Beehaw is a community of individuals and therefore does not have any specific political affiliation. At this point in time, we do not know what the political leanings of most of our users are. I would suspect that many of them would identify as progressive because we are explicitly a safe space for minorities. What we stand for and the space that we're trying to make is compatible with many forms of politics. Unfortunately some political groups build themselves around and choose to elevate or tolerate hate speech. These are the only political groups that we are incompatible with. If any of it was unclear in any of the other posts, I will restate it all here. Beehaw does not tolerate hate speech. Beehaw is an explicitly safe space. We center and promote kindness because that is what we see and love in the world.
Some of the instances that we have chosen to defederate with have explicit political stances and ideologies. Their political stance and ideology had nothing to do with the choice to defederate. The choice to defederate was based on the amount of hate speech present on the instance and/or explicitly endorsing it. Since hate speech is not controlled on the instances that these users come from, we cannot expect them to change their behavior when participating on our instance. While users may exist on some of these platforms who do not spread hate speech, the choice to defederate is made to reduce the burden on our moderators and admins. Occasionally these instances or users from these instances will point their fingers at Beehaw and make claims about our political leanings or whether certain kinds of politics are banned. To be explicitly clear, the only kind of politics that are banned here are those which enable hate speech such as fascism.
Politics on the internet
Many, if not most discussions of politics on the internet are poisoned by virtue signaling. When they are not poisoned by virtue signaling, discussions are often just ways to vent emotions. I believe the reason for this is the platforms themselves and the incentives to engage online. On the internet I can adjust my level of anonymity. An adjustable level of anonymity allows me to change how I speak to others while simultaneously mitigating or removing any consequences to myself. This of course varies based on the platform and what I'm attempting to accomplish, but in the context of speaking with others on the internet, I can be relatively consequence free to say whatever I want on most major platforms. Particularly negative or hateful behavior might cause me to be banned off of a platform, but through the use of technology or other means, I can simply create another account (or migrate to another platform) and continue the same speech. In malicious terms, I do not have to worry about managing someone else's emotions or my connection to them.
In real life, on the other hand, it is not as easy to pass myself off as someone else. I must be much more aware of how I speak to others because consequences can be much more dire. When discussing politics with others, I may alienate them or myself and so I may choose to be more open to listen rather than soapboxing. The people I'm interacting with may be a regular part of my life and may be people I have come to respect. Understanding how they think might be vitally important to maintaining or improving our connection.
I am presenting the internet and real life as two ends of a spectrum but it is more complicated than that. There are people who are very visible and tied to their identities on the internet just as there are people in real life who use false identities created to mask their true identity. Interactions vary in level of connection, platform, and who happens to know who we are in other spaces on the internet. There are plenty of people who talk on the internet about politics with the explicit goal of changing the minds of others. Some of these individuals are not using this as an outlet to manage their own emotions. These generalizations are presented in this way because I need to talk about these patterns in the context of the platform Lemmy. I'm asking everyone on this platform to be wary of anyone who focuses on politics but is unable to explain the issues themselves. They are probably trying to deceive you, are virtue signaling, or projecting their own insecurities and you should be skeptical of their approach.
I would encourage all of you to think about incentives when presented with political drama online. It is easy to get engaged because politics has a direct and often scary effect on our lives. In this community, it is not difficult to find individuals who are regularly marginalized by politicians. Especially for these minorities, it is completely valid to get emotionally invested in politics and I would personally encourage doing so on some level, but we need to think carefully about the other parties present in a conversation and whether they are willing to listen or incentivized to do so. For the people who are hiding behind anonymity and posting to vent their emotional frustrations with the system they are likely not invested in the community we are growing here and it may be appropriate and healthy to ignore or disengage with these folks.
Forking
It is in this political context that forking from the main Lemmy development has been presented. People are quick to point to potential upsides of forking, but the upsides are an after thought presented as a means to bolster or justify forking. These justifications are for what is ultimately a moral issue. The question at hand is whether it is moral to use a platform developed by someone who has committed acts which one deems immoral. To anyone posing this question, I would ask them to consider what other technology they use every day and to trace the roots back to each invention along the path to today's day and age. The world has a colonialist history, rife with violence and immoral behavior. Unless you retreat the woods and recreate technologies yourself from scratch, it's impossible to live in a modern society without benefiting from technology built on countless dead bodies in history.
