This is more of a question for the admins, but this can certainly be a more open discussion.
Per this thread, beehaw defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works two months ago, around the time that the reddit exodus was happening. Lemmy was blowing up, those instances had an open sign-up policy, and this meant that admins of other instances (like Beehaw) that wanted to heavily moderate their communities became quickly overwhelmed with the number of users from these two instances. Beehaw defederated to make the workload more realistic.
Two months on, I’m wondering if this defederation is still necessary. It seems to me that Lemmy overall has slowed down a lot, and maybe the flow of users from these outside servers would not be as overwhelming as it was before? I respect the decision of the admins one way or the other - I know that the lack of moderation tools was another factor in this decision. I’m just curious if this is something that has been considered recently?
Hi,
I’m speaking on behalf of the admin team of Lemmy World - we feel like we have to step in here and give some feedback to the things being said in this thread and give our perspective.
About “Supporting nazi’s”:
So we support nazi’s because it took us ‘long’ to defederate from exploding heads? That’s straight up false. We were one of the first instances to defederate with them and advocated heavily to have them defederated on other instances. FYI Lemmy World as a whole is just over 2 months old and so is this post: https://lemmy.world/post/747912
There was an issue early on with the original moderator of the Lemmy World https://lemmy.world/c/conservative community which was handled instantly:
- The problematic moderator https://lemmy.world/u/OptionHome that was posting misinformation (and worse) was banned
- The https://lemmy.world/c/conservative community was given to other moderators.
- We asked people to stop bombaring the /c/conservative community with anti-conservative posts as to allow civil discourse. https://lemmy.world/post/149519
- The https://lemmy.world/c/maga community was also banned
We take a hard stance on extremism from both sides of the political spectrum, and we believe that civil discourse should always be the first option. We ban hate communities on sight no matter whose side they are on, and we work hard to resolve the hundreds of reports we receive each day. As of today, 3733 users were banned from Lemmy.World, and that number will probably have gone up by the time you read this comment. We follow-up on moderation teams if we see reports that stay open for too long and if communities are abandoned we actively look to replace the moderation team.
So we ask everyone to keep sending in reports when you see any post that breaks the Lemmy World rules which can be found here: https://lemmy.world/legal.
About Beehaw’s decision to defederate with us: Even though we don’t agree with it, we have always been supportive of Beehaw and their choice to defederate with us until the mod tools improve. Even when the question gets posted in our community we defended the decision: https://lemmy.world/post/895811.
But wether or not Beehaw will refederate with us is ofcourse 100% your decision.
We ban hate communities on sight no matter whose side they are on
Can you please give examples of liberal or left-leaning hate groups you have had to ban?
They banned Hexbear.
Lol they aren’t leftists
Nobody is, you’ll never find a true Scottsman.
Can you please give examples of liberal or left-leaning hate groups that even exist?
Yeah, that’s what I was getting at. Note the lack of response.
Here are my two cents as an outsider looking in. I spend ~15-30 mins a day on Lemmy (usually while doing other things), so I see a decent amount of content but I am not at the leading edge of posts. When I look at posts, I rarely, if ever see spam. For the most part there is civil conversations and those that attempt to derail them are downvoted and, in some cases, banned.
Does this mean that moderation isn’t a problem? No, I am but one user. However, it does indicate it is not a chronic issue. Personally I would like to see you guys refederate, as that could only increase the quality of discussions throughout the fediverse.
Thank you. And if you should see anything that goes against the Lemmy World rules (https://lemmy.world/legal) please report it.
I’m from kbin, here’s my perspective.
Stay defederated from lemmy.world. The admins are at the very least sympathetic towards fascists being on their instance as long as they’re “polite.”
Shit just works is mostly fine, but world is a shithole and honestly I wish everyone would defederate them to force them to be broken up or isolated.
Honestly I would suggest defederatibf from lemm.ee as well. I have noticed a ton of fascists originating from there.
Not sure what you mean by ton of fascists originating from lemm.ee, but please be sure to report users if you notice something weird, rather than trying to create random defederation in the fediverse.
I agree. I haven’t noticed anything from lemm.ee in my casual browsing.
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The admins are at the very least sympathetic towards fascists
Example?
https://kbin.social/m/politics@lemmy.world/t/366019/-/comment/1806367
I love how your example is just you linking to your own comment.
FYI that link doesn’t work for us beehaw folks - the link you used is specifically for kbin users to view lemmy.world.
He’s linking to his own comment. There is no actual example.
It’s a comment I’d made previously that covers the same topic. Sorry for not annotating my life enough for your convenience
The comment would be more useful if you linked to the threads you reference in it.
How does that cover it though? There’s no further evidence in that comment either. Are we supposed to just take your word for it?
