I am one of the admins of Beehaw and I’m trying to get some feedback on our potential move.
Let’s start out with a little Beehaw history before judgements are passed, please.
A handful of us were beta testing Tildes when we decided to have discussions on a Discord server.
We decided that our ‘Northern Star’ or guiding principle would culminate as ‘Be Nice’ with purposefully vague/flexible interpretations. Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.
We talked for a little over a year and some of our members became impatient. Then someone stepped in to suggest a couple of platforms that we could consider getting started with.
One of those platforms was Lemmy. None of us knew, at that time, anything about ActivityPub.
During the Reddit exodus (surrounding the API outcry and blackout), our instance exploded. We were, initially, crippled by the mass amounts of users seeking refuge.
Thankfully, someone stepped in and volunteered hundreds of hours of work to stabilize our instance and refine it further.
After many hours of talks, it became clear to us that our overall goal could be achieved outside of Lemmy/ActivityPub.
Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.
I don’t think you guys cared when you defederated from the rest of the fediverse and turned up your nose at everyone else. I’m not sure why you care now. You guys go and do your thing, but I don’t think you’re very relevant to the fediverse.
You speak very vaguely, and I don’t think you’re being fully honest with your reasoning, but by this point, I don’t think it really matters.
While I would understand your reasoning for doing so, I would be disappointed to see it happen. There’s decent discussions on Beehaw that I enjoy taking part in, however if you guys decided to defederate or switch to a different platform entirely, I doubt that I would make another account somewhere else to follow. I like Beehaw’s content, but I have enough accounts to keep track of these days after everything split from Reddit, so it would ultimately be a loss for me.
I’m not sure if this is a commonly-held opinion for those of us outside of Beehaw, though.
Totally agree. It’s such a shame the issues with lemmy can’t be fixed to Beehaw’s satisfaction.
I’m subbed to some communities on Beehaw and I would miss them. But not enough to make an account on Beehaw to get them back.
Beehaw as an instance doesn’t have nearly enough content to justify defederation. It wouldn’t be missed if they moved somewhere else.
That being said, I do enjoy the discussions and would personally be disappointed to see it move or be closed off, but not enough to move with it.
Removed by mod
I think the fediverse would be better off without Beehaw, so yeah, get off Lemmy and go build your own platform by yourself. I wish you the absolute best of luck, and thank you in advance for taking all the worst kind of people off the fediverse with you.
Why do you care what other instances think about it? I’m honestly asking and expecting an answer here. This isn’t a sassy question.
You built a wall and now you’re asking people outside of that wall what it feels for you to leave. Well, I’d care if I could see what’s inside the wall, but I can’t. I tried subscribing and it was impossible.
So why do you care what people outside of your wall think? Again, I expect an answer here.
Why would you care to read and respond in an ask-random-lemmy-users-for-opinions@major-instance if you wouldn’t be interested in random lemmy users’ opinions?
You’ve already defederated lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, so I don’t care
Came to say much of the same. If “be nice” is a guiding principal, defederation with a bogus reason then never refederating is a thing I’d like to see gone from the fediverse.
So don’t let the door hit ya on the way out
I always got death-cult vibes from beehaw. I expected their flame-out to be a lot more dramatig than this, though.
I feel like I’ve given my answer to this question regarding Beehaw once before…
But as I see it, the main driving force and overall source of value for services like Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc., is federation. That is to say, federation among a wide variety of different users and servers across the fediverse using protocols like ActivityPub is what sets this entire thing apart from legacy centralized and corporate social media, like Reddit or “X”.
I was initially on Beehaw myself and I liked the mature and kind atmosphere, but I ended up splitting for Kbin due to issues with defederation (on top of being curious and interested in Kbin as an alternative software to lemmy). But whether we’re talking about “Beehaw.org” or “Kbin.social”, in my view the federation is a huge part of the appeal, and I wouldn’t see myself continuing to use a server if it cut itself off from the rest of the network, regardless of whether they did it for “good reasons” or not.
Like, if Beehaw wants to be just a significantly smaller and more highly moderated centralized alternative to Reddit, that feels like a pretty weak pitch which, at best, might end up with a community roughly the size of a classic forum. I’m not really interested in that. I want the Fediverse to succeed as a decentralized, open, scalable, and community-moderated alternative to legacy social media. Frankly, my interest in Beehaw as a community hinges completely on it being a part of that movement or not.
I can understand how federation may have posed significant challenges towards your goal of detailed moderation and creating a safe and friendly space, but only in the sense that you were possibly not fully prepared for the level of exposure to a large number of federated users. But even so, if Beehaw is ever to grow into something bigger (which, to be honest, is not a given, especially if you set out on your own as just another disconnected and insular social media website), you will eventually have to deal with the harsh reality that the kind of moderation that you’re interested in doing is going to be a significant challenge as your community scales, federated or not. (For example, you may be prepared to moderate content in English, but are you prepared to moderate content in other languages? How will you know when someone starts spreading disinformation and hate speech in Burmese?)
Finally, I think you might want to consider the general movement towards federated social media. Between ActivityPub and the Fediverse, Meta’s interest in federating Threads, BlueSky being developed around federation to some extent, federation support in things like WordPress, and a number of other social media platforms tip-toeing their way into the idea, I personally feel that there is a pretty interesting paradigm shift happening right now. Some of that has to do with moderation, responsibility and government pressure on big tech, I think.
