hey folks, we’ll be quick and to the point with this one:
we have made the decision to defederate from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. we recognize this is hugely inconvenient for a wide variety of reasons, but we think this is a decision we need to take immediately. the remainder of the post details our thoughts and decision-making on why this is necessary.
we have been concerned with how sustainable the explosion of new users on Lemmy is–particularly with federation in mind–basically since it began. i have already related how difficult dealing with the explosion has been just constrained to this instance for us four Admins, and increasingly we’re being confronted with external vectors we have to deal with that have further stressed our capabilities (elaborated on below).
an unfortunate reality we’ve also found is we just don’t have the tools or the time here to parse out all the good from all the bad. all we have is a nuke and some pretty rudimentary mod powers that don’t scale well. we have a list of improvements we’d like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and federation if at all possible–but we’re unanimous in the belief that we can’t wait on what we want to be developed here. separately, we want to do this now, while the band-aid can be ripped off with substantially less pain.
aside from/complementary to what’s mentioned above, our reason for defederating, by and large, boils down to:
- these two instances’ open registration policy, which is extremely problematic for us given how federation works and how trivial it makes trolling, harassment, and other undesirable behavior;
- the disproportionate number of moderator actions we take against users of these two instances, and the general amount of time we have to dedicate to bad actors on those two instances;
- our need to preserve not only a moderated community but a vibe and general feeling this is actually a safe space for our users to participate in;
- and the reality that fulfilling our ethos is simply not possible when we not only have to account for our own users but have to account for literally tens of thousands of new, completely unvetted users, some of whom explicitly see spaces like this as desirable to troll and disrupt and others of whom simply don’t care about what our instance stands for
as Gaywallet puts it, in our discussion of whether to do this:
There’s a lot of soft moderating that happens, where people step in to diffuse tense situations. But it’s not just that, there’s a vibe that comes along with it. Most people need a lot of trust and support to open up, and it’s really hard to trust and support who’s around you when there are bad actors. People shut themselves off in various ways when there’s more hostility around them. They’ll even shut themselves off when there’s fake nice behavior around. There’s a lot of nuance in modding a community like this and it’s not just where we take moderator actions- sometimes people need to step in to diffuse, to negotiate, to help people grow. This only works when everyone is on the same page about our ethos and right now we can’t even assess that for people who aren’t from our instance, so we’re walking a tightrope by trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That isn’t sustainable forever and especially not in the face of massive growth on such a short timeframe.
Explicitly safe spaces in real life typically aren’t open to having strangers walk in off the street, even if they have a bouncer to throw problematic people out. A single negative interaction might require a lot of energy to undo.
and, to reiterate: we understand that a lot of people legitimately and fairly use these instances, and this is going to be painful while it’s in effect. but we hope you can understand why we’re doing this. our words, when we talk about building something better here, are not idle platitudes, and we are not out to build a space that grows at any cost. we want a better space, and we think this is necessary to do that right now. if you disagree we understand that, but we hope you can if nothing else come away with the understanding it was an informed decision.
this is also not a permanent judgement (or a moral one on the part of either community’s owner, i should add–we just have differing interests here and that’s fine). in the future as tools develop, cultures settle, attitudes and interest change, and the wave of newcomers settles down, we’ll reassess whether we feel capable of refederating with these communities.
thanks for using our site folks.
Dang this really sucks :/ i understand why it’s important from a modding perspective. I guess I’ll need to open an account elsewhere and get a client with multi account support
Yea. I’m going to be honest, I disagree with this decision immensely. There just aren’t enough posts and comments here alone to really keep my whole lemmy experience here.
The whole point of federation is to be able to branch out as I see it. Half of the communities I’m subbed to are on the places being banned, so it sorta breaks the whole point of federation to me at least. I get why mods are doing it and think it’s definitely their right to do so, but as an end user, it reaaaally sucks and will likely make me make an account elsewhere as my primary.