Considering the last weird argument I somehow stumbled into on lemmy.world, I completely agree. Things go off the rails far too fast over there.
Defederation should only ever be used as a last resort. Every instance will have some amount of problematic users, or even users you simply don’t agree with.
If we’d all defederate from one another because some users on each instance are out of line, the Fediverse would die out quickly.
I agree, this is kinda hurting the fediverse.
I came here because I happened to see a post on lemmynsfw (coming from lemmy.world through federation) about Threads, and I was looking to reply from beehaw (because replying with a lemmynsfw account gives a certain “flair” of course) so I was looking for that post here. But I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I started looking into the reason here. Then I found this post which explained it.
But I think it’s important to realise that this way the fediverse will stay very niche and fragmented. It would be better to let the users have a choice who they want to see. And defederate only in very heavy situations (for example, nobody would expect beehaw to federate with gab.com because they support actual total nazis). But blocking lemmy.world as one of the biggest instances is… strange.
The thing is, I came here as a new user because spez makes reddit so inhospitable with his dick moves. So I went to https://join-lemmy.org/ and found beehaw. (well in fact I went to lemmy.ml first but didn’t like the attitude there). But join-lemmy doesn’t describe this whole complex fabric of defederation, it appears as if I could see the whole fediverse from beehaw. Because lemmy.world is a really major instance this is a little bit disingenous. For a new user like me (and a very technical one) this is really hard to grasp. And will lead to users being put off.
I think this whole fragmentation thing is a much bigger threat to the fediverse than Threads is to be honest.
I saw the same on Mastodon, with a lot of German sites instantly blocking federation as soon as another instance doesn’t copy exactly the same set of rules word for word (so no incidents are even necessary). In my opinion this hurts the fediverse a lot. As a user I don’t want to maintain accounts everywhere, the whole point of ActivityPub was not having to do that.
And don’t forget that not all communities on lemmy.world might necessarily bad. Reddit itself is full of toxic communities like the old the_donald (now banned of course). But also really good ones. The same is true for lemmy.world. By by defederating we’re blocking the chance of even seeing them.
thank you for your take! being here on beehaw (and being relatively new to lemmy in general), i have not had a ton of interactions with either of these instances. This came up for me because there are well-populated communities in those spaces that i want to subscribe to. That said, if World is that rife with fascists, then it is obviously not worth the gain in communities.
But it’s not.
I trust the admins. I was attracted to beehaw specifically because of the tight moderation. If they think they can keep to the same high standards and refederate, great. If not, oh well. I’d rather miss out on some content than expose myself to rude assholes, bigots, fascists etc
Completely agree! I trust the admins, they have proven that they know how to run a community that stays kind ❤️
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They’re pretty different for me. Beehaw is more community oriented - it reminds me of the smaller subs where you had regulars who talked about or gave advice on the content like vaporents. Kbin however is just as good for me, it just reminds me more of scrolling my hobby feed, whereas Beehaw honestly is a lot of news and politics on mine.
I have subbed to pretty much the first 30 pages of Magazines that I’m interested in on Kbin and it’s small but throughout the week it’s pretty varied. I actually haven’t gone through my subscriptions on Beehaw since not long after I made it, so it’s still pretty default. Like I said, it’s much more community chat based with news.
But I can probably change that just by adjusting my subscriptions on Beehaw, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet :) I like both for what they are, though I wish kbin had a little more activity. I’m also lucky, I haven’t personally seen any negativity whatsoever over there, but some people have reported issues which is disheartening.
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I replied somewhere else in this thread but we - the admins of lemmy world - have always been supportive of the beehaw decision to wait until better tools come along for moderation. We went through a few growing pains with LW but I’m happy to see how far we have come already and we keep working to make things better. Our legal page with the rulesets is actively being maintained and defines what we stand for: https://lemmy.world/legal.
lemmy.world is just hot garbage imo
I’m on Lemmy.world every day and I’ve never seen any of that. I don’t doubt it exists, but it’s definitely not a problem on any of the communities I’m subscribed to.
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I’m not jumping on you - I’m just pointing out lemmy.world isn’t a total write off. There are about 20k monthly active users on that instance and about 20k of those people are polite, reasonable people who post interesting content.
With any large community like that there’s always going to be some people who’re problematic, but either the moderators on lemmy.world are deleting them before I see them, or else it’s happening on communities I don’t subscribe to (probably a mix of both).
I think Beehaw should re-federate lemmy.world as soon as the moderation tools are better. In particular the cross-instance moderation issues should be sorted out. The key to a functioning fediverse is to ensure that everyone across instances can work together to tackle bad content. Many hands make light work.
I don’t really care about “growth”. Lemmy is a community not a corporation. What I care about is when someone starts an interesting discussion, are there “enough” people who take part in that discussion? I see threads on Beehaw (and even on Lemmy.World) that get zero replies. That sucks.
