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.
You are free to do whatever you would like with your server, but I won't pretend this is isn't pretty disappointing.
I've enjoyed this community a lot from what I've seen so far, and was very happy to have my main account live here.
However, while I appreciate a place that is focused on being nice, and freely hostile to the hostile, I'm not interested in an experience so sheltered that it feels hidden from the world at large. In regards to your statements that you wanted to avoid an echo chamber, this action seems very contradictory.
To be clear I don't think your issues were small. Trolls flooding your instance from larger instances is terrible and must be overwhelming and unsolvable for your small mod team. However, I see this as growing pains for a platform like this. I expected a response like petitioning your recently grown community for additional moderators. I didn't expect a rejection of the larger lemmy community and the growth it has been experiencing.
I'm not exactly certain how all parts of federation work yet, but I hope I'll be able to find a server that is a 3rd party, and federated with major instances as well as beehaw, where I can make my new account, and see the greater breadth of content I desire, without being cut off from beehaw. If anyone could recommend a server, that would be greatly appreciated. If that isn't how it works and isn't possible, then at least, thank you beehaw for introducing me to the fediverse.
To be clear I don’t think your issues were small. Trolls flooding your instance from larger instances is terrible and must be overwhelming and unsolvable for your small mod team. However, I see this as growing pains for a platform like this. I expected a response like petitioning your recently grown community for additional moderators. I didn’t expect a rejection of the larger lemmy community and the growth it has been experiencing.
growing pains are still pains, and we want to mitigate those pains rather than letting them rip. we think this is a pretty good, non-permanent way to do that.
additionally: i feel like you're making a point that undermines your own--you're basically describing why more moderation isn't really a solution to the problem right now. we have a finite number of man-hours to work with, and trolling can disproportionately burn through those. while we can improve the number of man-hours by throwing more mods at it, there's still:
only so much we and those mods can do with what the tools we have;
and only so many people willing to be mods that we also trust to wield those tools, particularly given the recency of the bulk of our membership.
additionally, the mods have a finite amount of time to work with themselves, and it's just not reasonable to constantly lean on them for what is ultimately unpaid, not-infrequently-distressing volunteer work (we have already had CSAM posted on here, for example). we don't want to Facebook them--they are real people we want to treat well and not as disposable, particularly since they're not even being paid to do this. and you can of course say "well, they're volunteers, they know what they're getting into, they can withdraw at any time"--but like. is that a good standard? is it the best we can do? i don't think so, personally.
I wasn't trying to make an argument or specific point, just share how I feel on the situation. if what I said contradicts itself, it is because I am not of one mind on this.
I don't think you did anything wrong. Despite that I am now motivated to not be a part of beehaw, and that feels bad. I think beehaw is great.