hey folks, here’s a quick update on our decision to defederate from sh.itjust.works! (and here’s sh.itjust.works’s side of this update)
we got in touch with the head admin over there, The Dude, and we had a pretty good chat about our concerns and reason for defederating. while immediate re-federation is just bluntly off the table with the rudimentary state of Lemmy’s moderation tools, we now have a pretty good idea of the roadmap to refederating with them. we think we’ll eventually be able to do this, although we don’t have a timetable on when yet.
we’re also now collaborating with him on how to move forward–and in the weeks and months to come we’ll be pushing to expedite the process of developing some of the necessary tools. this decision has really helped us make connections that can hopefully realize those tools both on the desktop side and in apps being developed for Lemmy. we’re also hoping to collaborate with other Lemmy administrators who have needs like our own, or just generally want more granular tools at their disposal.
we did also get in touch with the lemmy.world owner prior to defederating to share the concerns that prompted us to defederate[1]–but we have not received any communication from him since it was levied, so there’s no roadmap at all there as of now. we’re always open to reconsidering and collaborating to end the defederation with him, but for now the earliest i can give you is “when mod tools are in a better state”.
that’s all for now folks. if any new significant developments take place we’ll announce them as needed.
we’re only bringing this up now because it was just not useful information in the context of our announcement. it almost certainly would have been interpreted as some sort of callousness and/or brought unnecessary sectarianism and grief to him. at the end of the day he has his reasons and desires for running lemmy.world how he does, and we have ours for running Beehaw as we do. because of social and technological circumstances those are just incompatible right now, and that’s fine. ↩︎
In my application here I cited the decision to de-fed from them as why I chose to sign up for beehaw. I was looking through shitjustworks and was absolutely not liking how it seemed to be absorbing some of the worst “libertarianism and rationalism are my excuse to insult people” types from reddit. I’ll be interested to see whether their admins succeed in wrangling their ‘hives’.
This is in the nature of the domain name. If you name your site “shit just works” you can’t be surprised if you build a bubble for idiots in the first wave of registrations.
I’m not bashing on the site or their Admins.i say that out of own experience over the last 25+ years on the internet and some exp in hosting forums and all that myself.
Fun fact. Your take just made me sign up there too.
I actually seek different perspectives and don’t quite agree with any particular place that is very “ideologically packeted” like most tend to. Where “they insult” and “we don’t, because if they feel insulted is because of Reality and how right we are”.
I’m new to all this fediverse and I’m curious to see how different niche interests develop and if we can actually form the usefulness that Reddit threads could have or if it’s a unique and different usefulness…
Sometimes I wanna see what everyone else sees. That’s why I also have an account on another instance. But sometimes I don’t want the risk of seeing people question my right to exist (how often on reddit do I come across someone who’s “just asking questions”). That’s why I’m here. So glad reddit is dead now bc we’re all here instead.
I’d word it as, you don’t want the risk of other people writing a specific opinion on a specific topic that you don’t agree with.
Because the whole “right to exist” thing is very relative and dependent on framing.
It’s very common that criticism of X is taken as “you are -ism” or if you’re not voting exactly how I tell you to then you are denying my rights to exist. There’s lot of nuance In conversations of “where does my rights end and yours start” but the typical thing I see is “I want there to be no discussion about this, only axiom A”.
Reddit is not dead, only time will tell what happens with but I’d say Reddit is pretty much like what you talk about, with some slight variations on niche places.
There have been open calls to “eradicate transgenderism”, along with a nearly endless amount of anti-trans legislation in many parts of the world. Their rhetoric frequently borders on genocidal. It is 100% about our right to exist.
We’re not some hypothetical to have a pleasant debate over tea about, we are real people with real lives being directly harmed by real policy. Some of us are tired of being nice about it.
There’s a difference between having an opinion I don’t agree with and comparing being trans to “wanting to be peppa pig”. And then when I rightfully get offended and angry they lose their fucking minds bc I dared insult them. It’s happened many times, and yes, this is based on a real example from reddit. (tw: transphobia obviously)
I don’t know why you would share that link thinking it reflects what you initially said.
I will avoid continuing this conversation because I don’t think it will get anywhere but to me, it’s clear who is bullying whom and who misrepresents opinions as “denying your right to exist” and allows no debate.
It’s easy to think being righteous does not make you a bully but that’s exactly how mobs operate, by thinking their righteous ends justify the means.
I’m ok if Beehaw bans transphobia from their instance.
