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
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?
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.
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.
Eh, I have accounts on both instances. I’ve appreciated the active moderation on some Beehaw communities - I’d rather discuss LGBTQ issues on Beehaw than other instances, for example. But I also like to see more content elsewhere, so I’ve got my Lemmy.world account too. It’s pretty easy to account hop when using an app. It’s reminds me of being a member of multiple hobbyist forums, in a way.
I disagree, they definitely don’t want their own mini Lemmy. They want a safe space they are happy with, and defederation the only way they can do that with Lemmy’s current mod tools.
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works make up about 20% of the acitve users in the threadiverse (source). That is a lot, and it sucks, but it’s far off from making beehaw an isolated instance.
Imo for now new users should be discouraged from joining Beehaw, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works, since all the content can be seen from other instances anyways.
It’s important to remember that federation is just a feature in the end. As an instance administrator, you’re absolutely free to choose who to federate with.
I don’t see anyone giving Hexbear any shit for not federating with anybody.
I think a thing to note is that their community was here and well established well before rexxit. Rexxit put a lot of stress on many instances and their moderation ability, so it makes perfect sense that they might prioritize protecting their established community from abuse over being connected to every instance that intends to be a reddit alternative. There are plenty of instances they remain federated to that share their more careful moderation.
I expect that some time in the future they may reconnect with some more popular instances, as rexxit slows down and modding tools improve.
The nice thing about federation is you can choose to join more or less connected instances depending on what type of moderation you are looking for.