There are a lot of assholes on the internet, and I get wanting to have a space free of that. As a trans woman of 10 years now, trust me, I have gotten harassment online and off it. For me at least, I personally err on the side of having more freedom to look into places even if that means dealing with a couple of assholes. The mods say that strangers don’t walk in off the street and start trolling - from experience, I can say that is just not quite true. At some point, people really have to just roll with it and keep a positive attitude in the face of it. It’s better to deal with assholes from time to time to go out and have fun rather than sit at home.
I worry that a space like this can stifle a good thing by wanting to be too thorough. Shit always slips thru cracks, and while I get that it can suck for some, heavy restriction just kills the whole thing. In some ways, it just feels like some of the decisions here are very kid-glovey. Like, at least in subs like asktrans or mtf or other parts on reddit where trolls loved to comgregate, downvotes were how the community itself self regulated trolls - we don’t even have that option here. I’m not sure how I feel about such hands on moderation - it doesn’t give good faith users a ton of freedom
They have the right to do so, but it probably shows I don’t quite fit with the ethos of the instance.
This decision was about users from other instances coming here and causing trouble, not beehaw users going elsewhere. The intent isn’t to keep users siloed in here. Unfortunately, lemmy currently only supports two modes of interaction between instances: either you federate, or you don’t. More technologically mature fediverse platforms like mastodon have more nuanced options, and hopefully we’ll get similar options in lemmy soon that will allow, e.g., beehaw users out onto these instances without letting everyone on those instances in here.
yeah to be clear: we don’t want this either! it sucks! but that’s how it is and we’re willing to ultimately bite that bullet and any potential consequences.
I just fail to see how this solves anything, people can easily sign up here or another non-blocked instance to troll.
It requires approval to sign up here and a lot of the other instances Beehaw is federated with, because of that filter it will drastically cut down on trolls and make moderation much easier for the small team here.
The beauty of the fediverse is that we can go make a lemmy.world account and enjoy all that content if we want. I have an account there already, and a kbin.social account because it’s temporarily defederated from just about everyone.
We need maybe a desktop client that can independently make it easy for each user to switch between accounts, like Jerboa apparently enables for android (and mlem for IOS, maybe?)
@Lowbird @Dee_Imaginarium On desktop you can be signed into different instances via different tabs, unless I’m misunderstanding you. Arguably a little clunky, but I do this with Mastodon to switch between a more moderated & focused instance, & a more general instance.
I imagine some may end up approaching Lemmy similarly now with Beehaw’s decision (which I understand & honestly anticipated happening sooner).
Yeah, that’s what I do for now until better functionality is developed for switching in Lemmy. It’s not the best but still plenty workable for me.
The two blocked instances in particular allow signup without application. To sign up here you need to show you are of good character. Sure, other instances’ applications aren’t as rigorous but due to waiting periods it will still discourage people from making spam/troll accounts and evade user bans.
One particular thing in the modlog I spotted was a username lgbtslayer from a now-defederated instance making a stupid and nasty post in the LGBTQ+ community on here. No self-respecting admin reviewing applications would allow a username with a clear meaning to be hurtful to others. Seems like the Beehaw admins are plugging this hole earlier rather than later before it becomes too much for the handful of them to handle.
Yeah. It won’t prevent people from play-acting like they’re legitimately on board with beehaw’s philosophy to get in the door, but the number of people willing to go to that length will be a lot smaller. And if we were to get brigaded by some concerted effort to sneak trolls in the door, beehaw can close the door even more, temporarily.
Is there a way for us to see all the instances you have defederated from? As a new user, it’s really confusing that I can still go to a community and post a comment there without knowing that we’re defederated from them and they will never see it.
If you scroll all the way to the bottom, there’s a link that says Instances; it’ll show you every instance Beehaw has blocked.
Oof, yeah, that doesn’t sound great.
