Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.
Edit: A lot of people are asking why Beehaw did this. I want to keep this post informational and not color it with my personal opinion. I am adding a link to the Beehaw announcement if you are interested in reading it, you can form your own views. https://beehaw.org/post/567170
It’s important to note that the admins of beehaw are not happy about this solution, either. And they hope to refederate once they have better tools and enough mods / admins to deal with it.
They point wasn’t to shadowban, that was a side effect. The point was to protect their member–who specifically wanted a certain type of safe friendly instance–from hostile weirdos sending dick pics and stuff like that. Nobody’s happy with the situation, but it’s the best they could do under the circumstances with the resources they have.
I also don’t think it’s wrong for instances to have their own strong rules and preferences. This is one of the GOOD things about the Fediverse. The software features and how people use lemmy will catch up eventually.
As for the confusion / chaos around multiple/redundant/competing communities and so on…that will get better over time as people figure things out. Honestly it’s not that different than reddit with all of its splinter subs like “true-” whatever.
As for the confusion / chaos around multiple/redundant/competing communities and so on…that will get better over time as people figure things out. Honestly it’s not that different than reddit with all of its splinter subs like “true-” whatever.
That’s true for just the duplication problem, but the defederation / shadow banning issue is not one that reddit has and is pretty confusing and poor user experience for new users coming in.
This isn’t reddit 2.0. It’s a different platform with different mechanics that hasn’t had over a decade to mature.
Change is hard. People need to learn to adapt.
Right, but even non-reddit users would be confused by it. When everyone advertises lemmy as seamlessly integrating with all the different instances, it doesn’t matter what instance your account is on, this definitely is not that.
The idea behind federation is, that individuals host their own instance and connect (federate) with others individual’s instances.
But that’s not easy for less tech savvy people.
Except you’re not making a case for why they should rather than go to some other alternative once it pops up soon.
Expectation management… people need to stop pitching this on Reddit as the new Reddit then.
But… It is essentially identical in design to Reddit apart from the decentralised concept.
Which is a massive change that tbh I’m still not sold on.
Federation seems to cause more problems than it solves and it’s created so many fractured communities that it’s impossible to get involved in niche ones anymore.
It’s definitely more messy. I suppose the reason i left Reddit was that the corporate structure ended up compromising their ability to live up to the responsibility of running a community space. As running the community became increasingly subordinate to revenue the decisions of the corporate body became increasingly out of whack with the best interests of the community. The federated concept feels like a possible solution to that problem.
Well, new Reddit might easily mean better but also diffderent Reddit. Also, I am not sure whether people actually call it a new Reddit. Most of the time I heard the destription was a Reddit alternative which by definition doesn’t imply that it’s identical or even better in all ways.
But… It is essentially identical in design to Reddit apart from the decentralised concept.
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I foresee a lot of issues with defederation and the proposed mod tools in the future, as well. They can refederate but it’s not a good look for the platform when the federation can be fractured so easily. We have not seen the last of this issue.
I also question what it’s going to look like when these moderation tools are implemented. Lemmy has more avenues for moderation/admin abuse than Reddit, and less recourse for users. There are a lot of concerns here that just seem to be swept under the rug under the pretence that “you can always go to another instance”.
Ultimately it’s not an issue with the function of the fediverse, but with the moderation philosophy of the people running these instances. Particularly when it comes to the viability of voting. That’s a huge opportunity for suppression that I don’t trust certain admins not to abuse.
How does Lemmy have more avenues for admin abuse than Reddit? On either platform, the admins can technically do whatever they want. (Including editing users posts, spez). Lemmy makes it easier to just go somewhere else. At the end of the day that is all you can do.
The` point was to protect their member–who specifically wanted a certain type of safe friendly instance–from hostile weirdos sending dick pics and stuff like that``
They are making community policy around a single person?
I am not following.
With that being said, they can do as they please and other can do what they want. That’s the beautity of the protocol.
However, people shoudnt be surpised when others take the ball and play else where.
Looking forward to seeing how this works out.
That was just a typo. Beehaw has advertised itself as being a largely positive, safe online space. People who sign up for it would generally be considered to want that same ethos.
