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!
I hear ya. I don't know the first thing about what goes into running a big instance like that, so I'm willing to keep an open mind. But I really like this instance for its open approach. It fits with my understanding of how the fediverse would work, especially when some of the bigger instances were (at least initially) encouraging people to not all sign up on the same instance to balance the load of new users. By defederating, it kind of negates that aspect. People are going to need to sign up on multiple instances or just go straight to the big ones to ensure access to those communities.
But with everything being so new, I get it. It'll be interesting to see how things evolve as the fediverse grows/ages. I do hope the block list gets reconsidered soon enough though.
@Wit changed my mind with their comment. I wasn't thinking about it from the users' side.
Wrong person haha, I think you meant @wit :)
Ok I just realized that @ tags don't display the user's instance unless you click on them and that's super confusing, why in the world did they design it like that