I thought the whole point of federation was that everything from every federated instance was connected and I only need one account to see every part of it. The fact that federation has been the only discussion since the blackout is not good for the alternatives to reddit. My whole life is tech and if it's this distracting to me I can't imagine any remotely average user being interested. The fact that this was the perfect time to be part of an alternative but the whole experience has mostly just proven reddits "give it a week" response true.

I do think it's fair to criticize the decision to try to be one of the largest instances while only having four moderators. They should have accepted a place as a midsize instance with midsize communities in order to maintain their moderation goals. Or they could have worked to get more moderators. Blaming the defederated instances and mod tools seem disingenuous at best. That said mod tools undoubtedly need improvement.

I mean some people absolutely do love and feed on drama, but is that who we want to attract? They're not the nicest bunch to have around in my experience.

exactly this; the whole point was so instances could pick and choose who they wanted to interact with

I'd always heard that federation was good because if you get an instance infested with fascists, you (and everyone else who doesn't want anything to do with them) can just cut that instance loose and let it drift away

I guess others thought different?

Isn't the whole point of the fediverse that you get to create and craft your experience for your community? There's a really good reason defederating is a feature. I don't get it, Beehaw decides to use the features of federation so now we: firstly become tribalistic (them vs us), and secondly decide to get angry? Like it or not, this is what you signed up for when you wanted federation.

I don't see the point of getting angry like this, and really don't see how this negativity being conducive to a thriving community. Some new people are going to explore fediverse, see tribalistic mudslinging among instances, and say "not for me."

I'd say respect their decision and move on, if it's not for you it's not for you.

Yeah I don't feel quite as harshly but as soon as I saw they didn't allow downvotes I knew their philosophy wasn't for me. Too bad about losing their gaming group though.

That's been my view too. There's definitely a need for moderation, but I've been on the internet for quite some time and the vibe from Beehaw is very much concerning. Any time I've seen a community run like that, it always always ends up feeling like an echochamber run by a dictator. I want an internet that's mostly wholesome, not a "happy fun camp where there's all smiles and you had better not frown!"

And like all echo chambers, it will inevitably collapse

I have a beehaw account. I've only experienced one user who's a bit too intense about their thoughts. Everyone else has just been chill. The admin aren't defederating from lemmy.ml, the other big instance, and have no plans to do so. They really were just overwhelmed by the two feds they blocked because of trollish users. It's not as intense as you make it sound.

I think it's great. I want an account there for the occassions when I want to visit a safe space or a SFW website. It doesnt have to be your identity. You can go to different instances in different contexts, for different modes of interaction. And a third unrelated instance can remain federated with them both, if that's amenable to all parties.

Well we are one of the largest instances out there with open signups...

Good riddance. I like the no-downvote style but overzealous mods just create their own pillow fort of the same 5 users regurgitating the same shit over and over.

there are already users over there asking this very question lol

You're not banned from looking at anything. Just go to their instance, abide by their signup rules and don't do the shit they defederated to avoid.

A very good take on the pros and cons of this kind of thing.

Personally as someone with an account on Beehaw I don’t think I’ll mind mostly. I’ve been pretty happy with the communities they have already made and been quite impressed with content amounts.

Let’s be honest, this federated forum/link-aggregator is in its infancy. Rexxit brought it into the lime light and just kind of put a magnifying glass on these sorts of growing pains.

I’d like to point out that most of the criticism I’ve seen has come from outside the community. I don’t feel like this will be a long term thing only. It’s really an attempt at trying to preserve the community brand and feeling for its members especially while things are still young.

The admins at Beehaw have been explicit that this choice is not about locking their users in but about keeping bad actors out. But all of this is new, so the tools to accomplish that are crude for now.

Certainly so. From a sort of... sociological point I'm wondering what the impacts are of major instances growing independent of each other. I feel like I can already feel it with kbin and lemmy both growing separately during the blackout. I'm wondering if the trend for major instances is going to be where each one has their own unique culture or if they will eventually homogenize.

Only real concern here, although I didn't participate during the mastodon surge last year, I heard that defederation became a bit of an issue with how common there. Granted, I feel like the impact is probably less here with the fact that you are interacting with topics rather than people.

The admins are probably modding the communities because they probably created them but the proper solution should be to find mods, not just defederate

No one on beehaw can create communities except the admins, with the promise that they will personally split the ones they have into more distinct topics as it becomes necessary. As such, that also makes them automatically the mods. It's one of the reasons I decided against it, as well as.... * gestures to headline. *

I was quite curious what removing the downvote button would do to foster actual discussion, since its use is frowned upon in my one remaining reddit kebble sub, and everyone who remains each week is shockingly cordial with one another. Pity to see beehaw crashing and burning so fast like this.

I feel like the concept of "decentralisation" is good for the consuming users and people who want to discuss an interesting topic/subject, but not really for OC/content craetors... They just want their work to be as exposed to as many people as possible (exposure -> more clients -> bigger brand/value -> profit???), and defederalisating goes against that principle.

I think the issue is that everyone's so focused on seeing Lemmy as a "notReddit" that they outright get pissed when it doesn't work the way they think it should (like Reddit except the parts they think are bad)

Lemmy (and kbin, and other similar platforms) and Reddit have the same niche, but they're not the same thing

Exactly. I've been trying to rebuild my account on lemmy.world but it's disenheartening and honestly makes me want to not bother. The answer isnt defederating, the answer is find some mods.

Or they'll just be a smallish instance building the kind of community they want to build. There's nothing wrong with knowing what you want to be and not trying to be more.

Ostensibly they don't wish to scale at the expense of the quality of their community.

They can't scale. They will survive, though. Other generic Lemmy servers are overshadowing Beehaw as a generic Lemmy server. And it is fine for both them and Beehaw, IMO.

my friend ive been on beehaw since it launched. we dont care for scaling.

What if they don't want to scale?

They did this?

Ok, that's the definition of a powertrip. And exactly what we want to avoid.

We sse it on some communities here btw, some mods owning 60 empty subs. I hope there is a reseting of subs ownership after a month of zero content and activity.

Just make an extra account... I don't know about you, but I have a ton of reddit accounts, on reddit I already kept my participation separated and I used containers to quickly switch between them. It's fine, I wouldn't even notice a difference.

If you make an account on beehaw you cant see anything from lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works. Same in the opposite direction.

beehaw blocked lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. so people on beehaw can't see lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works content/users and vice versa.

thats really not the point of federation. the point of federation is consent. beehaw doesnt consent to being federated with lemmy.world. it just makes sense.