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No worries at all (PS: I just edited my comment, with a point I should have made originally).
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I would rather there be no discussion over a bunch of low quality shit posting and rage baiting tbh
I can only say that I spend less time on beehaw because there are communities on both of those instances I want to interact with. This isn’t really an argument to refederate because as an end user I can filter the noise and focus on the communities I want, but I know admins don’t have that luxury. It’s more of an impact statement. I like beehaw, and I don’t want to leave, but I do probably spend more time with my other account just because there’s more activity I’m interested in there. So I fully support whatever decision gets made and certainly support this community, but I can’t be the only user whos spending less time here than I otherwise might.
Yes it is. Yes it is.
If you really interact with the lemmy community you know they are very pro “freeze peach”, which means it comes with all the fascists, all the phobias, and the trolls.
I like Beehaw for what it is. Tight moderation.
Lemmy World is not a “free speech” platform.
Point 1 in the “Principles that Guide Us” section: https://lemmy.world/legal
ok…? But it is not my experience there and from the responses here they seem to agree with me.
A principle is not useful when it is not enforced.
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It is a “free speech” platform insomuch as it is intentionally making space for people with fundamentally conflicting beliefs.
There is no c/conservative on Beehaw, and many of us would not be here if there was. Extremism is not the only thing that is incompatible with my beliefs, and I get enough daily exposure to Neoliberal and Conservative viewpoints that I don’t want to deal with it when I’m relaxing. It’s why I haven’t had Facebook or Twitter in years.
Lemmy.world and Beehaw just have different goals.
Stay defederated. On top of all the great points already made, I don’t understand people demanding instances behave a certain way. If you don’t like the way this instance is handled go find another one.
Nothing’s wrong with discussing things with the intent to make them better for everyone
Yes, instances can do whatever they want and users should seek instances that match their needs but:
- Per the thread OP linked, it’s suggested this could be temporary. “this is also not a permanent judgement” is my context in saying as such.
- The post did not feel demanding. Though perhaps you’re making a more general reference?
Edit: context
Edit2: Not intended as advocation for refederating. I’m content with the content available to me so I don’t have a strong opinion.
Who’s demanding anything? Surely we can discuss it amongst ourselves as a community?
There is a lot of chatter that I’ve seen in other instances where Beehaw’s stance ranckled a number of folks.
My understanding is admins of some of those communities actually agreed with the decision because of the lack of proper moderation tools to handle their new scale. Some are basically un-moderated as well.
Speaking for Lemmy World - we look for new moderators when we notice communities are un-moderated. We follow the reports closely and if we notice they aren’t picked up by that community’s moderators we reach out.
And yes, we were also told initially that it was because of a lack of moderation tools but now @Lionir@beehaw.org seems indicate a “cultural” difference. But we are left wondering what the difference with LW and the other instances they federate with are.
Having accounts on both instances, I can say the “cultural” difference is the moderation style, and user expectations:
- Lemmy World: Reddit-like rules, a huge influx of Reddit refugees who think every comment has to go against the parent one, free registration which makes it easy to create an account and go troll mode on federated instances.
- Beehaw: Very open-ended but at the same time strict “be nice” moderation with minimal rules, users who had to “write an essay” (sic) to create an account, a general non-Reddit culture of… well, being nice.
- Lemmygrad, Hexbear, Exploding heads, etc: I think the cultural differences are obvious there.
- Other instances: they have much smaller user bases than Lemmy World, so even when there are cultural differences (dbzer0, lemm.ee, etc), they are not overwhelming (yet) the mod team on Beehaw.
we look for new moderators when we notice communities are un-moderated
The problem is not just having moderators on LW, but moderating LW’s userbase on federated instances. Some number of LW’s users seem to be hostile towards Beehaw, and there is little LW can do about that other than banning their accounts, which I don’t think would be that much better for anyone.
users who had to “write an essay” (sic) to create an account, a general non-Reddit culture of… well, being nice.
Didn’t have to be an essay, it just had to be something that answered the 3 questions it asked about why you want to join beehaw.
Precisely. I think the “write an essay” has become kind of a meme among non-Beeple about Beehaw at this point; I first saw it on Reddit a couple months ago, kept seeing it on and off, and just today saw it again.
It was also in part what made me join: when I saw what it was all about, I was like “so… people who believe that thinking before answering is too much effort, won’t be here… nice…” 😄
The kind of people who keep calling it an essay are the exact kind of people I don’t want around anyway. Either it’s too much to ask of them to write a couple of sentences, or they haven’t even bothered to look and inform themselves before spitting their hot take. Neither personality is desirable lol
The kind of people who keep calling it an essay are the exact kind of people I don’t want around anyway.