We do not have the technical expertise to create a new tool from scratch - all we can do is leverage tools that already exist to create communities like this. At the time we created this instance, the service we decided on was Lemmy. We did so with awareness of discussions around the politics of the main instance and developers. I think we've done a decent job outlining what we intend to do with this instance and explicitly made strong stances against hate speech and other behavior we do not agree with, including where we disagree with them. When taken in the context of computing in general, these political leanings are also not unique in their social and political harm as compared to some of the tech giants out there. The same is true in comparison to some of the famous tech inventors and innovators; in comparison to the history of computer technology; in comparison to the exploitation and problematic mining of rare earth minerals used in technology; in comparison to the damages we cause to the earth to create the energy used to power our servers. We can follow this path of thinking back all that we want to, and ultimately it's just not a particularly fruitful discussion to zero in on whether the political leaning of the main developers and instance are in perfect alignment with what we want to accomplish. We are not explicitly endorsing their viewpoint by using their software and we are not tied to using this software forever.
I cannot stress enough how much bandwidth has been taken up by these discussions in recent days. It been brought up as frequently as every few hours across Discord, Matrix, inbox replies, comment replies, new threads, and other forms of communication. We're currently dealing with a lot of other issues like keeping the server running, expanding to add more communities, moderating the communities amidst a huge influx of users posting and reply content from other instances, managing expenses, optimizing our server, planning for the future, and so much more. We cannot entertain philosophical discussions on all of the wonderful things we 'could do' when we're struggling to keep up with what we're already currently doing. We have not yet received a serious proposal for a fork which details operational needs when it comes to the maintenance, support, and resources needed to accomplish and maintain it. Simply put we do not believe a fork is necessary at this time.
As a final note, if there are things you'd like to see in this community we very much appreciate your input. However, this community has grown so large that I am already finding myself unable to reply to everyone and address everyone's concerns and I'm sure other admins feel similarly. Please consider whether your questions are better directed elsewhere - consider using the search functionality to see if others have answered the question; consider joining the matrix or discord to field questions to community members, or create a thread asking for help from your fellow users before reaching out to an administrator or a moderator.
If you feel strongly about contributing to Beehaw specifically or helping out with tuning or running the hardware, please join the Matrix or Discord and get involved in the relevant channels or discussions. If you want to contribute to Lemmy development, we would encourage you to dip your toes in, get involved, and get more familiar with the platform. Follow the Github and report bugs when you encounter them, or see what you can contribue to existing open issues. If you see technical issues arise with development, bring it to our attention so that we can act as mediators because we have collective power.
If you feel strongly about a longer term or larger project like creating a team to create documentation or helping us to legally become a nonprofit entity I also want to assure you that we love the enthusiasm, but unless you are coming to us with a formal pitch please spend your efforts self-organizing around this so that you can come to us with that pitch. Assume we know nothing about the field of expertise needed to accomplish any of these larger tasks and assume that we are extremely busy and unable to field or solicit advice without an executive summary and at least a draft plan of what the steps might look like, who would be responsible for those steps, anticipated concerns and plans for addressing them, and a timeline and estimation of resources needed.
My whole experience of moving to lemmy has felt like when people from another state move to a new one and complain about how awful it is and force it to change into where they left. If people are so absplutely offended by the politics of its originators, go create your own social media and stop harassing the poor mods, especially if the mods of this particular instance are trying go make your experience more palatable.
Lemmy is an AGPL software. Forking would just put a ton more burden on yourself with no real benefit.
I'd only bother forking if the original devs stopped supporting it and/or there were features you wanted but they refused to implement. What those dev's political believes are matter very little at the end of the day and it's ok for people to have different opinions.
All I'll say is, this is one of the huge advantages of FOSS. If a website is run by bigots and people tolerant of abhorrent behavior, that's part of the website. But if FOSS was written by someone of that ilk, you can take the toys they made for you and play elsewhere -- they showed their hand as soon as they submitted their project under an open source license, and it's too late now.
