safe space

Beehaw "moderators" don't have an issue with their user base checking out other communities. As is clearly obvious from the fact that they aren't defederated from all other instances.

They do have an issue with droves of unvetted users from other instances trolling and harassing their community though. And the most effective way to deal with that currently is to defederate from the instances that the majority of those bad-faith users are coming from. The unfortunate (and unintentional) side effect is that Beehaw users won't be able to interact with any of the users from those instances.

This is a situation born out of a combination of

lack of manpower and moderation tools
gaps in the configuration of inter-instance interactions
the way the internet works

You can disagree with this decision and users are free to switch, but this meme is a poor caricature of the actual effects of Beehaw's actions and (at least in my estimation) of their intentions.

The decision to defederate is less of an attack or an indictment against the other instances and more of a practical necessity for them to protect their community.

If the user base of the lemmy verse keeps growing I wouldn't be surprised if either

more granular control over the way instances interact with each other is implemented and the restrictions are softened or
the amount of spammers and trolls reaches a level that forces more instances to vet their users and the defederation is lifted entirely or
more powerful moderation tools show up and in combination with a greater number of people moderating makes the pre-screening of users unnecessary

I saw a wave of the harassing spam they were getting right before they defederated. One was a meme about lynching drag performers. Another was a picture of an erection that was posted in what looked like every feminist and trans friendly space, asking if it was bigger than the ones owned by the denizens of the communities. I'm sure it was just a small fraction of what they were dealing with as more shitty little hatemongers find their way to Lemmy, but I happened to catch it by sorting by new at exactly the wrong time. I can't blame the Beehaw mods for not wanting to deal with the psychological toll that comes with manually moderating that kind of content.
- I saw dick-pic spam.
  There's a lot of words we can use, but its a lot faster to just say they got harassed by the whole slew of NSFW-spam, porn-spam, harassers and such.
Yeah. I'm surprised by how hostile ordinary users have been at this point. Beehaw defedrated after the mods were swamped and most of the content they had to deal with was from these two instances.
I have accounts on both and I was just reading a discussion on beehaw where both the owners of lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works had chimed in and everyone was talking about how to get federated back in the future after beehaw have had a chance to get more moderators and the influx of users stabilizes at the end of the month.
My only gripe is that all of my negative interactions at this point have been with people from lemmy.ml so why do they remain while the other two were defederated? But that might be just my experience.
- I think shit and world got defederated because they don't have that "why do you want to join" question on the sign up page, and so is easy to make spam accounts on.
Yeah I agree. They've been quite open about everything so far and their main issue was the modding implications of open sign up. The tools just don't exist yet to manage it effectively and keep the kind of community they want, so it's just easier to defederate for now until they do. They have a dialogue open with shit just works and said that the admin of lemmy.world hasn't replied to their message, but that it's fine if they don't want to talk too.
I am a bit disappointed that inter-instance sniping has started so early though. I personally am on both instances and am going to try and treat both in good faith for now
- Fortunately, @ruud made a comment https://beehaw.org/comment/298646. They should be working together soon.
No, the meme is accurate. The owners of beehaw are so obsessed with protecting their users from possible harassment that they are willing to put them in a prison with no communication with most of the outside world (lemmy.world has the most active users and sh.itjust.works is in top 5).
- And the users on beehaw are free to create accounts on other instances if they want. Your prison metaphor is a bad one.
- I have a BeeHaw account and a lemmy.world account. I'm not imprisoned lol, it's the Internet, not some.private island. Nothing's stopping anyone from browsing or joining any of these communities
- Users are people capable of making their own choices. It they don't like the moderation approach they can just make a new account elsewhere. You don't get to tell them what they like.
- fucking lmao
  as if they can'f make an account on another instance
  y'all are just hurt because you think you're being rejected and insulted by this, when they made it clear that it wasn't personal or permanent

Dislike the meme, because I fully believe the beehaw decisions have solid, purely technical, grounds.