Apparently users from instances that don’t disable downvotes have a similar confusion when they look at beehaw content, too, because their instances show them downvote buttons and counts (local to their instance I guess?) that don’t actually get applied on beehaw in any way.
Oh that’s interesting. So it’s not just a connection being made when it comes to federation; contributions are stored locally somehow too, maybe?
I know the intent isn’t to keep us siloed here, but unfortunately that’s the end result. Personally, I’d rather deal with trolls than defeat the whole purpose of the fediverse. If I wanted a small walled garden, I’d have gone to raddle.me or tildes. The mods absolutely have good intentions here, but it’s a bit smothering
If you have jerboa you can have the multi accounts feature to still access what ever instances you would like pretty seamlessly. I think the long term goal is more mod tools so that there doesn’t need to be a giant wall but maybe some boarder patrol to keep the trolls out.
I think I’m probably being an idiot, but I have Jerboa and can’t see where to add a second account?
There’s a little menu in the top left corner when you’re on the main/front page that shows up when you first open the app. Click that and a sidebar pops out. By your current username is a little down arrow. Click that, then there should be a little plus sign and something that says ‘add account.’ Tap that, then it asks you for the instance link, your username, and password. Hopefully that helps!
Thank you!! Can’t believe I missed that; I was looking everywhere but there.
You’re so very welcome. I’m glad I could help! & Don’t sweat it - that little arrow is easy to miss! :)
Sorry to continue this OT thread; I am a bit of a dumbass and also completely new to Lemmy/fedi (this is actually my first post whee). Just downloaded Jerboa and have figured out how to add multiple accounts, but can’t find one of my other instances in the instance drop-down (lemmy.blahaj.zone? Not sure if this the instance name or not…) Does Jerboa not have all instances yet or maybe am I just utterly confused about the naming (probably)?
I think Jerboa has a set list they show (or maybe they show the several most popular). You should just be able to type in the name of the instance though, I don’t think you need to pick one that’s specifically shown in the dropdown.
You can type any instance you like into that field. A lot of people were confused by a drop-down that also lets you enter text. You are not alone.
Its the tiny white arrow drop down
Lol, so I WAS being an idiot - thank you!!
Haha no worries! it’s not super obvious
Do you know perhaps if there’s a simple way of syncing subscriptions between multiple accounts?
Hm, sure the effect is as you describe (if you don’t go multi-account). However, I have experienced over and over again how only a few bad actors can totally ruin an otherwise safe and welcoming community. The only solution so far was always to restrict ourselves to fewer but trusted users. And this happened even in trans only spaces where other trans people were bigots themselves.
Maybe, as pointed out above, it is a difference in interest and priorities. If your priority is to see more content but with the drawback of more bigoted behavior, probably an account in the now de-federated instances is a good idea. However, as I understand it, the reason for many people to join here was specifically to create this protected space where we err rather on the safe site.
And btw I would love to see more queer and specifically trans spaces on Beehaw ;)
You could always pick up shop and move to, like, lemmy.one, which federates with beehaw and likewise disables downvotes (if you like that, elsewise choose somewhere else), and still access beehaw communities while also continuing to access lemmy.world and etc. Or use multiple accounts. This is inconvenient if you want your comment history all in one place, but I think that’s just always going to be harder in the fediverse anyway.
I hardly think this move defeats the whole purpose of the fediverse, when the fediverse is deliberately set up to allow different instances to moderate themselves differently, and spread the system out over different servers precisely so that you can choose the one you prefer, or so that if one goes down it doesn’t take the whole thing down. There are plenty of instances that aren’t moderated in the way beehaw is, if you dislike it.
Imo, if anything, the fediverse purpose of allowing for different moderation in different instances is rather defeated if random people from free-signup servers can just waltz in to more strictly moderated servers and be assholes whenever they want, which will only become more of a problem as more people show up and import their sometimes terrible reddit behavior. It’d just chase out a lot of the people whose comments and posts I’m enjoying here.
