They want to build a walled garden. They've defederated 400+ instances. This extreme desire for control is what made me leave beehaw for lemmy.world and I'm not looking back.
I still have my original account there, and check up every so often when I run out of things to read here. I've noticed there is seemingly always some new personal thoughts thread pinned by the admins there. Admins treat pinned threads almost like blogposts that are important enough to warrant everybody reading. It's very strange.
I don't understand why they're in the fediverse at all. At this point they could just be a phpBB forum.
having the same interface is still cool and as a ml user i can still see their content
I'm on here and on there. I like both for different reasons.
I wholeheartedly support NOT engaging with beehaw. Any instance that supports defederation and censorship is an instance NOT worth supporting. The fediverse is supposed to be a refuge of free speech (within reason of course.) If an instance chose to defederate and isolate itself, it deserves the very same isolation it so wanted.
Tldr; beehaw wants to isolate, then give it the isolation it wants.
Any instance that supports defederation and censorship is an instance NOT worth supporting
You're posting from lemmy.world. You're defederated from over thirty instances. So by your own logic, you shouldn't support your own instance.
Defederation is an assertion of freedom of association. For example, lemmy.world is defederated from exploding-heads. The people who run the instance do not want to be associated with the right-wingers over at exploding-heads in the sense that they refuse to even talk to them or share a social media system with them. Because they host the server, they have a right to decide what goes on their computers [1].
My instance, Lemmy.sdf.org, is federated with exploding-heads, and everyone else. So was Vlemmy when it went down with the sole exception due to the fact that the content on that instance was illegal in his jurisdiction. And sometimes in the comments, I see some right-wing asshole peddling their bullshit because I made the choice to pick an instance without safeguards.
Now frankly, my day's not going to be ruined if I get some offensive or NSFL shit pops up on my feed. That's not how I work. The only person who gets to ruin my day is me. My experience with people has led me to believe that most people aren't like that. Most people benefit from some degree of defederation.
Freedom of association allows for groups with specific intent to form. As an extreme example, I could start an instance where you are only ever allowed to say the letter e, where posting any other character results in a ban. The stated goal of my instance might be to worship the letter e [3]. By joining my instance, you indicate that you're willing to follow my rules. There's no one with a gun to your back forcing you to do anything, but the group has a right to throw you out if you're acting antagonistically.
So if you decided to start posting the letter f, you might get banned and start yelling about how your letters are "censored" on my "tyrannical" instance. And literally, I would agree that would be censorship. However, I don't always oppose censorship.
I am, and I think most people are, against censorship in governments. This type of censorship is usually implied when talking about censorship without further labels. Furthermore, for many people, government censorship is the only type that they can conceive of. People are generally against government censorship because it makes certain types of speech illegal everywhere (in their jurisdiction) and all the time. Because governments claim supreme authority to manage their citizens, including the power of life and death, their censorship is tyranny. Similarly, corporations have butted their way into almost every facet of our lives. It is a much less popular position (unfortunately), but their censorship is also tyranny. However, me telling someone to get out of my house after they shit on my floor is not tyranny.
In my view, defederation in the Fediverse is closer to "telling someone to get out of my house after they shit on my floor" than it is to government or corporate censorship. If the Fediverse centralizes to a handful of big names, then it might be closer to actual tyranny, especially if the situation is such that you can't meaningfully go anywhere else. But, even in that situation, you could host a private instance and join back into the conversation because anyone can host an instance [2].
While I do not agree with Beehaw's moderation, particularly defederating from lemmy.world, I do (well, my dead Vlemmy account did) participate in Beehaw communities. They're nice places to chat. There's a good vibe. The people there are free to go elsewhere if they feel so unfree. The admins have a right to create whatever community they please [1], and you are free to leave or avoid them if you so please.
If an instance chose to defederate and isolate itself, it deserves the very same isolation it so wanted.
Yes, it does, and that's why they did it. Beehaw does want to be isolated from toxic people. In my view, everyone deserves a space where they can feel safe. No one would laugh at you for wanting your home to feel safe. Is it really such a stretch to imagine that some people might need an online safe space? What if you live in an unsafe home?
I guess the idea is that structured communities and groups are not necessarily tyrannical because they don't inherently meet the definition of a hierarchy, which is forced upon people.
That being said, structured communities and their rules can result in tyranny, for example cults. I don't deny that. I'm an anarchist; I oppose laws and tyranny, but I don't inherently oppose guidelines.
[1] IMO there are limits to that. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." E.g. common good trumps property rights, and I'm not really interested in simping for private property if I'm being honest. I consider social media to be a public service, so moderators really shouldn't be doing things that their community opposes. For example, if the admins of Beehaw decided to unilaterally ban the letter b from all posts or comments without getting the consent of their users, it is safe to assume that their community members would revolt. I would support such a revolt, because in that scenario, the admins of Beehaw used their power to fuck over the users, e.g. they exploited a power imbalance.