The very existence of that community boils down to people screaming the word "Tankie" at one another while trying to reproduce the most cringe corners of old Reddit.
Beehaw mods are just another group of power tripping nerds common to the social media space. These technical issues are all outgrowths of their desperate need to control discourse.
- I swear I've never heard "tankie" before a week ago and now I'm on Lemmy I read it 50 times a day.
- I see little proof for that yet. They behave like a small forum which reached its capacity.
- I mean that's literally what they say in their sign up form, but a bit more self congratulatory, so it's not really a surprise is it? They don't want to deal with randos and reserve the right to kick anybody out for what they consider "asshole" behavior.
- You know you really nailed it when you hit that equal up/down ratio!
thats great! people think differently.
I'm hoping they re-federate soon after their technical gripes are ironed out. Seems like a promising community, but only time will tell.
- https://beehaw.org/post/594843 It seems like there is work on it, but the lemmy.world owner does not respond to beehaw admins

And this a prime example of why the multi-instance system is great. Don't like one instance? Go to another one.

EDIT: I also wish to say that I feel both sides of the situation have merit. Yes, it sucks that we've been defederated, but in all fairness, there legitimately was an issue with abusive users causing havoc over on Beehaw.

Yeah I think Beehaw have a clear ethos and want to protect that. I think the misunderstanding is from the new people influxing into Lemmy/Kbin (me included) - they don't have to be a part of the wider Fediverse. They're big by the standards of Lemmy/Kbin when people arrived so people are suprised that they don't seem to "want" a big influx - they were expecting them to embrace redditors and want to be the new reddit. They understandably want to be able to moderate their communities and that's difficult with the current tools. They may also want to screen their users which may not be ultimately sustainable in a federate model.
Beehaw will continue and succeed in it's aims but it's probably not going to be a big player long term, but I don't think it wants to be the mass choice. Lemmy.world and Fedia.io / kbin.social at the moment seem like more likely bets long term as they're embracing the growth, and analogous communities to big familiar Reddit communities are being created which will be clear places to go for future influxes.

Let them do what they want. The communities you wanna check out will be available elsewhere with time.

What bothers me about this is that the administrators at sh.itjust.works, beehaw.org, and lemmy.world are all being adults about this.
While this Reddit-like stampede is already trying to create an us-vs-them environment.
It's fine. The adults are adulting. Maybe a bit of Reddit deprogramming is all that is needed for people to become more reasonable.
- Exactly! I'm new here (from Reddit) it's very clear that some of us new ppl are getting confused as to why instances are having to defed and are getting upset at the admins.
  We are the reason!
  The admins are working hard with the extra traffic and increased exposure to content that may not have previously been welcome in their communities.
  My fellow Reddit refugees, post and comment on the content you want to see, not the drama and the uncertainty right now. Find your ppl in the new communities and start sharing and conversing like the good old days on Reddit.
- I'm hoping that the overall lack of certain systemic encouragements from commercial socials that everyone has become horrifically used to interacting with will squash a lot of this kind of behavior over time. That is, the bullshit no longer serves the algo that doesn't exist herre, and the lack of positive feedback will either cause them to change their ways or just leave.
  I wonder if Lemmy's upvote system overweights the first few upvotes the way Reddit did. That drove people to make high engagement posts since a sudden flurry of comments on a rage-bait post tended to slingshot stuff to the top reliably. If Lemmy doesn't do that, it will help. The lack of eyeballs in Lemmyverse should discourage bots to some degree.
  I'm hoping the same for Mastodon. A LOT of the behaviors that people have internalized come down to trying to game the algorithm with hot takes and such, but the limited virality of the Mastodon platform will hopefully discourage all their usual bullshit, or they'll go.
  I think the people who just want Reddit will return to it, at least for a while, since Lemmy was just their methadone and the heroin store is back open now. Me, I've been peeling away from both Reddit and Twitter for a long time so I'm ready to move on. There was a distinct culture on the Fediverse before all these sudden surges in users, hopefully once things settle that culture will get a chance to assert itself again.
- The us vs them mentality is such a default human reaction, one that you have to actively battle in yourself.
  I like the whole idea of federation and I think the more we use the platform the better and more tailored our experiences will be.
  It's a ground up, organic process, and we're still figuring it out. I think things will naturally develop, because that is how this system is set up.