But nevertheless, social media is gradually moving towards federation, and I think that’s a good thing for the internet as a whole. You nice people at Beehaw will really have to search yourselves to determine whether you see the value in federation (both in terms of connecting people, but also in terms of allowing various communities to self-moderate to some extent) or not.
I do hope you’ll stay, even though it means facing the growing pains of moderation challenges sooner rather than later, because the fediverse is better with us all connected and communicating together. I’ll be sticking with the fediverse with or without Beehaw, but I do wish you all luck in your goals should you decide to set out on your own.
It’s over for beehaw already. Once they decided to ban everyone from the largest lemmy instance, it was over. They aren’t important to the fediverse, period, and never will be with their current leadership who have no idea what they actually want it to be, apart from their personal internet fiefdom.
The short amount of time I was there, it felt like a community built for the moderators and admins, not the users themselves. Frankly the fediverse is better off without them, so I hope they do leave.
Beehaw is my home in the fediverse, and I’m happy here. I like that they try to maintain a positive community. But if Beehaw left the fediverse, I wouldn’t come along. Which is a change from thinking I might last time I saw this topic come up.
If beehaw ends up in a silo I think it will just have too little to offer for me. And that’s ok. This isn’t about me, it’s about creating a safe space for your disenfranchised users.
I hope Beehaw stays, but I understand if they don’t.
I was a beehaw user for about a day. I had a lot of very pleasant interactions with other users, it was totally surprising how different and good the vibe was. And then an admin decided that a perfectly pleasant interaction I’d had with someone was unacceptable, called me pompous, banned me, and deleted the thread. And I’m used to being called pompous, because I have NPD and it’s one of the symptoms of my disorder. I can be nice and pompous, but only if someone’s willing to look past my disorder and see who I am and what I’m doing, instead of how I look.
So I would like it very much if the Beehaw admins left the fediverse and the rest of you guys stayed.
I would not like it.
I understand the issues for the people running Beehaw and they are totally real and understandable. That being said you have to appreciate that Beehaw is setting an example as one of the most popular instances on the Fediverse. What y’all are doing is not just limited to what you directly control but is also influencing this new and developing sphere that is the Fediverse. I understand that some people are resentful of how Beehaw enforces the rules of its own community, and I understand how a barrage of that can be extremely demotivating and tiresome. I have also heard about the absolutely despicable content that some mods have had to deal with which is extremely traumatizing which ideally shouldn’t have to be experienced by anyone. I would understand anyone who would want to never have to deal with that again since that would probably be my reaction.
In terms of ideas, I really appreciate that Beehaw is making a firm stand in the interest of free expression without being bogged down by prejudice and economic interests. The success of Beehaw compared to other instances demonstrates that the project y’all are working on is desired not only by Beehaw denizens such as myself but also those from general instances. This is despite what I assume is a barrage of negativity, complaints, trolling, and legitimately criminal behavior by those who do not support the kind of place which Beehaw is. I know it’s a big and unfair ask to want you guys to continue experiencing the things that cause you to want to make you abandon the fediverse, and honestly I wouldn’t blame you if you do, but it is very clear to me that the existence of Beehaw as it is is a huge draw to the fediverse and is establishing norms which can’t be accommodated outside of what we have here. Reddit sure as hell can’t offer what I’ve been experiencing on the fediverse, and I think that Beehaw is a huge reason for why that is.
You’re doing Truth social but with nice people. Very few people want to hang out in an echo chamber.
The foundation of your instance is a handful of sand, so I don’t think it matters if you stay or go.
Yeah forcing people to never be confrontational isn’t exactly a recipe for healthy discussion.
Beehaw is hardly and echo chamber. Generally defederation is done because of significant trolling or other negative behavior from an instance, not a disagreement with a philosophy.
I think an excellent example of how Beehaw allows opposing opinions is that you and I, who clearly disagree, are still able to talk about it.
The thing we want at Beehaw is respectful discourse. So long as neither party is insulting the other and conversation is productive it doesn’t matter if the opinions differ.
That said, I myself would probably not follow Beehaw off of ActivityPub. I prefer the content on Beehaw to most of the content in the fediverse, but I don’t want to maintain multiple accounts and Beehaw would definitely have less content if it moved off of the fediverse.
The problem is group dynamics. When you try to found something based on how different you are, things go well until you don’t have the external threat anymore. Now, the purity tests start.
I bear y’all no ill will I’ve just been on the internet long enough to know what’s likely to happen. In theory it’s such a nice concept. Good luck.
You don’t really explain why activityPub is limiting you. It’s hard to help you here.
I would say it’s probably the philosophy of the fediverse that limits them. There is a spectrum of opinions on every subject, including strong opinions and dangerous ones, sometimes both at the same time.
Having a safe space requires either control or exclusivity in my opinion. The fediverse affords you little control of instances outside your own besides outright defederation and banning of external users. Though arguably that lack of external control is one of the benefits of the fediverse as well. However, if their goal is a safe place for those they feel are disenfranchised and marginalized, they might be right that this isn’t the tool for the job. Though, adopting a different platform or strategy might limit their reach. I think that is their dilemma.
Aside from beehaw… The lack of a central control structure within the fediverse is fascinating to me. It’s reminiscent of the old internet, where everything was ran as its own little web island, and yet it has many of the benefits of the mainstream “mass market” internet of today. Over time, it will be an interesting experiment to study and be a part of.
Beehaw has already chosen not to be a part of the fediverse. There’s no real purpose in asking us; only you can resolve Beehaw’s identity crisis.
the only thing of substance are links to your websites and discord
Ah okay so this is what this is about. Very creative way to peddle your shit.
