this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.

Edit: A lot of people are asking why Beehaw did this. I want to keep this post informational and not color it with my personal opinion. I am adding a link to the Beehaw announcement if you are interested in reading it, you can form your own views. https://beehaw.org/post/567170

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[–] [email protected] 320 points 2 years ago (6 children)

It's important to note that the admins of beehaw are not happy about this solution, either. And they hope to refederate once they have better tools and enough mods / admins to deal with it.

They point wasn't to shadowban, that was a side effect. The point was to protect their member--who specifically wanted a certain type of safe friendly instance--from hostile weirdos sending dick pics and stuff like that. Nobody's happy with the situation, but it's the best they could do under the circumstances with the resources they have.

I also don't think it's wrong for instances to have their own strong rules and preferences. This is one of the GOOD things about the Fediverse. The software features and how people use lemmy will catch up eventually.

As for the confusion / chaos around multiple/redundant/competing communities and so on...that will get better over time as people figure things out. Honestly it's not that different than reddit with all of its splinter subs like "true-" whatever.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (3 children)

As for the confusion / chaos around multiple/redundant/competing communities and so on...that will get better over time as people figure things out. Honestly it's not that different than reddit with all of its splinter subs like "true-" whatever.

That's true for just the duplication problem, but the defederation / shadow banning issue is not one that reddit has and is pretty confusing and poor user experience for new users coming in.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (12 children)

This isn't reddit 2.0. It's a different platform with different mechanics that hasn't had over a decade to mature.

Change is hard. People need to learn to adapt.

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 2 years ago (11 children)

Wow so much misinformed hostility against Beehaw here. The mod tools for Lemmy are currently limited and they just want to protect their community from trolls and spam. There's no conspiracy here to break federation.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (32 children)

Beehaw is some pseudo moral purity echo chamber. They consider anyone with a contrary opinion a troll. People create these "safe spaces" under the guise of protecting minority groups, but fuck.. I'm a minority, and I knew immediately I wasn't going to be welcome there.

People are free to judge it as they please.

--edit--

Why aren't other instances having this problem? Like if trolls and spam are such an issue, why do I only see relevant on topic comments in other instances?

The issue isn't trolls, it's political dissent. And if you care about the truth, if you care about having the ability to talk about and express your ideas freely to other people, to have uncomfortable discussions with people you disagree with, to be exposed to new ideas, and fuck.. to possibly even change your mind, you shouldn't support beehaw.

If you genuinely want that type of environment, go for it, but that place should be called out for what it is.

This type of political authoritianism is why I left Reddit. It kills discussion, and I'm here for critical discussion.

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 2 years ago (10 children)

Also - fwiw - they are likely to refederate in the future. I subscribe to beehaw communities, cuz we can still see them, just can't talk to them.

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I disagree with this. A more nuanced take is that you should consider any beehaw communities read only unless refederation happens. The defederation was not out of ill will, it was about self preservation in a growing ecosystem and the reasons were clearly communicated and a path to refederation was left open. Read only posts are still valuable, and even though there is a more complex mechanism at play than true "read only" understanding that you can view is better than just blocking them in reverse. We are all friends here, and I think in the long run refederation will happen as this platform matures.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I’m basically a read only user anyway so hah!

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (15 children)

@[email protected] , you should add a link to the announcement which explains why Beehaw defederated since this looks to be the top question many are asking.

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[–] ItsaB3AR 39 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Disclaimer: pretty new to Lemmy a federation (older than this account though).

From what I gather, defederation is supposed to be a function of this whole system, but intended to cut off whole instances that refuse to moderate or are active cesspools. In saying that, I don’t understand Beehaw cutting off two of the other biggest instances. I know they have a weird mentality over there of no downvotes and saw some odd conversations condemning someone’s political views while admitting to not know the person at all (dafuq?).

It seems to me it would make more sense to block a single community rather than the whole instance.