It’s not ideal at the moment but until the moderation tools improve it’s the best way forward if they want to stick to their ethos. I enjoy Beehaw and the admin do seem like they want to refererate when it’s possible to.
I’m on both Beehaw and Lemmy.world so I between the two I can interact with everything I would want to see.
I think they just dropped the s off members.
I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be “members” and missing the s is a typo.
Wow so much misinformed hostility against Beehaw here. The mod tools for Lemmy are currently limited and they just want to protect their community from trolls and spam. There’s no conspiracy here to break federation.
Beehaw is some pseudo moral purity echo chamber. They consider anyone with a contrary opinion a troll. People create these “safe spaces” under the guise of protecting minority groups, but fuck… I’m a minority, and I knew immediately I wasn’t going to be welcome there.
People are free to judge it as they please.
–edit–
Why aren’t other instances having this problem? Like if trolls and spam are such an issue, why do I only see relevant on topic comments in other instances?
The issue isn’t trolls, it’s political dissent. And if you care about the truth, if you care about having the ability to talk about and express your ideas freely to other people, to have uncomfortable discussions with people you disagree with, to be exposed to new ideas, and fuck… to possibly even change your mind, you shouldn’t support beehaw.
If you genuinely want that type of environment, go for it, but that place should be called out for what it is.
This type of political authoritianism is why I left Reddit. It kills discussion, and I’m here for critical discussion.
Why would you not be welcome? Is it for your political opinions? Even if it were, I don’t think they would personally shun you unless it entails attacking minorities.
That aside, and having said that of course it is everyone’s perrogative to judge this behavior, I personally feel it is an exaggeration. Not every instance is about free speech nor should they be, at the end of the day the fediverse is about creating communities, one is able and should shape them into what their vision of that is. This is not authoritarianism, in this case they said it is due to their inability to moderate.
Even if it weren’t for that, it is good that communities don’t federate with every instance, aa I said, not everyone is about free speech and changing opinions some are here to have a good time and for that adequate protection is necessary.
I myself prefer deciding myself when to block other instances, so I joined one that let’s users decide. But if other instances decided to block us I would understand and either move on or join another instance to interact with them without thinking much about it (having multiple accounts is kind of easy on the apps,)
I think I’m kind of used from servers blocking one another from my time on mastodon and I’ve seen the necessity of the practice, for example an anime focused group blocking bot instances, brigading, alt right groups, etc.
This is not authoritarianism, in this case they said it is due to their inability to moderate.
Rationally I think this is straight bullshit. Their inability to moderate is because of the desire to control the political direction of topics. If people want an echo chamber, fine, but I’m calling it out.
If people want an echo chamber, fine, but I’m calling it out.
Yes, that was always allowed. Beehaw is extremely up front about the kinds of voices and perspectives welcome on it. It never claimed to be a bastion of free speech. Complaining about that is like saying you don’t like a burger restaurant because they don’t serve sushi.
Dude this is a discussion based website, and you’re complaining about me complaining? Pot meet kettle.
you’re complaining about me complaining?
I think it was Alexander Pope who once said that bad criticism does more harm than bad writing. Same principle applies here. Your criticism is bad. You don’t like getting “called out on it,” then make a better one.
Dude I’m voicing my opinion. You apparently don’t even disagree you just dislike like I’m expressing it? What’s your deal?
Fine, I just don’t get the echo chamber feeling but admittedly I only use beehive for gaming/anime/escapism hobby related communities so I haven’t seen it being all about conteolling politics, at least not directly.
At the end of the day I barely get what you mean by controlling politics, since it is not apparent on the communities I visit. Also keep in mind, I’m not american so if this is about the culture war over there or a republicans vs democrats thing I probably won’t notice it since it hasn’t affected any discussion I’ve had.
But I would need concrete examples for me to see it as authoritarian because in a vacuum as I explained I can see communities pulling this kind of conduct without it being about controlling the discourse per se but more about helping communities.
Edit: forgot to say, but if it was over politics I don’t think that would necessitate a ban lemmy.world (or alternative ly that would mean complete defederation) since it has no clear political affiliation, I see it just it being massive and difficult to moderate otherwise they would have targeted many other toxic instances way before touching .world.