What I do think is worth mentioning is that I wouldn't be averse to forking conceptually -- on a political basis, sure, but as lemmy grows rapidly I think it's tremendously worthwhile to pay attention to any forks that fix issues and growing pains with lemmy as a service. It seems particularly restrictive on the backend in some ways (could be wrong) and I think that using a more feature rich fork should such a thing appear would definitely be to beehaw's benefit. But that's a conversation for when that day comes, and not one that should be predicated on "lemmy=tankies=bad" but rather on "does this fork serve our userbase more", which is both a healthier question to ask and one more in line with the community being cultivated here. All this is hypothetical or course, but it's worth talking to these ends early on imo
I’m asking everyone on this platform to be wary of anyone who focuses on politics but is unable to explain the issues themselves. They are probably trying to deceive you, are virtue signaling, or projecting their own insecurities and you should be skeptical of their approach.
Is that why? I notice some people will make some wild political assertion, and when I offer a counterargument or ask for evidence, they just repeat themselves. Frustrating.
I like this post! I follow some people elsewhere who are mostly hyping up kbin because the main developer of Lemmy is a tankie and the main developer of kbin maybe isn't - but it's such a weird thing to apply a purity test to. Other comments mentioned it but Lemmy is FOSS, so even if you disagree with the political leanings of the developers, you are totally free to do what you want with it.
Barring the presence of any backdoors (which would likely/hopefully be caught because, again, FOSS) the main developers don't have access to any instances created with the software. I don't really understand the concern.
Now, if there's a functional concern with the Lemmy platform and how it's being developed, then yeah, that's when a fork should be looked at. It shouldn't be looked at by an individual community (with a lack of people who can help), but a more widespread effort. But forking because the "lead" developer doesn't match your purity test? Nah.
I don't think anybody can say beehaw is in any way representative of lemmy.ml politics. As far as I can see, it's the farthest thing from lemmy.ml or any other politics on either spectrum. I actually think beehaw is a fine example of how independent different instances can be.
Hopefully not repeating things others have said...
Thanks for taking the time to write long thoughtful posts explaining the admin thinking, rather than just "we have decided X, live with it" posts.
It seems entirely appropriate to me for the admins to set the tone of this instance, through explicit rules, through deciding who to add as a user and who to make a mod, and through deciding which other instances to federate with. Anybody who disagrees can always start their own instance. That you're opening a coffee shop doesn't mean anyone can come in without shirt and shoes (bad analogy like all analogies).
It's entirely possible that I (older white male with plenty of income raised in a homegeneous white suburb) have some opinions that would be appropriate on one of those defederated instances but not here. I can always make an account over there if I feel the need to post those opinions. Likewise, if someone on a defederated instance wants to post here and can behave themselves according to the house rules, they can create an account here. This doesn't seem like a huge burden to impose on anyone.
During a long career as a software developers, just about every successful fork I can recall came about because a majority of a project's developers (not its users!) decided they had to leave a dysfunctional project. Until/unless Lemmy gets to that point it seems pretty silly to me to talk about forking the codebase.
Excellent response. I joined Beehaw because I liked Beehaw's rules and philosophy. Kinda reminds me of Mozilla's in beta Mastodon instance. Beehaw as an entity is completely separate from its technological roots and this post eloquently shows that.
I hope this eases any political harassment along those lines.
After a buzz over to Hexbear, I find the strain of far-left over there that is more concerned with backbiting and defending former-communist and current parody-communist regimes because blind 'if west bad, not west good' thinking, than any of the useful zones of leftist activity.
I didn't observe anything that was explicitly hate-speech in my 15 minutes buzzin' around, but it didn't really feel 'kind', if you know what I mean. I get why Beehaw isn't federated with them. For the record, I am a deeply left-person. I do think that stating "Beehaw has no specific political affiliation" to be somewhat naive. Midnight fueled thoughts incoming.