While I'm not closely following the moderation at Beehaw, my understanding is that users there generally appreciate the moderators. Of course, if the moderators were so oppressive, it is plausible that they might censor negative views. I make no factual claims about the strictness of Beehaw's moderation, only about what I have experienced. For this reason, we would really need the opinions of Beehaw users (including their exiles) to get a sense of how the moderation aligns with their community.
[2] I understand that not literally everyone can host an instance. At the very least, it requires a computer, and not everyone can afford a computer. However, the Fediverse is a huge step up in taking back the power from old social media systems like Reddit and Facebook, where if they decided to ban you, you're basically fucked.
[3] EDIT, about ten hours later, I found this really interesting comment about a Mastodon instance that only allows you to post the letter e basically as I described. I was completely unaware that this existed. Apparently, it was developed as a response to an instance that banned the letter e as a writing challenge. I meant to use the "e-only instance" example as a ludicrous edge case, but apparently it actually exists! I might go join it...
Defederation should be a last resort. Beehaw basically defederates with Anyone and seeks to become a private forum. So the comparison isn’t really on par. You are right of course and I agree wholeheartedly that their choice to isolate is their right. Just that I won’t be making an account there, not that I could considering their strict sign up process.
That said, I have other accounts in other instances. I am wary of joining smaller instances as they could disappear any time, and with it ALL your posts.
I do have a vlemmy one but it has become unusable as of late (not sure what happened to the site) and lemmy.ml which remains unused. I have a lot of pending sign ups with other instances as well, non have replied and I’m tired of having to write essays just to join an instance only to be met with silence (which is why I tend to avoid instances without an open sign up these days).
I haven’t come across sdf.org when I was initially looking for lemmy instances. But thanks for pointing that out. If their sign up process isn’t too much trouble then I might give it a try.
I guess that’s the beauty of the fediverse we can support the instances we want and if nothing fits us we can choose to self host (though with a very high barrier for entry).
EDIT: Just checked out lemmy.sdf.org and it requires an essay as well so I probably won’t waste my time with it. Despite the small amount of defederations that lemmy.world has, it still remains to have the best balance between ease of use and censorship (even nsfw content are allowed here as far as I know)
So unless its stance on not defederating with Threads cause a lot of problems, I probably won’t switch anytime soon.
My application to sdf was the following:
printf "%s\n" "I'd like to nerd out, please. Seeing this instance's CLI-based origin makes me smile."; return 0
I personally blocked all beehaw communities - not out of spite or anything, but I kept accidentally commenting on beehaw threads before realising I'm speaking to nobody.
If beehaw has their own reasons for being closed-off, that's their choice, but I wouldn't engage with them in that case.
Personally, I’m thankful that I got into the fediverse a short time after it defederated. I haven’t missed much and I haven’t interacted with it much.
You are right of course. Beehaw is an independent instance and as such reserves the right to moderate their space as they like.
If people really want to access it, they can always just create a separate account on it.
Though reading through their code of conduct here:
https://beehaw.org/post/1042456
It suggests a very controlling and stifling environment that’s not really conducive to open online discussion. And maybe it was intended that way, as a safe space for the “softer” more sensitive people in the internet. And that is respectable.
But it has the potential to be an echo-chamber, the same as what Tildes is. It’s a too sheltered experience that is more suited to private group chats rather than a publicly accessible forum.
In short, bothering with it, especially if you are not this type of target audience is ultimately a drain in energy and an exercise in futility.
They want to be Reddit. Why would you want to interact with that?
Yeah. They need to come back too. Most of the trolls went back to being reddiots. The participation there has been on a hard downward trend since defederating. There are less than 500 per day on there now most days.
But mod tools have not improved. Anyone could technically still join lemmy.world and troll them which was one of their concerns.
Doesn't matter if they're dead and their core supporters get discouraged. There are a lot of posts that are just by a dozen or so people with little engagement. That is not sustainable.
Beehaw’s been around for like 2 years. They’ve specifically designed their instance to be a small, heavily moderated community. If anything, the massive growth they were getting a month ago was unsustainable with their existing ethos.
Yes it is. I've been on forums with ~20 or so active people and it lasted for years.
I bet you weren't posting 100 articles a day with a comment or few each.
It doesn't have to be active like reddit right? Or even like Lemmy was around the blackouts? A community can remain active even without federating with lemmy.world. People can still sign up for Beehaw and see their posts from other instances (like feddit.uk or the canadian one).
I'm simply commenting about the sustainability and participation. It speaks for itself. I like the community there, but it has gotten less and less interesting as the participation has fallen. I don't see that changing.
Why don't you start an account there and help them out, or start an account on an instance that is federated with both if you prefer the community there? I personally disagree with their moderation and don't like the kind of users they approve of, so I'm happy seeing less of them around.
Because they won't let you. And I'm not writing a full size letter just to join a forum. Is someone really that desperate to join Beehaw?
You can see for yourself, the federation / defederation list is always public.
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