So if you take Reveddit, and go look at Reddit communities you’ll see massive political disparity in how comments are moderated. Go look at beehaw modlogs and you’ll see the same thing.
If you personally aren’t able to see the bias in moderating, sorry I don’t know how to teach that.
Beehaw lost me when admins allowed a female user to repeatedly insult men, say 95% of them are awful, that men shouldn’t even exist etc they claim they’re a “safe, welcoming space” but it’s actually hypocritical.
They defederated from this and other instances and yet I’ve never seen any comments reaching that level of hostility here. The only way to interpret that is that they actually are okay with insults and bigotry as long as it suits their whims. If a man had made the same remarks it’d be written off as the rantings of an incel and they’d likely be banned.
I should be their target audience as someone who has voted left my entire life and it’s too much and too controlled for me. Either they’re for all equality and inclusiveness or they’re not. Pick one.
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Eh, there were a few posts about this on lemmy.world when it happened. People went through beehaw’s modlog and could only find a handful of actions taken against both communities.
Seems they just want to have their own little bubble.
Safe spaces are pretty much that. I would actually like to join beehaw if I ever need to switch to an instance for my own sanity. I left reddit but it’s followed us here so I think a more curated experience would be nice.
That is unless they’re nazis, fascists, authoritarian or any other kind of violent extremist faction. I’m sick of having no faith in humanity because of all these backwards ideologies being “expressed”. To quote Costanza, these pretzels are making me thirsty.
I also don’t like how beehaw has downvotes disabled. I get not wanting there to be brigading, or negativity, but being able to downvote a troll, or a post that is blatantly providing misinformation (purposefully or not), is invaluable.
I think there’s value in it. The underlying idea is that if someone is wrong, even if blatantly so, you have to take the effort to explain why. On reddit, the downvote button was just as often used as a community cudgel against dissenting opinion, even when the opinion was 1) genuinely harmless but unpopular, 2) well reasoned and supported by evidence but something that went against the mob mentality, or 3) just something that people didn’t understand and their gut reaction to it was negative.
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Yep, I applied to join when I was fresh and it asks about how active applicants are. I was honest and said I wasn’t the most active person but that I did participate in the subs that I used the most. Was trying to be honest and didn’t see any red flags with that. They still denied me, so fuck beehaw
True, but unsubbed from them when it happened because I don’t want to see communities I can’t interact with.
Why add to the problem and have frustration with wanting to discuss something you are blocked from?
They have every right to protect themselves against spam. But that said, ever since they defederated, their activity and user numbers are down.
Agree that they have every right to handle their instance however they want. I also have the right to not interact with them while they are blocking the instance I call home.
Good. Serves 'em right.
It’s getting pretty tiring to see people feeling entitled to have access to any and all communities of the Fediverse, if the people paying for the running cost of the Beehaw instance wants to defederate (for whatever reason, “good” or “bad”), that’s their prerogative.
If you really want access to their content, apply to join, otherwise sign up to any of the dozens of lemmy instances federated to the rest of the fediverse.
One of the great things about the Fediverse in general is choice, user and instance admin can choose how they want to interact, and are not beholden to a company or group which can take any arbitrary decisions they want.
TLDR : Instance admin are entitled to how they want to run it, you’re not.
Ah, in less than 48 hours we’ve come full circle.
What beautiful dawns await us.
I’m entitled to leave to another instance. One of the main things to look at when choosing an instance is who they are federated/defederated with. I would never join BeeHaw Lemmy.world, or Sh.itjust.works because of their feud. I’d rather join a third party instance and have access to all the content on all three.
I signed up through sh.itjust.works - was this a bad idea? Only opened my account 2 days ago so learning the ropes.
I’m criticizing people criticizing people for criticizing people who criticize people who criticize…
You’re just as tiring as the people you’re criticizing.
Ah, in less than 48 hours we’ve come full circle.
What beautiful dawns await us.
Ah, in less than 48 hours we’ve come full circle.
What beautiful dawns await us.
@[email protected] , you should add a link to the announcement which explains why Beehaw defederated since this looks to be the top question many are asking.
Newbie here. Is there an easy way to identify a beehaw community? I’ve been hitting the subscribe button left and right to build up my profile feed and I’m just winging it here. thanx!