If Beehaw is "explicitly a safe space for minorities", then we must ask "Why do we need a safe space for minorities?", "Where does this need come from?" all of which begs questions about power, hierarchy, control, the sources and motive of hate and oppression, and a dozen other related questions that will each need some meaningful response. This leaves you with a couple of choices.
We become horribly reductionist (and naive) and just handwave and say "Because we need kindness, and there is hate." But then, why are we in need of kindness, why is there hate? Why do we need more love? Different hole, same warren. This route I think trips you up in the "unable to explain the issues themselves." You might retreat to the escape hatch of "focused on politics", but ignoring something so pervasive and in-your-face as politics is a conscious and focused political act. People who ignore politics are some of the most deeply political people on the planet. There is no escape from politics.
The other option: We confront and grapple with the beast, and reach conclusions, answers, and stances to the best of our ability about these issues that lie at the heart of a community's formation, what we want for it and for people. This is basically the formulation of an ideology or identity. Maybe not a concrete one, but one that will broadly align with some subset population and unalign with another. Maybe this doesn't quite fit with Beehaw's vision of community, but at its most over-simple, a community basically defined by both who is in, and who is out, and the nature of those assertions.
Bullet 1 is (in my opinion) unsustainable; it will present a nice facade for a time, but eventually people and events will make people dig, and dig, and dig. Some of these incidents will put people in a place where they won't have clarity and purity that comes from deliberate soul-searching, but will be wrapped up in moments of fear, panic, hate, outrage, and other emotions that will bias the rudder towards things the admin may find unpleasant. People come to strange and often harmful choices and beliefs when they don't have a wellspring of strength to draw from, and instead have to find it in the moment, or as is often the case, give in to the storm (excuse the purple here. It's late as hell for me). I think this is evident in just about every major online community of the past.
So as I run out of energy: I think you start thinking about some broad stances, or people here will start thinking of them for you. That "we do not know what the political leanings of most of our users are" may be a dangerous sign that there isn't really a pulse on the kind of community you're building, and are accidentally just throwing together a place where people gather.
Echoing the thank you for taking the time to explain and elaborate on yalls stance. I wasn't even aware of lemmy's roots - but I see beehaw's roots and that's all I care about. Looking forward to spending time and energy on kindness and love in this little space.
We are not supporting fascism by using a software used by fascists. It's a tool, and it can be used to create something stunning and beautiful instead.
On mostly subbed to Bewhaw communities with some Lemmy.world and one or two lemmy.ml so far and I haven't noticed ant nastiness anywhere else so far. If it would start becoming common I'd just cut ties with those communities or maybe even all communities from a specific instance if it's gone that far.
I'm hopeful that Beehaw will stay wholesome and probably most other instances as well.
It would be kind if neatto have the ability to personally block instances as well as communities in the future but so far it's not needed. Plus I'm sure our administration would cut ties with instances that manage to actually turn bad.
If anyone is really bothered by the creators of Lemmy and don't want to use their product there are always kbib I suppose? When their federation is working again you should be able to sub to all your favorite lemmy communities there too right?
So.. not sure what my point with this post is except that I'm happy with the current situation.
Wow thanks so much for putting these thoughts out there with all the complexity and in open language. I also (yes progressive left here) thought about the other sites and tools I use and made the decision to go with beehaw because of the community. As you say it's a messy colonialism-coloured world in many ways so the best place to start is with community values.
That’s a very sensible approach IMHO and resonates in unison with my own opinions on the matter, so I couldn’t be happier about this post!
I have to say that I was a bit worried after the creation of /c/socialism, not because of the ideology itself (which, to be fair, is probably one of the political groups I feel the closest to, but that’s not the issue), but because I was worried that it was an “official endorsement” and political affiliation of Beehaw, and would create drama, discourse or echo chambers.
This post proves that it was not the case or even the intention, and that’s really reassuring. It might still cause issues as people from other political sides (rightly) ask for other communities to be created, which is not a problem in itself, but might still create conflict and discontent in either side.
The explanation in this post makes me quite confident that you’ll be able to handle these challenges in a smart and sensible way, though. Thank you for that, admins! I’m glad that I picked the instance I did.
I'd just like to commend you on your choice of language here. You're more diplomatic than most politicians! Well expressed and I support the principals you put forward.
