I am one of the admins of Beehaw and I’m trying to get some feedback on our potential move.

Let’s start out with a little Beehaw history before judgements are passed, please.

A handful of us were beta testing Tildes when we decided to have discussions on a Discord server.

We decided that our ‘Northern Star’ or guiding principle would culminate as ‘Be Nice’ with purposefully vague/flexible interpretations. Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.

We talked for a little over a year and some of our members became impatient. Then someone stepped in to suggest a couple of platforms that we could consider getting started with.

One of those platforms was Lemmy. None of us knew, at that time, anything about ActivityPub.

During the Reddit exodus (surrounding the API outcry and blackout), our instance exploded. We were, initially, crippled by the mass amounts of users seeking refuge.

Thankfully, someone stepped in and volunteered hundreds of hours of work to stabilize our instance and refine it further.

After many hours of talks, it became clear to us that our overall goal could be achieved outside of Lemmy/ActivityPub.

Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.

  • Chozo@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    While I would understand your reasoning for doing so, I would be disappointed to see it happen. There’s decent discussions on Beehaw that I enjoy taking part in, however if you guys decided to defederate or switch to a different platform entirely, I doubt that I would make another account somewhere else to follow. I like Beehaw’s content, but I have enough accounts to keep track of these days after everything split from Reddit, so it would ultimately be a loss for me.

    I’m not sure if this is a commonly-held opinion for those of us outside of Beehaw, though.

  • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    11 months ago

    Good riddance, Beehaw is terrible. It was maybe the single biggest exporter of concern-trolling about lemmy.ml and to my knowledge still entertains absurdly reactionary comms for no reason (though I haven’t brushed up on my lore in a while). Go make your blue Raddle.

    More constructively: Having your “Northern Star” be “intentionally vague” is not a good practice. Having clear rules is a much better way to avoid falling into “what did the mod who reviewed the report feel like doing at the time?” arbitration issues. If you want to serve disenfranchised communities well,* then have that be the foundation and clearly define what that means and why you are doing it.

    *My experience with this was that Beehaw was more about first world radlibs patting themselves on the back, but I digress

    • Exocrinous@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I was banned from Beehaw for being “pompous”. I have narcissistic personality disorder, being pompous is one of the symptoms. I was being nice, polite, and complying with everyone’s requests, but I did so pompously, because I’m disabled. You’re 100% right, Beehaw is run be ableist radlibs and their word “nice” is a dogwhistle for “neurotypical”.

      • kux@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        why would you delete your comment, then make a new account and use it to post the same comment?

        • Exocrinous@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Oh, I didn’t do that. I made a new account and posted the same comment, and THEN I deleted my old comment. I didn’t want to spam the thread with duplicates.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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      11 months ago

      It would be better if the protocol had the capability for stuff like access controls where you could require that external users request permission to join your local communities and to be able to post there (where the moderation queues would show such requests per server). That way you could maintain visibility and protocol compatibility and make it easy to link between discussions, while maintaining quality of communities.

      • TiffyBelle@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

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  • Margot Robbie@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I don’t think lemm.ee is federating correctly, but I’ll give my take here if some one can sees it.

    Beehaw will go the way of every other reddit alternatives, because the existing community is not enough to sustain the critical mass of activity needed. In fact, with the current instance policy, Beehaw is struggling to sustain itself as is with federation, which will only get worse if you defederate.

    I’m not sure why Beehaw refuse to use Lemmy’s white-list federation feature and selectively pick and choose who to federate with instead of going full scorched earth.

    It’s ultimately up to the admins at Beehaw to make this choice, but I would like to say, grass is not always greener on the other side, defederation will harm Beehaw more than it helps.

  • MiddledAgedGuy@beehaw.org
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    11 months ago

    Beehaw is my home in the fediverse, and I’m happy here. I like that they try to maintain a positive community. But if Beehaw left the fediverse, I wouldn’t come along. Which is a change from thinking I might last time I saw this topic come up.

    If beehaw ends up in a silo I think it will just have too little to offer for me. And that’s ok. This isn’t about me, it’s about creating a safe space for your disenfranchised users.

    I hope Beehaw stays, but I understand if they don’t.

    • Exocrinous@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I was a beehaw user for about a day. I had a lot of very pleasant interactions with other users, it was totally surprising how different and good the vibe was. And then an admin decided that a perfectly pleasant interaction I’d had with someone was unacceptable, called me pompous, banned me, and deleted the thread. And I’m used to being called pompous, because I have NPD and it’s one of the symptoms of my disorder. I can be nice and pompous, but only if someone’s willing to look past my disorder and see who I am and what I’m doing, instead of how I look.

      So I would like it very much if the Beehaw admins left the fediverse and the rest of you guys stayed.

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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    11 months ago

    I would be disappointed. I like the content from Beehaw and I enjoy being able to see it in my federated feed. I also think Beehaw fits a good niche in the Fediverse that would otherwise leave a hole if it was not there. I also think beehaw is a good influence on the Fediverse as a whole.

    Have you considered that a part of your goal could be to make things better for disenfranchised people in a more general way? I think your presence in the Fediverse has a positive effect that goes beyond your own instance. And I think that’s worth preserving.

  • donuts@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    I feel like I’ve given my answer to this question regarding Beehaw once before…

    But as I see it, the main driving force and overall source of value for services like Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc., is federation. That is to say, federation among a wide variety of different users and servers across the fediverse using protocols like ActivityPub is what sets this entire thing apart from legacy centralized and corporate social media, like Reddit or “X”.

