Like many of you, I woke up this morning to discover that our instance, along with lemmy.world, had been unexpectedly added to the beehaw block list. Although this development initially caught me off guard, the administrators at beehaw made an announcement shedding light on their decision.
The primary concern raised was our instance's policy of open registration. Given my belief that the fediverse is still navigating its early stages, I believe that for it to mature, gain traction, and encourage adoption, it is crucial for instances to offer an uncomplicated and direct route for newcomers to join and participate. This was one of the reason I decided to launch this instance. However, I do acknowledge that this inclusive approach brings its unique challenges, including the potential for toxicity and trolls. Despite these hurdles, I maintain the conviction that our collective strength as a community can overcome these issues.
After this happened, the beehaw admins and I had a good chat about their decision. While our stances on registration policies might diverge, we realized that our ultimate goals are aligned: we both strive to foster communities that thrive in an atmosphere of safety and respect, where users can passionately engage in discussions and feel a sense of belonging.
Although the probability of an immediate reversal are slim given the current circumstances, I believe we have managed to identify common ground. It's evident that, even in separation, we can unite to contribute positively to the broader fediverse community.
In the coming weeks or months, we plan to collaborate with other lemmy instance administrators to suggest enhancements and modifications to the lemmy project. Primarily, our proposals will concentrate on devising tools and features that empower us, as instance administrators, to moderate our platforms effectively.
In the meantime, while I understand may not be ideal for everyone, users who choose to participate on the beehaw instance will be required to register a separate account on their instance.
Thank you all for continuing to make this community great!
Although this user is kinda huffing their own farts, I think they are speaking to something that needs to get solved in the long term.
If you make an account on an instance, create a bunch of posts and comments, then your instance makes a choice you totally disagree with... It's easy for everyone to say just leave and find another instance, but leaving that history and effort behind kinda sucks. Even if you're not at the mercy of an instance's admins, your account is.
Lemmy/Kbin really need a mechanism to migrate an account so users are totally free to find their own home, and client apps need a way to transparently mix content from different accounts so you can join two instances that have de-federated from each other. Again, it's easy to say you just need to make an account on each, but the UX of doing so is terrible.
Hopefully this is on the agenda and will get worked out in the future. Being able to seamlessly migrate to other federated sites feels like something that should be a priority, letting you easily move across to other instances if they align more with your beliefs and the content / rules they allow.