Nothing wrong with that imo. If you don't like it, just use another instance.

This system means people can foster their instances to be however they want, and that's great!

Also, fyi, if you're on lemmy.world, leave any beehaw comms you've joined and join alternate comms in other instances. The beehaw comms are going to be very empty on your end soon.

I also predict that their comms will die out in a few weeks, unless they federate again.
Still, interesting challenge to the whole federation concept, if it’s even possible for you to shape/customize a community of people, if you have to let anyone in from anywhere.
When I was registering to lemmy, BH was already big, I read their rules/concept and was thinking how would that even work (e.g. no downvotes) with federation.
Let’s see where it goes, but I would be happier if we all stay federated and build a big userbase, rather than fragmenting into small silos, and having 5 different versions of a topic-based community with a few K users each.
Is there an easy way to shift an account between instances? Or do you need to start from scratch with a new account on each instance?
- Not any that I know of. Doesn't matter much though; there's no karma system here to worry about, and you only really need one account on an instance that isn't controversial like lemmy.world and lemm.ee, and really, most instances.
  You can check if an instance is blocking any others by clicking 'instances' at the bottom of the page.
  This beehaw thing is very rare. Just stay away from the instance and its comms for now until lemmy's improved further to support this massive wave of users.

beehaw initially seemed like a nice good natured well rounded place but they got controlling and weird very quickly. never even let me in, i typed pretty good faith answers and haven't heard shit ofc

check out their modlog. they have way too many unnecesary bans or post removals. wasting energy instead of focusing on the real trolls.
- How do I filter modlog to only show logs from given instance? I’ve entered modlog that is available at bottom of page on beehaw and also different instance and the modlog is quite similar with some beehaw entries not showing up on other and vice versa.
  I assume the modlog is combined from all federated instances, so I can’t really tell what actions are made by beehaw unless it references community belonging to beehaw.
Toxic positivity is absolutely a thing.
- God I know people like that, the most normal social behavior gets interpreted as hostility and is met with aggression.
I'm surprised they didn't just ask for more mod help.
- Probably a lack of people with the same vision and trust as the admins
I'm on the SDF instance. It's a small instance that seems to Federate with all the big ones including Beehaw. It has manual approval but only asks one question and approval is within a day.
Also the host platform has been around since 1987.
- SDF gang rise up. Love the historical aspect of the platform
There's always a chance you might have unfortunately been overlooked from the sheer amount of applications the admins have to sort through daily. I had to resubmit my app twice to get through, same answers and all. Got approved in under 30 mins
Beehaw was almost responsible for me not joining this service at all, got frustrated when I couldn't log into my account a week after I made it and nearly gave up entirely.
- Yup I had this experience too. I've read that their denial emails aren't being sent out by their mail server, but it really felt like they just ghosted me.
Maybe they want to turn it into some kind of cult?

Coming from sh.itjust.works. It seems there is a pattern of some attacks to forcing defederating some lemmy instances. Those threads can be found on both sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world. There are several vocal users dominating those threads (some user even reaches 20+ comments written in the same thread). Those user whose complaining user has total against, and already hostile to the instance they dislike, and interact to the other instances with bad faith, provoking, and insulting those instance. I believe this is some sort of coordinated pattern to break fediverse into echo-chamber.

IMO, defederation should be used as last resort, because normal user, especially seeking small niches, will be affected the most. In case of beehaw, there are tons of factors that are justifiable. I wish this defederation drama is not become the defining feature on both lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works.

I believe individual user can block communities and users, plus block instance feature is in the works. I wish the people who starts those threads can just do that.

