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lemmy.ml Tankies
(beehaw.org)
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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Might as well take this opportunity to point out that beehaw is still defederated from sh.itjust.works. I thought it was a bizarre decision at the time and the fact that it hasn't been reassessed after all this time is even more baffling. Beehaw and SJW are two of the best moderated instances on Lemmy, and yet we aren't federated with each other.
You can view the original announcement from beehaw here and the reaction from SJW here. ~~You'll also note that beehaw has since refederated with lemmy.world.~~
I have been informed that beehaw is still defederated from lemmy.world, my mistake.
Nearly a year later, it's obvious that the decisions of beehaw admins during that critical period of time when redditors were first trying Lemmy were highly disruptive towards the development of the platform as a whole. The first level of disruption came from the direct fragmentation of communities caused by that defederation decision.
The second and more devastating impact was the impact on the perceptions of new users, who were given a manifestation of their worst fears about Lemmy and it's federated structure. Many potential users were turned off Lemmy because they didn't like the fact that they could suddenly be blocked off from major communities on other servers due to arbitrary admin decisions, and beehaw essentially provided the perfect example of that at a critical growth phase.
At the time that they defederated SJW, Beehaw was more that 3 times larger, at about 12k total/3k monthly users. Now, SJW is more than 5 times larger than Beehaw, which has dwindled to just 450 monthly users.
With regard to lemmy.ml, I think the main issue is that beehaw has disabled downvotes. The tankies are significantly outnumbered on Lemmy as a whole and a combination of downvoting and active moderation from other admins effectively minimizes the problem for most other major servers. But because beehaw doesn't allow downvotes, has dwindled to a small userbase, and has isolated itself from other non-extremist servers (SJW), you have been left much more exposed to the tankie propaganda, with your only recourse being the nuclear option of defederation.
Obviously, my point is that beehaw admins should accept that they made a mistake and refederate with sh.itjust.works. I would also recommend upgrading to the latest version of Lemmy, because it at least gives users the option of instance blocking. I understand that you intend to move to Sublinks or another platform in the future, but in the meantime you are neglecting your users by allowing the current implementation on Lemmy to languish.
I don't mean this to be an attack on the beehaw admins, because I think they have done a number of great things for Lemmy and the fediverse and I believe that our objectives are generally aligned. But I feel that I must express these frustrations, because as I have just explained, the actions of the beehaw admins also have direct consequences on fediverse users from other servers.
I think that beehaw admins, not dissimilarly to hexbear admins, tend to disregard how their actions impact the fediverse as a whole and focus solely on the proximate impact on their own userbase. This is a faulty mindset, because the fediverse is the ecosystem which we all share, and that ecosystem needs to be protected and maintained in order for all of the different organisms (instances) residing therein to thrive. Without our connection to the fediverse, all of our instances would simply wither away.
unless we're compelled to, it is exceedingly unlikely we will upgrade. we are fully committed to moving off the platform so it just makes no sense to prioritize Lemmy updates.
with respect to refederation: we already polled that with both SJW and LW months ago and were given a very definitive no, do not refederate from our userbase. only 11% and 17% of our users were in favor of refederation respectively, and majorities were fine with continued defederation from both. our defederation policy was also strongly supported. (i believe this is the first time these numbers have been posted because they were so definitively in favor of the status quo.)
we're not and have never been in this for numbers so this is immaterial to us--we've been quite public that we'd be fine having a community of a few dozen people, because that's what we were before the Reddit fiasco. in any case: please understand that we are not responsible for the health of the Lemmy ecosystem. and even if we were (which we reject categorically) we have definitively been told to leave the platform because of our disagreements with the Lemmy developers. bettering this platform is no longer a priority for us in any way--and it is the general opinion of the team that we wasted a lot of time prioritizing that given the developer antipathy toward us. you can read more on that here if you'd like.
If I remember correctly, I definitely voted with the majority on this one, for what it's worth.
I don't agree with every moderator decision that's been made, but there isn't a site on the planet where I'm going to agree with every moderator decision, even if I'm running the damn thing. I do strongly agree though that bigger isn't better, and that 'that other one is bigger' isn't a compelling argument for re-federating.