Maybe they want a walled garden, but as new people come in and want as much content as possible to show that this is a better venue than Reddit, to me they give off the wrong message.

Am I mistaken somehow? Anyone able to enlighten me?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I recommend reading Beehaw’s statement: https://beehaw.org/comment/263590

As it is just text on a screen, I think there are more and less generous ways to read the post. But I think a lack of scalable mod tools (to combat an internet-sized influx of “bad actors”) is a reasonable (and hopefully temporary) rationale for defederation.

[–] ItsaB3AR 36 points 2 years ago (26 children)

Having read this, I get what they’re going for, but also question the venue a bit.

With Lemmy being about federation, it sounds like they want to have a de federated mini Lemmy to themselves where they can decide who is allowed in or not. Not that that is a bad thing, if there’s a demand for it, but I think it’s different than what every other instance is about and maybe would be better as something like a Discord server (or FOSS alternative).

Again just my 2c, I just know I’m looking for a better quality alternative to Reddit, and an isolated instance isn’t my cup of tea.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Newbie here. Is there an easy way to identify a beehaw community? I've been hitting the subscribe button left and right to build up my profile feed and I'm just winging it here. thanx!

[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago (3 children)

The community name will end in “@beehaw”.

If you go to the community search bar and search for say, “gaming” you’ll get multiple results. The one that’s just “gaming” is your home instance, any with an “@instancename” behind them are from elsewhere.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I don’t understand: did something serious happened, or it’s them overreacting?

[–] jack 69 points 2 years ago (3 children)

It's just down to Lemmy not having good enough mod tools yet. Beehaw is a carefully curated walled garden instance that hosts some high quality communities; they are availing themselves of the only real tool they have to curb an influx of bad actors from other instances.

Here's hoping its temporary. The admin team here at sh.itjust.works clearly operates in good faith.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago

They have stated as much, and are open to refederating once the mod tools can handle the influx of people joining instances with open sign-ups. Side effect of the reddit refugee crisis.

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

They defederated because they were both large Lemmy instances with zero review process for joining users, and they'd rapidly starting acquiring bots and bad actors. Because of federation, these accounts could interact on Beehaw's server like they were locals.

Beehaw on the other hand, has a human-powered review process for signup. It isn't strict, but it keeps out bots or low-effort users. Beehaw's community goal means that reducing the amount of bots, bad actors, and low-effort users on the platform is a priority for them. Their moderating is also human-powered, and very involved - not outright banning/blocking. They reach out to users to discuss their content's intent, and issue warnings/requests personally as needed.

That level of moderation is fantastic for fostering community and is compassionate for ignorance and error; but it isn't scalable when being hammered by bots and an influx of new accounts. Beehaw's only protection from instances that shelter bots and bad actors was to defederate from them until those instances were able to address them somehow.

The Beehaw admins have reached out to the admins of the other instances; their hope is to find a solution that reduces the amount of bots and spam accounts creating on .world and .works. They don't want defederation to be a permanent solution, it's just the only feasible one they had.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There sign up process was nearly successful in putting me off from ever trying Lemmy. I almost gave up finding instances which would let me join without filling in a completely stupid form where I have to state what communities I will join when I haven't even had a chance to get to know what communities are out there!!.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago (22 children)

And this is why the fediverse will never work out - if I gamble wrong and set up shop on an instance that gets in a pissing match with other ones, I either have to make an account elsewhere (and then have to do it again later the next time two instances defederate each other) or live with only seeing some of my subscribed content.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are already conversations about Nomadic Identities and what that would look like. Until that is done, I agree with you that there are going to be some issues, such as this. The fact that this is on their radar is very promising.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1571

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

set up shop on an instance

Don't do that. You probably should have multiple accounts on different instances. If you really need a continuous, single identity, post links to all your usernames in each.

