this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
159 points (96.0% liked)
Memes
45725 readers
723 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Eh, it's not all bad. They want a certain tenor to their instance, and don't have the tools to effectively deal with folks who want to screw with that. Lemmy is in a period of exponential growth, and open registration policies seem to be the exception rather than the norm.
If it's an actual problem (I haven't seen anything particularly problematic yet, but I'm your average good natured sh.it.head), they're within their rights to use the few tools at their disposal to calm things down, work with the instances of concern, and retool their approach.
This is all a learning experience for everyone involved. I have no ill-will or butthurt over this move, just disappointment that we can't have nice things right away.
@Cracks_InTheWalls sigh. So basically the jerks that were banned from reddit are trying to ruin things here. and getting themslves banned and a few instance to not talk to eachother till their gone. Oof.
@Puffymumpkins
I mean, that's one part of it, but I do recommend reading the link on my comment here if you haven't already. Before the redditors came, moderation was comparatively easy - lemmy traffic was pretty small. Additionally, most instances had (still have) a vetting process to try and weed out the trolls. sh.itjust.works is a free for all in comparison, and that's one of the reasons I love it. Give a username and a password, and you're off to the races (for how much longer, idk).
But imagine you're a Lemmy instance admin in a pre-APIocolypse world. You're building a community with certain values/norms, most everyone is agreeing to play ball, and you've got a nice little group. Then you have a bunch of sh.it.heads sign up. Some of them want to be shitheads. It gets extremely difficult to separate the shitheads from the sh.it.heads, because all of your tools are geared towards managing your previously small, mostly pre-vetted userbase and a small, mostly pre-vetted number of outsiders. End of the day, you're one of only 4 hobbyist admins. So chaos ensues - not even just because of the shitheads, but just the sheer jump in activity in general. And there are some immediate choices to make.
I think this is a good object lesson in the realities of federated services and gaps that need to be addressed to make it as positive an experience as possible. Better to happen now than later. Lots of lessons to be learned over the coming weeks and months.
As a regular Beehaw user, I really appreciate you understanding the perspective and reasoning behind defederation. The move affects Beehaw users negatively as well as they can't see many of the wonderful communities on the defederated instances, and amazing contributions from those users, all because of a tiny fraction of trolls, giving headaches to moderators already full plate, and because of open signup they can't be stopped as easily.
what the trolls did
(Said trolls posted about dick size in Feminism and a user lgbtslayer posted mean stuff in LGBtQ+ community on Beehaw)The main "gap" I see in all this, is the lack of user account migration.
Instances defederating is a feature, not a bug, it's how instances with incompatible Codes of Conduct are supposed to interact: just go each their own way.
What's lost in the process, is users getting taken for the ride. There should be an easy way for users to hop from one instance to another when they realize their current instance doesn't meet their expectations.
That might require having to get verified into a new Code of Conduct on a different instance, maybe a review of whatever post history they want to import, maybe just a multi-accont UI. It's something to be worked out.