And this is why the fediverse will never work out - if I gamble wrong and set up shop on an instance that gets in a pissing match with other ones, I either have to make an account elsewhere (and then have to do it again later the next time two instances defederate each other) or live with only seeing some of my subscribed content.
Can you help me understand exactly how this will affect me? I actually have accounts on both lemmy.world and beehaw.org (I signed up for both when I initially found Lemmy and was trying to figure the whole thing out).
If I’m on my lemmy.world account, will I no longer be able to browse beehaw communities? On the flip side, if I’m on my beehaw.org account, will I no longer be able to browse lemmy.world communities?
Am I understanding things correctly? If that’s the case, then is the only solution to flip back and forth between the two accounts depending on which server the community I’m wanting to browse is on?
Basically. You can browse them with the opposite account but you can’t interact.
So it’s like getting banned from a subreddit, except you can’t even browse with the same account after being banned?
Yes browse. No post.
If you get an account on an instant that isn’t involved in this mess like FMHY you can browse both without any issue.
This was my thinking.
Is there an easy way to check if anyone has defederated from your instance?
there should be an instances button at the bottom of the page that shows it.
I might have to go here. I’m already tired of defederation and its histrionic champions.
Okay, guess I just won’t use it then if they defed from my primary instance. Glad they did this now and not later when they became bigger and more important.
If they’re that into making a safe space then fine. Hopefully some other people will also make more free spaces and both of them can exist and everyone can be happy.
I realize that is a highly optimistic outlook to put it mildly. I must remain hopeful to avoid losing my mind, if I haven’t already -.-
I reckon this will hurt Lemmy in the long run
Not if @[email protected] is correct.
At this point it’s too early to tell how well moderation can work in the long term. I’d rather they take it slow than burn out.
Same for any expectations regarding lemmy itself.
Is there a page where we can see which instances are ban-crazy and which ones actually federate and communicate?
this is completely reasonable, they own the instance and should be able to do whatever they want with it.
Anyone knows why this happened ? Hope admins dont ruin Lemmy for everyone.
When there was an influx of users during the Reddit blackout, they said that they were getting lots of trolls and they couldn’t keep up with the moderation. Lemmy.world and Sh.itjust.works had the most traffic and were letting people sign up without vetting so the Beehaw admins decided to defederate those communities.
Making it harder for people to sign up and interact with each other, during the most important week of the platform’s existence, I hope they didn’t take that lightly
So I don’t understand your mentality here. What do the people hosting servers as a hobby owe former R3dd!t users to make their migration easier??? Seems entitled to think people who are literally paying out of their own pockets right now for people like us to talk to each other owe us even more. Geez.
The person you responded to said nothing about being “owed” anything.
What do you think their point was, then? 🤔
That the defederation was a significant action?
I guess that’s where our opinions differ. Seems like it should be just a blip when someone wants to take their ball and go home. Just choose another ball, man.
That’s a hard action. Hopefully its temporary.
Beehaw has plans to refederate with sh.itjust.works, but no word in lemmy.world.
But since sh.itjust.works is federated with lemmy.world, if beehaw refederate with sh.itjust.works then lemmy world users will be able to interact with beehaw, (via sh.itjust.works) correct?
No, nothing would change in regard to lemmy.world until they refederate with it as well.
But since sh.itjust.works is federated with lemmy.world, if beehaw refederate with sh.itjust.works then lemmy world users will be able to interact with beehaw, (via sh.itjust.works) correct?
No, it’s not transitive, it’s like lemmy.world is blacklisted.
No, Beehaw it’s already Federated with a lot of other instances that are Federated with lemmy.World.
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Yep, they said they intend to federate again once they have access to better tools to help with the bots and stuff. Hopefully with the new influx of tons of people, that will also mean more people working on tools and apps to improve things.
Thanks
Just a heads up, we love our admins around here, they are great. Beehaw defederated from people because they were afraid of being able to mod everything with the influx of users with limited mod tools available. They will likely refederate eventually. For now I unsubbed from all beehaw communities and dont miss anything. The cool thing is if you do end up on an instance with admins you don’t like, there are like 10,000 other instances you can go to.
But the admins here are usually pretty transparent with everything going on. They are just some dude with a server in their closet. Not some cooperation that are making decisions with profit in mind. They are doing it for the community.