The TLDR behavior and won’t click offsite links and references and want a constant stream of tiny little ideas. There was a time when Reddit wasn’t like that and it became the culture of TLDR and downvote-disagree.
Reddit could have single-handedly taken on clickbait in 2014 or earlier by people replacing news headlines with sincere earnest descriptions. But the clickbait became what people swam in.
My friend put some pretty simple stuff and got denied. Granted it may have been during a negative influx
Appreciate the insight. I have heard many variations of what went down/what the reasoning was and it’s all sort of unclear to me to be honest. But ultimately I think if instances weren’t supposed to defederate, then the option wouldn’t exist. Mistake or not it’s their call!
But we are left wondering what the difference with LW and the other instances they federate with are.
Have you asked them?
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I value the principled approach and slower pace, the low tolerance for stirring. Moderation has such a huge effect on feel and the big ones never did enough to try to build healthy communities. Beehaw has mostly taken the sting out and I’d hate to see that lost.
I feel torn on the issue. I spend 90% of my Lemmy time on here, but the growth feels much slower than many other communities. I’m mostly ok with that. Content is pretty good, but still not much chatter on many posts. I mainly go to World to post to !superbowl, but even with 10x the users as here I only just started getting decent up votes, and I don’t want to mod, so I don’t feel like starting it here and trying to build an audience again.
Lemmy is probably still going to be finding its legs for another year or 2, so keeping multiple logins is probably the best way to roll for now.
Count or discount my opinion as a non-Beehaw member as you will but…
I think the instances should do what they set out to do. Federate, defederate in line with the instance’s ideals.
I’m not on Beehaw, but I do like seeing its content. But I also like seeing (most) of the content on Lemmy World and sh.itjust.works; and I can get both from the instance I am on.
Honestly, I think it’s best that we stay the way we are here and not re-federate.
My experience after leaving all the toxicity of Reddit behind was that it was really a blessing to find a community where moderation actually mattered and made a difference in the culture of site. I did a lot of lurking on Lemmy even before leaving Reddit, enough to know it was not a place for me. I tried Kbin when I did finally leave Reddit, but did not like the experience there much, so eventually landed here.
While I can appreciate people’s concerns about the defederation, and in particular some of the stresses for the admins which are certainly really challenging, I think it would all be far more negative if at this stage the decision were to be reversed. Not every community needs to be “the biggest, baddest, baddy in the room” so to speak. I just get the impression the vision for Lemmy is something along those lines. No one seems to care about that here (that I can tell), they just care about having civil and open discussions which, more than anything else, feel safe. It’s why I stay and am glad to support it. If that changed, I would most likely move on and not return.
I really think this needs to be fixed by a system that allows for the user to decide on their own content federation.
I think communities should be able to block users and communities from seeing and interacting with their content, but the problem is that currently defederation means that the home instance can block what you see of other instances.
This can be fixed either by still allowing data to be sent out to severs but not in from them mostly. Or it can be fixed by making unified user accounts that can persist on multiple servers and therefore go around defederation.
Why do this? Because I guarantee there are users here like myself who wouldn’t mind viewing content on other servers and so instead we’d be forced to make and use another account. The less accounts per person, the better imo. Because creating many account discourages community and harms vetting processes.
i hear you, and that’s why i made this post. After reading through the replies though, I think it makes more sense for beehaw to stay defederated. The way it blocks us from using those communities is a little annoying, but i think it’s better if you think of it like each lemmy server is it’s own social media site that happens to have some ways of communicating with other sites, rather than thinking of all lemmy servers together as one site.
That’s really the spirit of the thing - you don’t get mad at Facebook because they don’t let you view and comment on reddit posts from facebook. Currently, the connection between Beehaw and Lemmy.World is mostly the same.
The amount of moderation actions from those instances were a lot higher than from elsewhere, specifically lemmy.world. With how lemmy.world is now after browsing it for ~5 mins I can confidently say that that would be the case again if we were to refederate
I feel like that might be a topic where it’s important for the community to voice their opinion.
Here are my two cents as an outsider looking in. I spend ~15-30 mins a day on Lemmy (usually while doing other things), so I see a decent amount of content but I am not at the leading edge of posts. When I look at posts, I rarely, if ever see spam. For the most part there is civil conversations and those that attempt to derail them are downvoted and, in some cases, banned.
Does this mean that moderation isn’t a problem? No, I am but one user. However, it does indicate it is not a chronic issue. Personally I would like to see you guys refederate, as that could only increase the quality of discussions throughout the fediverse.
See I have the exact opposite experience outside of beehaw and a few key communities I browse on Kbin.
Does this mean that moderation isn’t a problem? No, I am but one user. However, it does indicate it is not a chronic issue.
This is contradictory. You are admitting your experience is anecdotal yet also saying it clearly shows there isn’t a problem.