Do you know if there is an issue on lemmy github about this feature you talk about (more flexible federation options) ? So we can follow or maybe contribute
I know there’s a general issue to track shortcomings in the mod tooling: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2277
There’s also an issue to allow users to block certain instances themselves, which would be helpful with this kind of thing: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2397
There are a lot of open issues at the moment on lemmy’s github. I’m not sure if there’s something specific to this issue yet. I wasn’t able to find one but I may well have just used the wrong search keywords (I don’t know all the activitypub lingo yet). If not, one should definitely be opened! (And if I happen across one I’ll update this comment.)
I’m a woman too, but I have the opposite opinion. The world is already a tough place right now, especially living in the southern US like I do, and maybe it’s just because my ND can make emotional regulation difficult, but sometimes I really just want a safe space where I can let my guard down and be myself without a constant fight.
For the same reason, there were certain subreddits that I frequented often on reddit and certain ones I absolutely did not go to. I don’t mind l blocking the occasional user or even blocking an entire community myself if it means protecting my mental health, but it sounds like the adminis here were getting an unusual influx of trolls that were making it difficult to moderate this community. That’s even more difficult if each individual troll can just go make another account at one of those instances every time they get blocked here.
If people want to access those instances, they can create secondary accounts and visit them. There’s no reason we can’t have the best of both worlds. Plus, I don’t get the feeling they want this to be a permanent decision. It seems like just a stop-gap until they can find a more permanent solution whether that’s more moderators, more rules, or more mod tools.
I would also rather deal with the occasional troll or rude comment than to close off this community from the outside world. But, I recognize that it’s very difficult for our four(?) admins here, because they would rather try to talk out individual cases instead of blanketting beehaw with a boatload of very specific rules. And it’s a tightrope walk here when people can say (maybe just to waste time or not, but we should rather not err on the side of malice) “Why do i get punished but you allowed xyz the other day?”.
I’m just going to trust them here that there was a really big income of clear-as-day bad actors. Since they do not get paid at all for their services here, I see how it’s easier to defederate for the time being, seeing how they already have their hands full just trying to keep the instance up and running while working “proper jobs” and managing their own health.
So ya, for now, stay defederated. But as soon as you guys get more tools to play with, please tear down those walls again.
I would rather NOT have to deal with trolls and narcissists and have a smaller community for the sake of my mental health, and im sure a lot of my queer and folks would rather not as well (im cishet). trolling calls for attention by bending a discourse to their will. lets just not?
agree, the community here has had a very distinct vibe so far - welcoming and kind. It’s been a unique experience that can be ruined quite easily. I think we all need to be patient as this evolves.
The community will continue to grow, too, even without the users who are only on the now-defederated instances. I don’t think this dooms us to running out of content at all.
Especially when you can’t create communities on Beehaw and Beehaw is the only instance I know that have no downvote button
Lemmy.one and lemmy.blahaj.zone both disable downvotes too. I think there are others also. For some of us it’s a huge part of why we’re here and not elsewhere.
Agreed. It sucks that a lack of good mod tools forced this to happen. Having multiple passwords and accounts isn’t a great experience.
I think multiple accounts is a great idea.
I work in tech security and I cringe in pain when I see people post their 10 year accounts. The amount you can deduce and learn from mined social media data is absurd. I migrate to a new account every 6 months and that’s the longest you should keep an account. This of course doesn’t apply to your public brand account.
Oh wow, I never thought about it this way! Makes perfect sense. Thanks for the insight :)
ETA: Although I get that there is also the drawback of frequently “resetting” your account that you have to prove again and again that you are a trusted user. How do you deal with this?
Yeah that’s a valid point but it doesn’t take much to rebuild the participation history.
I also think it’s an awful metric for security anyways. Reddit tried that but you can literally buy reddit accounts for pennies and it only reduced the original content flow. The subreddits that had min-karma or account age requirements were always needlesly shitty and discouraging imo.