Just a heads up, we love our admins around here, they are great. Beehaw defederated from people because they were afraid of being able to mod everything with the influx of users with limited mod tools available. They will likely refederate eventually. For now I unsubbed from all beehaw communities and dont miss anything. The cool thing is if you do end up on an instance with admins you don’t like, there are like 10,000 other instances you can go to.
But the admins here are usually pretty transparent with everything going on. They are just some dude with a server in their closet. Not some cooperation that are making decisions with profit in mind. They are doing it for the community.
From what I understand, admins here are literally paying out of pocket AND volunteering their time to host us. Just as when I invite my friends over to my house for a BBQ, if one of them brings a friend that starts shitting in my pool, I tell them to GTFO and probably stop hosting BBQs for a while even though my friends who DIDN’T shit in my pool still end up suffering the consequences.
Thanks, current Fediverse admins!
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Disclaimer: pretty new to Lemmy a federation (older than this account though).
From what I gather, defederation is supposed to be a function of this whole system, but intended to cut off whole instances that refuse to moderate or are active cesspools. In saying that, I don’t understand Beehaw cutting off two of the other biggest instances. I know they have a weird mentality over there of no downvotes and saw some odd conversations condemning someone’s political views while admitting to not know the person at all (dafuq?).
It seems to me it would make more sense to block a single community rather than the whole instance.
Maybe they want a walled garden, but as new people come in and want as much content as possible to show that this is a better venue than Reddit, to me they give off the wrong message.
Am I mistaken somehow? Anyone able to enlighten me?
I recommend reading Beehaw’s statement: https://beehaw.org/comment/263590
As it is just text on a screen, I think there are more and less generous ways to read the post. But I think a lack of scalable mod tools (to combat an internet-sized influx of “bad actors”) is a reasonable (and hopefully temporary) rationale for defederation.
Having read this, I get what they’re going for, but also question the venue a bit.
With Lemmy being about federation, it sounds like they want to have a de federated mini Lemmy to themselves where they can decide who is allowed in or not. Not that that is a bad thing, if there’s a demand for it, but I think it’s different than what every other instance is about and maybe would be better as something like a Discord server (or FOSS alternative).
Again just my 2c, I just know I’m looking for a better quality alternative to Reddit, and an isolated instance isn’t my cup of tea.
Eh, I have accounts on both instances. I’ve appreciated the active moderation on some Beehaw communities - I’d rather discuss LGBTQ issues on Beehaw than other instances, for example. But I also like to see more content elsewhere, so I’ve got my Lemmy.world account too. It’s pretty easy to account hop when using an app. It’s reminds me of being a member of multiple hobbyist forums, in a way.
I’m still looking for an app that lets me browse using multiple accounts at once. I’d like to have a feed from Beehaw and Lemmy.World, for example. Defederation won’t be a problem if I opt in to moving in and out of their walled garden
You can do dat with liftoff for lemmy. They have and everything “All” Section where all of your logged in instance in the app is combined into one feed.
You can still subscribe to stuff on Beehaw from elsewhere it’s just interaction with it is turned off for now. It would be nice if an app had a selector for what account to post/vote as on the fly though.
So the question is it turned off for the blocked instances or is it just not visible to Beehaw. If I make a post from Sh.itjustworks, can someone from Lemmyworld see it? Or can no one see it?
As far as I understand, Sh.itjustworks and Lemmy.World are communicating like normal right now. So users should be able to post to communities in each of those instances, comment, etc. unless that user is using a Beehaw login.
Doing that on Jerboa right now. It’s great!
I’d rather discuss LGBTQ issues on Beehaw
Sooo… I’m nonbinary… and I got banned from beehaw for talking about my ex pushing their daughter into LGBTQ.
So who gets to decide what issues are acceptable to talk about?
I can’t speak to your personal experience in getting banned, but judging from your short comment history so far I wouldn’t want you on my instance, either.
Yet here we are communicating 👋
Admins and moderators decide on behavioral standards for their instances, just as it has been for every discussion forum that has ever existed. I don’t care to personally adjudicate your experience with Beehaw - I am simply sharing my own.
Sorry did you mean to respond to me? I don’t really see how your comment applies to mine.