Only if that rule is accurately defined. It’s definitely not occuring in the link provided unless you consider “getting bullied and disagreeing with other user” transphobia.
I’m not going to engage with the other user anymore. They want freedom to insult and censor because “they’re righteous”. It’s not an attitude that’s specific to one group, mind you, but it’s definitely an enlightening interaction in the context of this thread.
Authortiarianism doesn’t sit well with me and I consider it an absolute no but I’m playing by the instance rules. I don’t think they are but it is what it is.
We’ll see how this space develops. Individual users are not relevant, anyway, but the aggregate.
just fucking defend the reactionaries why don’t you. Bet you’re the type who sees nazis committing genocide, and minorities fighting back, and says “man why can’t both sides stop fighting???” Enough with the fucking respectability politics already. In an uncivil age, y’all motherfucker’s calls for “civility” are just a device to squash all protest so you can get your way, not actually an argument made in good faith.
Hey, well, I’m blocking you so I don’t have to see this bullshit again.
Sometimes I do wish for a downvote.
Some days it feels like there’s a shortage of nice people. Today is not one of those days. Thank you.
I genuinely think Reddit lowered my expections of moderators so much over the years without me even realising, it’s great to come to a place like this where everyone on both sides sounds reasonable and competent at what they’re doing. Really excited to see how Lemmy and the Fediverse more generally develops.
Reading this and the other admins replies has given me a proper little boost this morning. Thank you for the transparency, it won’t always be good news like this but I value it anyway
I also read the comments. Glad we’ve defederated. Seems like there are plenty of people over there with really bad ideas and they’re scouring the internet for people to poke them with.
The replies to the post by the sh.itjust.works admin are fascinating. Admin’s post is calming, reasonable, minimises outrage and indicates ways forward which will improve the platform. Win win win, with some temporary inconvenience. So of course others are forgetting all of that and inventing things to get upset about. How do we (collectively) unlearn this habit? I learned by observing it in action and reading others’ writing about it. Maybe someone will learn something from reading this. Tiny drop in the vast ocean but I don’t know how to scale it. We need to figure it out though.
A big thank you for beehaw mods protecting our community. I feel warm and loved. :)
The Dude abides
Hahaha!
On a separate note, it is very interesting that the creator of Lemmy.world is non-responsive. That is concerning, seeing as how his instance is one of the biggest.
Why do you see it as concerning?
Well, it was pretty big news that Beehaw was defederating from them, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort to reply real quick to someone reaching out to you from Beehaw. You could just say “thanks, let’s talk about this when I’m not so busy” but to just ignore it seems weird to me.
I don’t think I’m the only person who won’t reply to an email until there is something actually productive to say.
I guess I’m just the weird guy who appreciates acknowledgment because without it I feel like I’m being ignored.
It’s rude to not to acknowledged, you are right and valid to feel that way.
Lol … tried commenting from my lemmy.world account but duhh that’s defederated… This is @ruud@lemmy.world
This was my reply:
Hi there! Lemmy.world calling!
I read here that I’m unresponsive, but after a chat with one of your team, the last mesasge I got was:
"Sorry for the bad news especially after we’ve had such a good conversation but we have defederated. It was not an easy decision and I hope it doesn’t hurt our relations. It’s not personal, it’s just that our goals don’t work together, we wish it was possible to “limit” a la mastodon… I hope you understand "
I didn’t know that was a question… ;-)
I would very much like to get in touch with you, I have also been in touch with the sh.itjust.works admin. If there’s anything we could do to solve your concerns, let us know.
You can reach me on matrix @ruud:h-y-p-e-r.space or mail info@lemmy.world (But I’ll be asleep the next 8 hours hopefully, so I’ll be unresponsive)
That’s my bad, I had kinda assumed you’d reply something so the silence was a bit unexpected. I apologize.
@Lionir@beehaw.org, @alyaza@beehaw.org I realize a three day old buried comment chain is not the best place for this, but seeing as how the fediverse is difficult to search, and as a moderator of a medium-sized community on lemmy.world where I have not personally seen any content needing moderation, I’m curious if there has been a public statement somewhere on Beehaw you can direct me to that explains the specific issues and reasoning behind defederating with with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works?
As of today, @ruudtest@feddit.nl has implemented a captcha on lemmy.world and sign ups are currently closed due to an influx of spam accounts being created, which he already banned as stated here: https://lemmy.world/post/293545.
Lastly, why have other large instances with similar growth and open registration like kbin.social and lemmy.ml been spared?