I wouldn't be surprised if reddit is cooking some shit up on their end tbh.
Can you link to those threads? It's my opinion that coordinated attacks like that should result in bans. Can you ban users from other instances on your instance?
- Yes.
  The problem is that sh.itjust.works has an open-registration policy. So when Beehaw.org banned a user, they just made user2@sh.itjust.works and then user3@sh.itjustworks (etc. etc.) and Beehaw.org kept getting flooded with dick-pic spam.
  The underlying question is one of open-registration vs closed-registration. Furthermore, its compounded by the fact that Mastodon-like moderation tools don't exist yet (Lemmy is much newer), so solutions from Mastodon don't exist yet.
  It sounds like Beehaw.org is pretty confident that Mastodon-like moderation tools will allow them to open back up.
- It is still me just under different account. I decide seeing if the defederates posts settle before I reply to you.
  On sh.itjust.works, This user creates several threads and comments to making wave hating on exploding-heads.com in last 24 hours and he is proud of the clout he generates. There are also several brigading kbin.social people replying to my comments as camoflaging as sh.itjust.works people; in my instance kbin.social people do not have their @ domain. I am correct on this one; there are several trolls try to abuse defederate feature disguised as community voice as they please.
  In this instance I immediately see another post, that is posted in the same day here. However, this attempt immediately backtracked by the OP, so I think this is different than what happens on sh.itjust.works so I am wrong on this one.
Yep it's definitely a grand conspiracy and totally not an inevitability in this type of system. Could I also get your opinion on the moon landings?
- There is no moon.
- not OP, but sure
  they filmed the moon landing on the moon
  all of that footage we have? Fake
  they did travel to the moon but they faked all of the footage on site (the moon)
  also Kubrick was there

Yeah, they basically make you write a cover letter. I don’t even write cover letters for jobs I want. Definitely not going to write one to be approved for an Internet forum.

all i had to do was write a sentence or two and i got approved instantly
- What was the sentence

if they want to hide in a lil hug box that is their perogative

I think it’s a fair point. They won’t be able to remain federated to many instances if their point of contention is open-enrollment.

I understand needing the Lemmy moderation tools to improve and that it’s temporary, but the damage to their own communities and users may not be temporary.

Their users will turn inward and end up preferring their own communities—which is fine. However it also means that non-beehaw users will shy away from those communities in favour of others, lest their home site get de-federated at some point for the same reasons. These effects combined means slow-to-grow, low-visibility communities in the fediverse, and increases the chance that their communities may dwindle if others of the same subject become pre-eminent outside of Beehaw.

In short, while I understand their reasons, I think that it risks making Beehaw.org permanently insular and ultimately much more similar to a non-fediverse website.

Exactly. The point of the fediverse is the federation. Without that, you have a simple online forum from the 2000s. Congratulations, your time machine worked
I think their problem is open enrollment in combination with lack of moderation and mod tools to handle that. Defederation is not permanent, as Lemmy implements better mod and admin tools instances which have defederated to mitigate spam or trolls can start opening up more again.
I think that is currently already in the process of happening. The reactions to the announcement from Beehaw users can generally be split into 2 3 categories:
Support, we should keep our communities insular
Neutral, I support whatever the admins decide
Opposition, I'm leaving to an instance that isn't insular
EDIT: Added neutral, because on reflection there were quite a few posts like that
This means they are already self-selecting for insularity, which means the resulting userbase is very likely to want this "temporary" solution to become a permanent one.
This isn't necessarily an issue: if the userbase is happy with their insular nature and are comfortable with it, and it's clearly signposted on the sign-up, then after some network healing where we build communities separate from Beehaw everybody gets what they want
- It's also not an either or. You can want to be part of Beehaw to have a close-knit home base while also singing up for other instances to bop around on.

They've only been the most popular instance for like 3 days and the mods there are already power tripping.

Unfortunately, "Defederating" is the same as "Banning yourself from everybody else", so I trust that people will vote with their (virtual) feet and move to instances with a more diverse set of federations.

They are not power tripping, if you've read their posts you'd know that they have a very concrete view of the story of community they want to build and unfortunately their manpower and moderation tools just don't allow them to stick to it while staying federated with rapidly growing communities.
- Which is why I'll say it again and again, the fediverse might've been the wrong choice for building a community like they want

I can't believe that people paying to host an instance want it to not get flooded

This is 1984 or something

No they just want to avoid the toxicity

They had some quality communites. Ah well, we can make them here with blackjack and hookers.