The question at hand is whether it is moral to use a platform developed by someone who has committed acts which one deems immoral.
The platform is a tool, much as anything else is. The intent and message is what separate the use of tools. BeeHaw has an amazing intent and purpose. Creation or developer of the tools should not factor into using such.
A few years ago it turned out a very promising python documentation library was using another library for a core aspect of the docstring comment parsing subsystem. I don't remember the names of either of these two, but as it turns out, the person who wrote the docstring comment parsing subsystem was someone who liked using the Nazi-Facing-Swastika as his repeating background image on his site and as textual glyphs to denote things like list items. He claimed it was everyone being too stupid to know he was using it in an eastern context, but he had an email like firstname_lastname88@gmail or whatever.
The point I made then is that even if FirstName LastName was running into a culture-shock situation, and even if they just happened to like the number 88 - or maybe they were born in 88 - there was simply no way I wanted to tie myself or my employer to that person. Nobody is going to extend any grace.
I guess I don't even think that is necessarily a bad thing. Why should people stanning genocidal authoritarian regimes be extended grace? Is it only okay if they can give us something, like a nazi scientist building space rockets? Is it simply because they gave you something you can't get anywhere else without paying more than you'd want to? I actually don't have an answer for this. I felt fine telling PossibleNazi88 No, and AccidentallyLinkedCompositionalLibraryAuthor Sorry, I'll pass, and in large part that is because Sphinx does exist and I can use it, even if I'd prefer not to. But what if this library were the only one? Would I just hold my nose and use it anyway?
Same with Lemmy - can I get it in a different package? A similar fediverse community package, without the gross genocide cooties all over it? This is a practical question; maybe this is reason enough to want to host a kbin instance over lemmy, eventually.
But philosophically: What if the next fediverse community package is from a Patriotic American, who has no problem with all the first peoples genocides and chattel slavery history because they believe in America so much that it's an intrinsic part of their identity?
It sucks because I want to make everything better, and I believe that to be true of Beehaw administration for sure as well, but navigating this shit is hard and even if you're principled you're probably only principled insofar as you're aware.
Conversely, doing the thing you know to be wrong just because the alternative is hard and maybe impossible isn't good either. But maybe you can use the genocide-fan's product to do more good than harm? But now you're back to nazi scientists making moon rockets, and nobody is happy.
I guess I'm just rambling while I admire the problem.
Is it possible to have a list of de-federated instances from Beehive? I think it may be good for transparency, even if I am pretty satisfied about how things are being done here!
Honest question: can you define ‘hate speech’? Because in theory I agree it should not be allowed however in practice it generally means ‘political ideas that I disagree with’ are banned under the guise of hate speech rules. There needs to be specific standards clarifying what the rule actually is.
Hypothetical example: am I allowed to take a socially conservative stance on gender-affirming healthcare or would that be considered ‘hate speech’?
Part of the divisiveness of our politics today is that people segregate off into their echo chambers where extreme positions are rewarded, amplify, and a purity contest of one-upmanship emerges. When you gather people to talk about issues rather than team affiliations the exteme divisiveness subsides because it becomes less about personal identity.
Also, some people are just dicks and it's better if they're not provided with a safe space where intolerable behavior is reinforced as acceptable.
Out of curiosity, how did you come up with the current list of defederated instances? Clicking on the first several links leads me to believe most are Mastodon servers and a good chunk of them don't even exist anymore. Is the list largely based on some pre-existing list maintained elsewhere in the Fediverse?
I don't pretend to change anything of how this place works, specially considering it's federated and, as you say, presumably different spaces can be forked and "set up their own rules".
I remain, however quite keen to see if the "no hate speech" is a consistent thing or simply a "hate is ok against the right targets" and "being on the other side of X issue is hate speech" (e.g.: any controversial topic such as being against a particular war, being in favor of/against political party X, expressing views opposed to government policies, not sharing a specific view by the demographic majority of the site (Usually US/UK/AUS)).
Ideally, I can set up something where I can get exposure to many views and go here and there without having to feel I'm in X circlejerk and the narrative is packet Y, that comes with all these predetermined views in this overton window.