What I noticed and why your experience probably doesn’t match with ours is that people signed up lemmy.world to harass in other instances that are closed like ours and usually centered on LGBTQ+ communities. That might be a significant factor.
Here is the public statement we made about the issue a few days ago : https://beehaw.org/post/567170
As for why kbin.social and lemmy.ml were spare : I’ve not personally seen many reports from lemmy.ml and kbin.social was not even federated when we made this decision so it wasn’t on our mind.
Really love the transparency and communication. It’s a breath of fresh air, honestly.
I’m curious what exactly you mean with “better modding tools”. I am working on a iOS/Android app and I’m wondering if those are tools I could integrate into it.
What exactly are your needs?
My guess is that this is referring to “auto moderator” and similar type of tools, so functionality that needs to first be created in the Lemmy core, before you could support them on your client.
Thanks for the update!
While exploring kbin I’ve been checking out lemmy world a bit and there’s a surprising level of toxicity towards beehaw going on. From a vocal minority of course but some have seem to have taken the degeneration as personal slight and some are just aggressive towards beehaw on a general term.
A lot of people seem to understand the reasons and even if they don’t agree with it they’re at least understanding.
The toxic minority is hard to grasp though.
Then again, I suppose the ones that caused the issues in the first place are among that group.
Amazing how fast tribalism takes form
I understand the decisions made but I would be pretty annoyed if I had a lemmy.world or a sh.itjust.works account and I’ll explain why below.
Looking on https://browse.feddit.de/ Beehaw has the largest communities for Gaming, Technology, Chat, News, Programming, Politics and Music (and probably more). These are staple communities that the majority of users will be subscribed to one or more.
Those users now need to make a decision, they either make a new account on Beehaw (or another instance that isn’t defederated by Beehaw) so they can continue to browse those communities, or they instead keep their accounts on lemmy.world / sh.itjust.works and join smaller and less active communities to replace the Beehaw ones.
Unfortunately trolls can create a load of accounts in instance ABC and spam Beehaw until Beehaw defederate instance ABC until there are no large instances left.
It’s good that Beehaw are looking to refederate with both instances, but I imagine that the majority of people expressing their opinions thought defederation was a final decision.
I think there may also be a bit of a defensive reaction in that without the full context, there’s sort of an implication that Beehaw admin thinks everyone on these other two instances are just terrible people. Couple that with Beehaw’s…erm…opinionated language, and it’s a recipe for hurt feelings.
I’ve seen some comments mentioning that it feels like guilt by association, and it seems somewhat reasonable to take that personally – especially as people are still wrapping their heads around how federation works and how blunt the mod tools are at this stage.
I also think there’s maybe some harsh feelings over the idea that Beehaw’s ideal state is Beehaw users being able to comment on other instances but not the other way around. There’s some sentiment I’ve seen that this amounts to Beehaw taking the big communities for itself and hanging everyone else out to dry. I don’t really think that’s Beehaw’s intention, but when the big conversations appear to be happning behind closed doors, it makes sense that some feathers would be ruffled.
And last, I’ve seen some users commenting that the only reason the two defederated instances got users is because the signups are open and anyone who was put off by Beehaw’s registration either can’t use words effectively or was born to antagonize Beehaw’s users. I really don’t think that antagonistic view other other instances’ users is helpful, and it’s definitely making the situation on the ground worse. For example, the reason I didn’t register with Beehaw is that I just couldn’t think of any actual reason I wanted in there versus anywhere else – I just wanted to be where the people were, so I could use a social platform to talk to strangers, and the way Beehaw’s reg page is worded, it sounds like this would likely not be a good enough reason to be allowed to participate there. So I just went somewhere else that seemed more interested in having me around.
So i guess for anyone who bothers to read this, please don’t lump all users from the defederated instances under a banner of “degenerates” or whatever. They seem to really be taking it to heart, and I think it’s more hurt feelings than actual antagonism for anyone who didn’t personally harrass anyone.
Thanks for the transparency. Is there no way to see a list of defederated instances? The one in the instances page includes mastodon instances which makes it hard to read, and also doesn’t list the reason for defederation.
The defederated list does not include reasons and we can’t add it from Lemmy’s tools. The Lemmy instances we’ve defederated from memory are : Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml because they deny certain genocides, exploding-heads.com and lemmygrad.com because they are queerphobic, burggit.moe because they host child pornography.
Finally, lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works because of the reasons mentioned in the post.
Is there a non tankie leftist instance? I’m honestly looking for one