Seems like the system is working just fine!
It’s important to remember that federation is just a feature in the end. As an instance administrator, you’re absolutely free to choose who to federate with.
I don’t see anyone giving Hexbear any shit for not federating with anybody.
People are just salty because they have some of the largest communities.
But they’re rightfully salty if Beehaw defederating themselves deprives this platform of a big chunk of content and users, especially during this month
That’s the thing. If someone defederates with you, and you wand a community on that instance. Then you are free to make the lost community in your instance. And if re-federation happens, both community can co exist without problems.
Also you can make an account on the instance that defederated. So you still can view the community you want.
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I disagree, they definitely don’t want their own mini Lemmy. They want a safe space they are happy with, and defederation the only way they can do that with Lemmy’s current mod tools.
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works make up about 20% of the acitve users in the threadiverse (source). That is a lot, and it sucks, but it’s far off from making beehaw an isolated instance.
Imo for now new users should be discouraged from joining Beehaw, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works, since all the content can be seen from other instances anyways.
Fair point. But I will say as a pretty new comer to Lemmy, it is hard to find an instance that you know will be a good fit.
“Safe space” for who?
They want a political echochamber.
When your life and right to exist as who you are is political, it’s nice to not have to deal with “debates” over that.
Beehaw is pretty explicitly a safe space for queer people and other members of minority groups, and their allies or just anyone who can take the time not to be bigoted or “Just Ask Questions”. They don’t exactly hide this fact ;p
They are much more proactive about it than other places, sometimes too much for my personal tastes (though I think about making an account there for when I don’t feel up for dealing with shit >.<) even if I respect what they are doing.
I don’t agree at all. The fact of the matter is I can’t even talk about my lived experiences being nonbinary in beehaw so to call it a safe space for minorities is blatantly false.
This is the “I have a black friend” of online communities.
From what I see, you said you said something about your ex “”“pushing”“” their daughter “into” LGBTQ. Which is stupid. 99.999% of the time this a bad faith argument from trolls and even if not you cant make someone queer just as much as you can’t make someone straight or cis. Queer people are exposed to intense social pressure to be cishet and yet we are still not. You can feel pressure into hiding or self-repressing or self-denying, but that’s a different thing >.<
Also, you can be bigoted while bieng a part of a minority group.
Choice is the point of federation.
I think a thing to note is that their community was here and well established well before rexxit. Rexxit put a lot of stress on many instances and their moderation ability, so it makes perfect sense that they might prioritize protecting their established community from abuse over being connected to every instance that intends to be a reddit alternative. There are plenty of instances they remain federated to that share their more careful moderation.
I expect that some time in the future they may reconnect with some more popular instances, as rexxit slows down and modding tools improve.
The nice thing about federation is you can choose to join more or less connected instances depending on what type of moderation you are looking for.
I think it’s also important for the this context to understand what beehaw is. They are an instance specifically created to be a more friendly, empathetic community. That made them a bit of a target when the migration started happening, as you might imagine.
Ultimately, they can do whatever they want. I understand that decision might rub some people the wrong way, but in the end it’s their community.
Frankly, after seeing the downfall of other reddit alternatives like voat, I think they’re justified. Young internet communities seem to be prone to being overrun by trolls and neonazis.
That’s not why voat is full of racists. Voats population surges came from racist Reddit communities getting banned. This is the first time there’s been a reason for other people to migrate off the site.
That’s not to say those racists don’t also share the same reason for migrating this time, too.
Thank you for the source
Why?
At the time LW and SJW had few barriers to signing up, so they had a higher rate of spam coming in and the beehaw team said they couldn’t keep up with moderating it. No idea if this is still the case, but they remain federated.
SJW is a wild abbreviation
Oh no, are we calling shitjustworks SJW now??
I thought about that while typing it but I thought it was kinda funny so decided to leave it haha
We need to replace dumb acronyms with better ones, anyway.
Maybe SHJUWO or SHIJUWO
I wonder if that was intentional on the instance owner’s part?
Nah definitely not. I don’t know about the owner but there was definitely too much “debate” on whether to defederate from exploding heads for my liking, felt a little too “free speech-y” so I set up on lemmy.world instead