In a way, the more I have access to, the better. Because I can move from side to side learning about the others. Obviously, this view is not shared by many and thet would gladly censor 75% of the space to preserve the right way, claiming it's "moderation". I don't disagree on moderation but I think that we're too interfered at this point that we don't even see how little room we have for discussion (which then creates very narrow discussions in different niches).
In any case, sorry for the stream of consciousness. Excited to see how all this works and hopefully I'm able to participate and gain insights from a wide array of perspectives in a wide descentralized network.
Thank you for creating a safe space! When I look at other communities many people are arguing about some content filling their feeds and I was wondering what their problem was until I discovered Beehaw did a great job avoiding instanciating (is that a word?) with problematic places, keeping my feed clean and safe ☺️
And I agree about the forking not-issue. If we had to look at every item, service, or infrastructure we used every day to check for its origin we wouldn't leave our bed, and probably our bed could be part of the issue too!
I would love to have this as a generalized text to be shared between instances. I'd use the general mood of this post as basis for the rules for all my instances. Maybe on GitHub, which then can be edited through pull requests and discussed.
I originally joined Beehaw, but decided to run my own instance because why not. I still prefer subscribing the communities in Beehaw just due to this way of thinking. I hope the moderation works for you and doesn't get too bad.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I definitely appreciate this piece and the body of pieces around Beehaw's policies and philosophies. I can imagine it eats at time that's likely quite important to have in the current circumstances, but the writings are invaluable insights to consider and try to apply going forward.
The fact that we have Lemmy at all, let alone the growth of ActivityPub and federated platforms, feels like the kind of miracle that would stop Aaron Swartz from spinning in his grave. Tech often has a particularly wild way of making one face their values and pick their battles. I have issues with Amazon, for instance, but I can't stress enough how a massive chunk of the internet these days relies on Amazon Web Services to get online, and I could say likewise for Microsoft or Google. I'd swear off their services if I could and embrace a hardline FOSS stance, but if I went through with that, a lot of my employment opportunities wouldn't consider me. I could probably make it happen if push came to shove, but it would be a legitimate challenge that I'd feel a lot less secure in, and I don't exactly have the safety net to afford that.
I wouldn't consider it to be hypocritical or a bad thing to pick and choose your battles. On the contrary, I think it's a mature and necessary approach in a complicated and difficult world. I'm finding it hard to think of anything in my life that doesn't have controversy and tragedy at some point in its production or history. All of it warrants resistance and change, but if I were to give everything the drive it deserves, I think I'd turn to dust.
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I agree that a fork isn't necessary right now. It certainly has no technical necessity—if anything, it would probably be technically worse to splinter the developer force. I can respect there's a moral argument to be made for it, and I wouldn't fault someone for preferring another platform over it. I think Beehaw has done a respectable job at philosophically separating itself from the controversy, however, and at this time, I'd say that's enough for me at least.
Another consequence of hate speech shifting from intolerable to a mainstream political opinion over the last few years. It's sad to see, and crazy to watch happen in real time.
I am new to Lemmy and also to Beehaw. Does defederation mean that we can't load comments/threads/communities from defederated servers via Beehaw (and vice versa for users of instances Beehaw has defederated from)?
Unless you retreat the woods and recreate technologies yourself from scratch, it’s impossible to live in a modern society without benefiting from technology built on countless dead bodies in history.
This makes complete sense, I also think open source and federated platforms like this give users the most autonomy from the creators of the software when compared to other platforms. I do wish there was the ability to port users and communities across instances, though, kinda like you can do with mastodon. I understand that would be hard for the developers to create, but I think it would help with the creation of a truly free platform.
Furthermore, I think some of the concern around some primary instances is a little overblown, as most of the larger ones have their own policies against bigotry and fascism. However, I understand that the type moderation between instances differs, and that is the best part about federated services.