Hilariously, this is a problem reddit will soon face after killing it’s API. most of the actually robust mod tools were third party.
Yeah I totally get the decision but I gotta say I’m disappointed. Maybe it’s naive but I loved the idea that one of the premiere instances of lemmy had a core ethos that was a bit different and hopefully less toxic. Now instead of being a core driver for the developing culture of the lemmyverse were kinda just going to end up a niche walled garden. But again, from a mod perspective it get it. It sucks the tools simply don’t exist to deal with the massive influx of reddit users.
Realistically, I’ll probably end up with a main account elsewhere and hopefully continue to participate here occasionally.
Hopefully mod tools will alleviate this in the near future.
Does such a tool exist already?
I believe Jerboa on android has a feature to let you have multiple accounts signed in, although I haven’t messed with it yet
I have, it works great!
It sure does! I’ve been using it frequently the last few days! The mass migration has made many instances slow or a crawl, so it’s super handy to be able to just pop to a different account on a different instance.
This is correct, it does
I’ve used it, you can only view one account at a time. It’s a bit like profiles on your streaming service. It doesn’t merge things.
Mlem has multi login, I’ve been using it for a bit now, not too bad
Except the app is very very early in development and is missing a LOT of features.
You can have it on jerboa, the Android app. I don’t but i see.the option on my navigation bar
Not yet unfortunately, but I believe there are people working on it - and this may already be a feature Jerboa and Mlem devs are looking at.
I guess it kinda defeats the purpose of federation - having everything in one place that it gathers for you.
Maybe in future admins should get an option to restrict external voting, commenting and posting, which might help.
Or maybe have an additional ubersubscription option that allows external users deeper participation in exchange for additional vetting. But that would mean that community mods have to vett these ubersubscribers, not the instance admits.
Jerboa already supports it. I’ve been using it for a couple months now
Try Fedia.io, it’s another kbin instance.
Why not Kbin.social directly? We’re federating again!
It’s better if users spread out the load between instances.
kbin.social is just fine, too. At the time of my reply, I thought this was a kbin thread and so advocated for one of the other kbin-based instances, but it’s actually a Beehaw thread. Just one of the learning pains!
I was thinking it just shows how well this whole fediverse idea works that you could even be confused in the first place 🤓
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Go to kbin.social, click Login, then click create account.
If you’re trying to wrap your head around Federation, consider each “Instance” akin to an email provider like Gmail, Yahoo, Bing. It doesn’t matter who you sign up with, each provides email that can be sent and received with other email providers.
Federation is similar in that each Instance (a particular site like Fedia.io, kbin.social, lemmy, etc) are now the providers. So long as each Instance is participating in Federation, then you’ll see content from everywhere.
This reply is a perfect example. I’m on kbin, you’re on lemmy.ml, and this thread is on Beehaw!
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To add on to what 667 said (because I had the same questions myself the past week, and am still learning), kbin is not just another Lemmy instance. Unlike Beehaw, lemmy.ml, etc. (which are all built on the same code template), Kbin has its own codebase. I think of it as a separate “application” within the Fediverse, one that was built with both reddit-style link aggregation (a la Lemmy) and Twitter-style microblogs (a la mastodon) in mind.
This is how I think of it, hopefully of I’m mistaken someone will correct me 😄.
You are correct.
kbin is Federated with Mastodon (to my understanding) as “Microblogs”. Lemmy federates with kbin as magazines:communities and posts/articles/etc:[the lemmy equivalent].
I don’t mind you asking at all–this is a wonderful little time. We’re witnessing and participating in the potential birth of a new kind of social networking.
So as I understand from your post here, every piece of software is responsible to define its relationship with a different kind of software while all use ActivityPub underneath?
I have been reading on the ActivityPub protocol and trying to understand these days.
Yes, this is as I understand it as well. Eventually everything will fall under a set of open standards, very much like email.
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