Most of them already have popular alternatives
- what are the popular alternatives to blackjack and hookers? asking for a friend

can anyone tell me what happened to the beehaw?What I only know about is that it's about CCP.

They only have 4 admins for their server and the massive influx of people across the board, but mainly Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works being two of the biggest instances with open registration, was apparently causing them issues.
They have a very curated instance they’re wanting to have and that’s on them. While they’re in the top 5 for users currently, that probably won’t last. As more people join, they’ll end up joining instances that don’t ask for answers to question forms.
It’ll be fine. Beehaw will refederate or they’ll wither.
- Fine in the long term, but a bit annoying in the next weeks. They had in my opinion already big gaming and tech community, with some interesting discussions, and now we are more fragmented, making the whole thing less attractive and straightforward for new users.
They defederated us because we allowed open registration
- ...go on..? And...?
  And because this instance had open registration, it quickly became one of the biggest instances. Trolls were using the open registration + federation to harass their community. Because there are a lack of mod tools and the fact they only have 4 mods, they couldn't keep up. In order to keep the community they wanted in tact, they decided to temporarily defederate until they're better equipped to handle it.
- That's kind of an oversimplification. The de-federated because they only have four mods and didn't have the ability to effectively moderate all the users from large instances with no vetting process.
beehaw doesn't have moderators, only 4 admins. they have closed signups and try hard to curate a particular style of community. lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works have open signups. some of those users went on beehaw communities to troll, and the amount was too much for beehaw admins to manage in terms of moderation. so they defederated.
- Why can't they find mods? Lol
I heard their message boards were getting lots of death threat level nasty messages, the mods said it was too much to deal with case by case.
- So begins the game of broken telephone.

I think it's a healthy part of the growth of the Fediverse. Maybe it ends up being a good idea, maybe not. Hopefully everyone can keep an open mind and learn some lessons along the way both with successes and failures. Let's be real, if this is what kills the Fediverse then the Fediverse was doomed from the start.

This is all early days and I'm just enjoying the ride. It's really just refreshing that it's not some VC backed mega corp making these decision.

I'll be honest. I really do feel their argument about open registrations is a weak one. Reddit is effectively open registration. The only thing you need on Reddit is an email and then you're in.

The moderation tools are a fair point. I really do feel like they really want to make in their eyes a safe space. Which is their perogative but not something I personally vibe with given how much they are deleting and removing. I've rarely had to step in as a moderator in the places I run, most people are behaving. One total person I had to ban and they were not from Lemmy.World.

You don’t even need an email address for Reddit
- Around 2017 they started requiring it, I think? I told a friend a few years back to make an account and he refused due to the email requirement

Can... can we not have a situation where I have to sign up for three different sites to replace Reddit?

Just use a n instance that isn't beehaw, like lemmy.world. that is one.
- I think the main problem we’re having is that you can’t migrate accounts yet. It’s a pain to restart on a new instance. Hopefully this’ll get worked out soon!
This just means beehaw is going for a smaller and tighter community.
Just join non-beehaw comms from your instance. You only need one account on an instance to see and interact with everything, including kbin communities/magazines
Just dig around for a smaller instance that is federated with everyone, such as the one I'm using

lemmies: laughs at beehaw defederating

also lemmies: "hey we should totally defederate from exploding-heads"

This is hilarious!

Hilarious, I thought the same thing. Safe space locks doors. Ehh whatevs it's how all this works anyway, right? Which is something I'm not totally sure I know anyway lol.

Just realized I can interact with deleted posts lol.
- I wonder what it was...

how apropos

Can someone explain fot new users what the hell is beehaw so we don't subscribe to them.

I wish I could block all beehaw communities from showing up at once. And no I'm not going to move instances to do that, that is a completely stupid concept. I just want to filter everything that includes their name.