Question, you mention that the only instances you block allow fascism, however you have blocked both Lemmygrad and preemptively Hexbear, both of them are Communist in nature, and I feel that this is crazy to need to point out, but communism is the polar opposite to Fascism, and they are ideological opposed in every way, You will never find a more ardent anti-facist than a communist, so I feel like this is a bad faith attack on these instances. I also would like to point out that First Hexbear has not federated, nor made any plans to federate with Beehaw, over concerns with Beehaw moderation, and Lemmygrad has Rule 2. No Bigotry Rule 3. be Respectful and Rule 5. No Right Deviationists (No fascists), and they are very well enforced, and Rule 3 in particular is better enforced there than over here on Beehaw.
Any advice on how I can remove beehaw from my all feed in Jabora?
I find these types of environments produce echo chambers where suddenly I'm not even able to give my perspective on gender as a nonbinary person because it goes against some mainstream perspective.
I have other reasons, but yeah 😝 Fuck mods trying to control politics, I want free discussions, otherwise I'd just stay on Reddit lmao!
If anyone can give me instructions on how to remove beehaw that'd be greatly appreciated.
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Also if anyone can recommend any instances for open discussion!!
I respect your philosophy and believe you should do what is best for yourself and the community. Also want to point out that by forking, you might be closing the door to allies and those who fall through the cracks due to the registration system.
For example, I initially tried to make beehaw.org my home base, but maybe I didn't include enough info in my registration statement, because I'm still not approved. This was what I wrote:
"I'm signing up for Beehaw because Reddit is essentially killing the 3rd-party app I use to browse reddit (Reddit is Fun) and I refuse to use their mediocre official app. I want to join this community because it seems diverse and polite, and if Reddit is preventing me from using their site the way I've been doing for the last 9-ish years then I'd rather go elsewhere. As to what I can contribute, hopefully add to the conversations here and be a part of this growing community. The wonderful thing about Reddit is that for the past 9 years I've been a user, there was always someone who could answer my questions on virtually any topic, and sometimes the roles are flipped and I'd be lucky enough to be able to provide answers to a random stranger instead. I've shared mods I made for games on the site and participated in gaming and political discussions, but otherwise mostly spent my time scrolling through the news and enjoyed reading discussions on various topics. I'm sure you guys have received an influx of Reddit refugees recently, and like them I hope to make Beehaw my new home."
Like I said, maybe not enough info, but I believe my politics and philosophy jives with the Beehaw community. Now, getting rejected (or put in limbo) is not a big deal because I can still participate freely from lemmy.world, and most of my subscriptions are to Beehaw instances (news, politics, gaming) so in all honesty it doesn't make a big difference. But the point is that if Beehaw was forked, then someone like me would be cut off from this community. As a minority myself and someone who considers themself an ally, I want to reiterate that you should do what you believe is best for the community and yourself. I just wanted to give my own (biased) opinion on the matter.
The question at hand is whether it is moral to use a platform developed by someone who has committed acts which one deems immoral.
The question for me is actually is it ethical to contribute to his repo.
I think my idea is maybe the contributors are seperate from the code. A fork happens when code is rejected because a maintainer does something unpopular. Wait for that to happen. FOSS has a history of dealing with uncomfortable maintainers, like Linus.
First off I would like to thank the beehaw team for there excellent work. I doappreciated your work.
However, as someone who has conservative values, I disagree about your statement of neutrality. Your choice to use the word "minorities" clearly demonstrates that you have a political agenda. Furthermore, you use the term hate speech without actually defining it.
With that being say, I agree that we should not allow offensive or harmful language. I think all people deserve the right to not be targeted for personal choices or characteristics that they can not control. I also think people should be respectful of ideas even if they disagree. Targeting someone because you don't agree with them should be prohibited. It also comes to my attention that many alternative social media sites end up becoming home to antisemitic and racist ideas. I support free speech but it can get out of hand quickly. Beehaw should work to have a clear system for moderation that is fair and can be protested in the case of bias. There also should be a transparency report by users in order to keep the administration honest. We must not let this community be tained by harmful speech but we should try to address it with compassion.
I just made a lemmy.world account after hearing about the mods on lemmy.ml, but when I posted a picture of winnie the pooh, the comment was deleted, and I was marked as a bot. And it sounds like beehaw's not open for new registrations.