    I was initially on Beehaw myself and I liked the mature and kind atmosphere, but I ended up splitting for Kbin due to issues with defederation (on top of being curious and interested in Kbin as an alternative software to lemmy). But whether we’re talking about “Beehaw.org” or “Kbin.social”, in my view the federation is a huge part of the appeal, and I wouldn’t see myself continuing to use a server if it cut itself off from the rest of the network, regardless of whether they did it for “good reasons” or not.

    Like, if Beehaw wants to be just a significantly smaller and more highly moderated centralized alternative to Reddit, that feels like a pretty weak pitch which, at best, might end up with a community roughly the size of a classic forum. I’m not really interested in that. I want the Fediverse to succeed as a decentralized, open, scalable, and community-moderated alternative to legacy social media. Frankly, my interest in Beehaw as a community hinges completely on it being a part of that movement or not.

    I can understand how federation may have posed significant challenges towards your goal of detailed moderation and creating a safe and friendly space, but only in the sense that you were possibly not fully prepared for the level of exposure to a large number of federated users. But even so, if Beehaw is ever to grow into something bigger (which, to be honest, is not a given, especially if you set out on your own as just another disconnected and insular social media website), you will eventually have to deal with the harsh reality that the kind of moderation that you’re interested in doing is going to be a significant challenge as your community scales, federated or not. (For example, you may be prepared to moderate content in English, but are you prepared to moderate content in other languages? How will you know when someone starts spreading disinformation and hate speech in Burmese?)

    Finally, I think you might want to consider the general movement towards federated social media. Between ActivityPub and the Fediverse, Meta’s interest in federating Threads, BlueSky being developed around federation to some extent, federation support in things like WordPress, and a number of other social media platforms tip-toeing their way into the idea, I personally feel that there is a pretty interesting paradigm shift happening right now. Some of that has to do with moderation, responsibility and government pressure on big tech, I think.

    But nevertheless, social media is gradually moving towards federation, and I think that’s a good thing for the internet as a whole. You nice people at Beehaw will really have to search yourselves to determine whether you see the value in federation (both in terms of connecting people, but also in terms of allowing various communities to self-moderate to some extent) or not.

    I do hope you’ll stay, even though it means facing the growing pains of moderation challenges sooner rather than later, because the fediverse is better with us all connected and communicating together. I’ll be sticking with the fediverse with or without Beehaw, but I do wish you all luck in your goals should you decide to set out on your own.

    • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s over for beehaw already. Once they decided to ban everyone from the largest lemmy instance, it was over. They aren’t important to the fediverse, period, and never will be with their current leadership who have no idea what they actually want it to be, apart from their personal internet fiefdom.

      The short amount of time I was there, it felt like a community built for the moderators and admins, not the users themselves. Frankly the fediverse is better off without them, so I hope they do leave.

  • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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    11 months ago

    I’m subbed to some communities on Beehaw and I would miss them. But not enough to make an account on Beehaw to get them back.

    • rgb3x3@beehaw.org
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      11 months ago

      Beehaw as an instance doesn’t have nearly enough content to justify defederation. It wouldn’t be missed if they moved somewhere else.

      That being said, I do enjoy the discussions and would personally be disappointed to see it move or be closed off, but not enough to move with it.

  • Jordan117@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Defederating Beehaw would not only weaken it as an instance, but remove its positive influence from the wider fediverse. The big platforms wield so much power and influence and money, the smaller upstarts need to connect as much as possible to stand a chance at relevance as a credible alternative. We’re all better together. I really hope you reconsider.

    • Dr. Bluefall@toast.ooo
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      11 months ago

      …because they’re a large fediverse instance, with a significant number of users and well-known communities?

  • CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    I don’t think you guys cared when you defederated from the rest of the fediverse and turned up your nose at everyone else. I’m not sure why you care now. You guys go and do your thing, but I don’t think you’re very relevant to the fediverse.

    You speak very vaguely, and I don’t think you’re being fully honest with your reasoning, but by this point, I don’t think it really matters.

  • platypus_plumba@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Why do you care what other instances think about it? I’m honestly asking and expecting an answer here. This isn’t a sassy question.

    You built a wall and now you’re asking people outside of that wall what it feels for you to leave. Well, I’d care if I could see what’s inside the wall, but I can’t. I tried subscribing and it was impossible.

    So why do you care what people outside of your wall think? Again, I expect an answer here.

  • lorty@lemmy.ml
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    11 months ago

    Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.

    Could you expand on this? How exactly does these things prevent you from Being Nice, if that’s the goal of your community?

      • Big P@feddit.uk
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        11 months ago

        Wouldn’t the nice thing to do be to contribute to the moderation tools instead of splintering

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 months ago

          I very much agree. Instead of complaining and isolating themselves and their users, they could be helping improve the moderation tools which benefits all of us, but instead they choose to self isolate, which hurts their users while the biggest servers that they defederated forget they even existed.

    • ursakhiin@beehaw.org
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      11 months ago

      Beehaw is hardly and echo chamber. Generally defederation is done because of significant trolling or other negative behavior from an instance, not a disagreement with a philosophy.

      I think an excellent example of how Beehaw allows opposing opinions is that you and I, who clearly disagree, are still able to talk about it.

      The thing we want at Beehaw is respectful discourse. So long as neither party is insulting the other and conversation is productive it doesn’t matter if the opinions differ.

      That said, I myself would probably not follow Beehaw off of ActivityPub. I prefer the content on Beehaw to most of the content in the fediverse, but I don’t want to maintain multiple accounts and Beehaw would definitely have less content if it moved off of the fediverse.