ANNOUNCEMENT: defederating effective immediately from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works
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.
I see this being a very slippery slope. Part of the nice thing about the fediverse is being able to interact with other communities on other instances. I can easily see Beehaw starting to defederate with more and more instances thereby severely limiting the amount of communities that are accessible. I see the trigger being pulled to defederate from every other instance just to stop any unwanted things from happening.
I easily could see the trigger being pulled to defederate from every other instance just to stop any unwanted things from happening.
i'll be completely honest: i don't know where some of you are earning the confidence to speak more on what this instance will do in the future than us, the actual admins who decide what will be done in the future. i made this point elsewhere, but, to reiterate: if we wanted to defederate from everything we'd legitimately just do that and be done with it. we don't really hide what we intend to do here. the most we've even considered is--if things deteriorate for some reason--switching from an explicit blacklist to a whitelist which would still allow federation with other communities, because we like federation and we want to preserve its good use cases while still being able to minimize the ones we're running into here.
i'll be completely honest: i don't know where some of you are earning the confidence to speak more on what this instance do in the future than us, the actual admins who decide what will be done in the future.
I'm not speaking on what the instance is going to do. I gave my opinion on where I could see it going based on this action. That's why I said this is a slippery slope. The more instances that get blocked will cause people to sign up on other ones thus causing the same issue to happen but from a different instance. The only reasonable decision at that point would be to defederate from everything.
Again this is just my opinion and thoughts on the matter. The defensive and slightly hostile tone back reminding me I'm not an admin and therefore shouldn't speak about what I thought might happen wasn't really appreciated. This is supposed to be a place about open dialogue correct?
Emotions may be running high right now and I think we're all dealing with a level of communication we're not quite used to. It's hard to not be annoyed and vaguely escalatory when thirty people all ask you the same thing in thirty different ways. This is a space for open dialogue and I'm sorry if you felt alienated in any way 💜
It's hard to not be annoyed and vaguely escalatory when thirty people all ask you the same thing in thirty different ways
That's going to happen though. Most people are going to comment before reading through the comments. If they read through them at all. As I said to the other admin, if it's not possible to not be hostile in their response maybe it's time to stop responding for a while.
This is a space for open dialogue and I'm sorry if you felt alienated in any way 💜
And yes I did. Even more so after the second response that still had more attitude towards me without a hint of an apology. It's hard to feel this is an open dialogue space when other admins aren't willing to stop themselves or apologize when they are doing one of the main things this instance is trying to not have happen.
Sometimes disengaging is the right choice, even when it's from the people you love most in the world.
I'm not in control of how everyone acts here and there's a lot that's going to fall into a gray zone. What's interpreted as an attack or as an escalation will vary from person to person. Some people will be more triggered by some content than others. At a certain size, there will likely be people who just don't like each other but play nice when they are in the space together.
Where we are choosing to draw the line for acceptable behavior is decidedly much more aggressive than most of what's on the internet but it isn't perfect and there's gonna be some conflict that happens. I'm sorry that conflict is painful for you right now, I don't want anyone in the community to be upset. 😔
I’m not speaking on what the instance is going to do. I gave my opinion on where I could see it going based on this action. That’s why I said this is a slippery slope. The more instances that get blocked will cause people to sign up on other ones thus causing the same issue to happen but from a different instance. The only reasonable decision at that point would be to defederate from everything.
the issue here is 1) this goes against basically everything we've said in the thread to this point, so it's kind of irritating to see your opinion ignore all of that; but also 2) there is a huge logical leap being made in the assumption that "the more instances that get blocked will cause people to sign up on other ones thus causing the same issue to happen but from a different instance". as just one obvious confounding variable to this idea: instances don't all share the same culture, norms, or moderation so you can't assume problems on one would become problems on another, and most of them also have a barrier for entry so entry is not a given.
I would really appreciate it if you could drop the attitude with me. In all the comments I read I didn't once see this addressed so I'm not ignoring a damn thing. There will probably be other people commenting something similar who won't even bother to read other comments first. It's how people operate. If you can't keep yourself from getting hostile towards me and other people as an admin maybe it's time to stop responding to people tonight.
Even if we limit ourselves initially by defederating, it gives the mods a break, and allows us as an instance to work out what instances we’d like to federate with. That seems a better way of going about it vs opening the flood gates on the idea our users will have greater access. Growing pains suck. This will work itself out. Right now, the Reddit blackout left many of the trolls with no where to go and a carefully curated instance probably looks like an easy way to get their fix.