wols 156 points 3 years ago

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

save

path: 0 280614, hotness: undefined, score: 156, children: 57

asclepias 70 points 3 years ago

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.

save

path: 0 280614 289343, hotness: undefined, score: 70, children: 2

dragontamer 17 points 3 years ago

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.

save

path: 0 280614 289343 290077, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 1

Reliant1087 44 points 3 years ago

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.

save

path: 0 280614 282291, hotness: undefined, score: 44, children: 2

MeButNotMe 23 points 3 years ago

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.

save

path: 0 280614 282291 283027, hotness: undefined, score: 23, children: 1

wildeaboutoskar 22 points 3 years ago

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

save

path: 0 280614 282562, hotness: undefined, score: 22, children: 2

cura 20 points 3 years ago

Fortunately, @ruud made a comment https://beehaw.org/comment/298646. They should be working together soon.

save

path: 0 280614 282562 285458, hotness: undefined, score: 20, children: 1

WanderingPoltergeist 5 points 3 years ago

save

path: 0 280614 289970, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0

Freesoftwareenjoyer -25 points 3 years ago

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).

save

path: 0 280614 286523, hotness: undefined, score: -25, children: 46

spicytuna62 49 points 3 years ago

And the users on beehaw are free to create accounts on other instances if they want. Your prison metaphor is a bad one.

save

path: 0 280614 286523 288917, hotness: undefined, score: 49, children: 19

BarrelAgedBoredom 17 points 3 years ago

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

save

path: 0 280614 286523 293946, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 4

lich_hegemon 14 points 3 years ago

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.

save

path: 0 280614 286523 291320, hotness: undefined, score: 14, children: 16

eta_aquarid 5 points 3 years ago

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

save

path: 0 280614 286523 319346, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 3