealing appropriately with the growth of kbin.social but I also approve of Beehaw’s approach - namely: we aren’t ready for that kind of growth right now so we aren’t going to let it happen.
I expect something similar will have to be put in place here at kbin as well sooner or later. Eventually we will run up against a limit of what Ernest can do being but a single man with but a single pair of hands.
You’re welcome to have your own opinions. But I think actions speak louder than words
And so far, based on their actions, IMO they are being a bit elitist. They can prioritize whatever they want… But by doing so, it becomes clear that they are not interested in the users leaving reddit, so I will not pity them when those users end up elsewhere.
Then again, I am not in the “p.c. language” camp - as anyone who bothered to read my screen name can tell immediately - and am probably not in the demographic they’re going for anyway.
You’re welcome to have your own opinions
wow, much generous. it’s not “my opinion” though, it’s something Beehaw’s owners have stated multiple times over the past however long have I had an account there.
But I think actions speak louder than words
you mean, like an action of not prioritizing growth?
it becomes clear that they are not interested in the users leaving reddit
they’re interested in forming their own community. they’re not trying to become a replacement for reddit and never have.
Then again, I am not in the “p.c. language” camp
it’s not “my opinion” though, it’s something Beehaw’s owners have stated multiple times over the past however long have I had an account there.
Your opinion or theirs. It’s obvious that you agree with it. I’m not trying to persuade you to have a different opinion. I really don’t care.
I do appreciate you not hiding the fact that you are a member there.
But my point is that just because they give some rationale that sounds good at first glance, that doesn’t mean that I am incorrect either.
I think any group that is restricting registration of new users - regardless of their goals or justification - is being elitist because it is restricting to only people some select few in charge deem “worthy” or in some cases, such as tildes random invite drops with extremely short time-windows, are more likely to gather users in particular time zones/regions. Maybe you dislike me using the term “elitist” for this but to my thinking, they are essentially trying to create echo chambers and are considering large segments of the Internet population as undesirables. They can put a marketing spin on that and call it “weeding out racists” or creating a safe space whatever they want but it doesn’t change the underlying facts. I see plenty of sites that avoid these kind of things without resorting to such exclusionary tactics.
And if this comes across as me trying to pin that solely on beehaw, that’s not my intent. I feel equally so about tildes. Again, you may disagree. That’s fine. I don’t care either way. I am very passionate about free speech, even for those I dislike and disagree with. And it is less that I wish to look down on beehaw/tildes/etc and more that currently, my opinion of them is that they are promoting censored communities, which is something I am opposed to. Perhaps that isn’t actually the case, or maybe they will change things. My opinion isn’t set in stone, and I am happy to revise it if and when new information presents itself. But as things stand now, that is how I see things.
Heh good one. Meant it more in the sense that they would probably not allow such a name there but yes, let’s go with me trying to be “edgy” ;-)
Anyway, as I said in my previous comment, I am not advocating to defederate with them. But if they later get butthurt about something on kbin and decide to defederate us, I doubt that I would even spare it a thought.
Edit: typos
nevermind
If you are referring to this
I wouldn’t mind one bit if kbin/beehaw were defederated from each other
then, unless you have some insider knowledge, I think you may be mistaken. kbin and beehaw are not defederated … at least not yet.
federated = joined in an alliance, e.g. linked
defederated = not federated, e.g. blocked / censored / not linked
source: https://beehaw.org/instances
Linked Instances
…
- kbin.social
oh my bad I misread
Where do you see this at? I see plenty of beehaw posts still so curious.
When I first read about the defederation I had a knee jerk angry response but after thinking about it I really feel like it makes sense for them. They want to have a heavily moderated space and it’s hard to do that when you integrate with the other communities. It seems to me they have a level head and are approaching this carefully. I hope that they end out being in the minority but I can understand having a few relatively solitary groups with a focused goal.
My biggest concern with this, is that it may keep many people from joining us / leaving reddit, as they also will have a knee jerk reaction, but won’t bother to look any further into it.
A good point, but honestly I think it barely matters compared to the fact you can barely use the home page right now.
Valid point.
Good news. Im on lemmy.world but I’m sure it will work out. As there is no corporation the users and admins can collectively work on share and own the tools for moderations.
Exactly. The improved moderation tools will help everyone and there is no reason to keep it to one instance because of the non-profit nature of the fediverse (so far). Good stuff!
And they’re open about it, rather than having it happen behind closed doors (or not at all), which is a good sign.
This alyaza character seems like a real gem. I’m imagining all the curious refugees checking the place out for the first time, seeing all of this censorship irony, and promptly going straight back to reddit.
and the paragraphs and paragraphs of intentional lowercase. at least, as an admin, they seem very engaged with the community.
The transparency is refreshing.
I see that in both the original post and now this update that the focus has been on improving tooling for Lemmy specifically. I’m worried that kbin isn’t having the same focus on moderation tools. Anyone have some insight into kbin’s roadmap?
Kbin is a newer project, the admin needs time to organize it, 2 weeks ago was just a hobby project, now it has +30k users.
I can say he is actively working on making it easier for admins and mods to regulate content.For sure – I just don’t want kbin to get forgotten about, because it’s got the exact same issues that got Lemmy.world delisted: a quickly growing userbase with open signup and limited moderation tools.
I understand, if you are interested you can join /kbin’s matrix room to keep an eye on the work that’s being put into the development of /kbin.
Well there’s this roadmap but it’s a month old and things have probably shifted given the past week.
I know it’s on their list, not sure where it’ll get prioritized. I shared a link to kbinMeta with beehaw.org’s list of needed moderation functionality, which applies to kbin as well, but so far the only comment is “jesus christ, here we go again with all this blocking bullshit”. 🤣
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/37130/Beehaw-s-mod-tool-needs-Useful-for-KBin-as-well-Discuss
interesting. I wonder what this entails for sh.itjust.works? I know y’all can be a lot… harsher than those beehaw guys. I wonder if beehaw is expecting a culture/tone shift? or just indeed actual moderating?
Oh no it’s a shame that they will wall themselves off said no one ever.
It’s almost like we need to create some kind of… Constitution that everyone agrees on for these United States… I mean, instances. Ahem.
“talk to us, let’s set out a road map, we are the reasonable ones”
When someone said they were very “Delores Umbridge”, they weren’t wrong.
