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.
This is a false dillema. With reddit you had no choice but to accept the top-down decision. With federation you are free to take your activity and traffic elsewhere. If you don't approve of the decision being made here you're not beholden to this community and the choices of its administration.
I swear people have completely forgotten how the internet worked before Reddit. If you didn’t like a platform you could just…leave. Walk away and make your own and if enough people shared your feelings on the matter, another community would form. It happened all the time, there wasn’t really a monopoly. The fact that we can feasibly do that again (even better in a lot of ways) and people still act like one volunteer-run community drawing a line in the sand over what is acceptable and what isn’t is some catastrophic blow to freedom of expression truly shows how deep the centralised social media brain worms have burrowed.
IMO that's because a majority of reddit users didn't use the internet in the pre-reddit days. Reddit's been around for 17 years, and mostly has a young (teens to 20s) userbase.
One volunteer-run community out of 700+… there are still 699+ other options.
I keep seeing the complaint that Beehaw is being a bully and preventing people from accessing Beehaw’s excellent content and community. Do they ever stop to wonder how Beehaw managed to have such excellent content and community?
Yup, before I got to reddit if a community did shit I didn't like them I just vamoosed. Even with reddit, you see alternate subs popping up after a disagreement with the primary
For real the choice used to be "swallow it and be happy" or "just don't use reddit". If 60% of people are happy with this decision they're making (for very pragmatic reasons, I might add), then the other 40% can choose to stay or start accounts in other instances; or both.
In all seriousness I agree and it's really nice being able to make that decision for myself, because I prefer a more peaceful and moderated community personally. To each their own and I'm thankful for the Fediverse for letting us have that choice.
The problem is that there's a limited number of big instances that may not fit your need. In centralized social media you are also free to go on a competitors so in the end there's no big difference.
Curious, what does federation have to do with that compared to standalone sites (like multiple people hosting Tildes instances or something)? Still not super clear on all the details of how this stuff works.
Your user account exists here on beehaw.org. That means you are subject to the rules and moderation of the people hosting the server that your account lives on. This means that you will only be able to interact with other instances that the admins of beehaw have permitted (or in this case, not blocked).
My account is on zemmy.cc, a server that I own and maintain. This means I can take my identity to any server that will allow me to federate with them. If they decide they don't want me as a part of their community for whatever reason (which is their rights as owners of the server), I can take my activity elsewhere.
This is in contrast to a site like reddit. If reddit dictates a ruling you don't like, it doesn't matter what subreddit you're a part of, you're subject to those rules across the entirety of reddit.
Think of it like a neighborhood. I'm from a different town and just visiting. You can kick me out of town, but I can just go visit other towns. I don't live in your town so I only have to follow your rules while I'm in town.
Reddit in that neighborhood example would instead be like an authoritarian country, where everyone under their domain is subject to their ruling.
That's where the "I can leave your town and go to another one" comes in
I can leave Beehaw and all of the rules that they impose and go elsewhere. Except I'm not leaving anything, I'm just browsing a different federated instance. I'm not even writing this post from beehaw.org, my browser is currently pointed to zemmy.cc
This post, this comment thread, and even the notification that you replied to me were all part of my zemmy.cc experience. Beehaw the site effectively operates like another subreddit from my perspective. If I don't want to follow Beehaw's rules I can just browse another site from the comfort of my home instance. That is what federation enables that can't be done with a centralized provider like reddit.