This is why the move from Reddit was so difficult for Redditors: because we put all our eggs into Reddit Inc's basket. All our content is under Reddit's control. This analysis can be applied to any centralized social media service. If your instance shits the bed or bans itself from everyone else, you can move somewhere else. You can start your own in the worst case. It's annoying, but at least there is a real path to move on.

We shouldn't be putting our eggs in any one basket. We shouldn't have been doing it before the Fediverse, and we shouldn't be doing it here either. Your social media access should not be dependent on the goodwill of one person or entity. Eventually, that entity will corrupt.

Also, I'm on vlemmy.net. Right now, they haven't defederated from anyone, and I believe we're still not banned from Beehaw or anyone else. If you really want the whole Fediverse (and you probably don't), make an account on vlemmy or one of the top three instances on this page.

Why don't you have a second account?

Lazy. Don't care if my shit gets fucked. But if you do care if your shit gets fucked, then you shouldn't rely on centralized social media.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I disagree simply on the basis that they hope to refederate eventually, and it might be good to already be subbed. But yeah.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, guess I just won't use it then if they defed from my primary instance. Glad they did this now and not later when they became bigger and more important.

If they're that into making a safe space then fine. Hopefully some other people will also make more free spaces and both of them can exist and everyone can be happy.

I realize that is a highly optimistic outlook to put it mildly. I must remain hopeful to avoid losing my mind, if I haven't already -.-

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

shrugs It sounds like they'd happily refederate once the right mod tools are available.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

Seems like a pretty reasonable request. Hopefully they get the tools they're after and then everyone can be even more connected again!

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Can you help me understand exactly how this will affect me? I actually have accounts on both lemmy.world and beehaw.org (I signed up for both when I initially found Lemmy and was trying to figure the whole thing out).

If I'm on my lemmy.world account, will I no longer be able to browse beehaw communities? On the flip side, if I'm on my beehaw.org account, will I no longer be able to browse lemmy.world communities?

Am I understanding things correctly? If that's the case, then is the only solution to flip back and forth between the two accounts depending on which server the community I'm wanting to browse is on?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago

The first post I came across from another instance was on Beehaw. It was very confusing trying to figure out the federation concept with that community being my first visit.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago

At this point it's too early to tell how well moderation can work in the long term. I'd rather they take it slow than burn out.

Same for any expectations regarding lemmy itself.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I reckon this will hurt Lemmy in the long run

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[–] pattmayne 28 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Is there a page where we can see which instances are ban-crazy and which ones actually federate and communicate?

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Anyone knows why this happened ? Hope admins dont ruin Lemmy for everyone.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (11 children)

When there was an influx of users during the Reddit blackout, they said that they were getting lots of trolls and they couldn't keep up with the moderation. Lemmy.world and Sh.itjust.works had the most traffic and were letting people sign up without vetting so the Beehaw admins decided to defederate those communities.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Making it harder for people to sign up and interact with each other, during the most important week of the platform's existence, I hope they didn't take that lightly

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago

Just a heads up, we love our admins around here, they are great. Beehaw defederated from people because they were afraid of being able to mod everything with the influx of users with limited mod tools available. They will likely refederate eventually. For now I unsubbed from all beehaw communities and dont miss anything. The cool thing is if you do end up on an instance with admins you don't like, there are like 10,000 other instances you can go to.

But the admins here are usually pretty transparent with everything going on. They are just some dude with a server in their closet. Not some cooperation that are making decisions with profit in mind. They are doing it for the community.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (1 children)

this is completely reasonable, they own the instance and should be able to do whatever they want with it.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago (2 children)

At the time LW and SJW had few barriers to signing up, so they had a higher rate of spam coming in and the beehaw team said they couldn't keep up with moderating it. No idea if this is still the case, but they remain federated.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 2 years ago

SJW is a wild abbreviation

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh no, are we calling shitjustworks SJW now??

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I thought about that while typing it but I thought it was kinda funny so decided to leave it haha

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