I chime in with criticism often enough, so I figured I'd just poke my head in and say I think y'all are right on target with this one.
You should do what your users want. Growth in users for the sake of "line goes up" is a faulty attitude. Dozens of users sounds like a community of good faith users, very nice. You do you!
Thanks for the response. I didn't realize that you had conducted polls about refederation, that's good to hear. I'm familiar with the situation with the Lemmy developers.
I understand why you have chosen this course of action and I don't mean to say you're responsible for the health of Lemmy. I was just pointing out that from my perspective, a rising tide lifts all boats, and it's helpful to have a network of similar communities because it makes each one stronger.
For instance, if someone on SJW complains about us being defederated from lemmygrad and hexbear, I can simply tell them to make an account on lemm.ee, thus allowing them to remain a part of any communities on SJW but also allowing them to have the experience they wanted. And lemm.ee also gets a new user out of it. When you don't have those options, the disgruntled user is much more likely to stop using the platform entirely.
However, you obviously already have plenty of experience cultivating and maintaining a community, so I have faith that you will be able to continue to do so regardless of the extent of federation that you deem appropriate or which platform you use, and I wish you luck going forward.
My understanding is that a lot of the reasons for defederation stemmed from a fundamental lack of sufficient moderator tools. Tools that have not appeared and the lack of which has prompted Beehaw to consider moving to a different ActivityPub supporting platform in the fediverse.
Here is my view/reaction as a Beehaw user. I am not an admin or mod, just a regular user. I don't want this to seem like an attack, but know ahead of time that I disagree with a lot of what you said.
How so? It is not obvious to me, and some examples would be great.
As a personal opinion, the communities Beehaw defederated from are communities I don't want to interact with. This is not a net negative for me.
Do you have evidence of this? It is a pretty bold claim and if it is so impactful, there should be evidence. As side note, Beehaw's goals (from a user perspective mind you, I am not speaking for the admins or mods) are not exponential user growth, but quality community. If users are turned off by the fact Beehaw is pro defederation with communities that are a large source of trolls or hate (not saying SJW is one of those), then Beehaw isn't the right community anyhow.
I like the removal of the downvote. It makes for a more positive community, and because Beehaw has an active mod/admin team we don't tend to have issues that are not taken care of fairly quickly.
To me, the issue is that this relies on a lot of other large communities to moderate users, and more often than not that is more difficult than it sounds for the good ones, or non-existent in the crappy ones. Especially with the Lemmy devs resistant to adding good moderation tools.
Again, Beehaw's focus is quality over quantity. Honestly this felt like it was meant to be an insult, but in the grand scheme of things doesn't have much relevance to me
Defederation is the most extreme, but if so much bad stuff is coming from a single source that is not properly moderated, it seems like the most logical to me. I think this goes back to a lack of moderation tools and poor moderation in other instances, not to Beehaw's relatively smaller user base or defederation from other instances.
Does sh.itjust.works still have open sign ups? Then I don't think a mistake was made nor should the admins refederate.
I am not privy to the inner workings of Beehaw, but I know they are focusing on moving to a new platform, so this seems like it would be a lot of wasted effort for the small team that is Beehaw.
This is a difference of philosophy (at least for Beehaw, hexbear is a different story/issue). Beehaw's focus on it's userbase is why I am here in the first place. The greater fediverse isn't my concern, and it is not the admins responsibility.
I think when Beehaw moves platforms, things may change. Better tools might allow for a more open relationship. That being said, Lemmy has been hostile to Beehaw (when they tried to reach out the Lemmy devs to petition for better mod tools, they were told in no uncertain terms they were welcome to GTFO). I know Lemmy isn't the whole fediverse, but putting in a bunch of effort on a platform Beehaw is leaving seems silly.
Again, these are just my thoughts as a Beehaw user, but to me the issues you bring up are not issues for me at all, and in a lot of cases are actual boons.
I've spent a lot of time trying to evangelize Lemmy on reddit, and one of the most common criticisms is the possibility of defederation and getting cut off from major communities. Most people who have been using Lemmy for a while understand that it's way less of an issue than it sounds like, because there has to be a major reason for a defederation between servers and it doesn't usually happen out of nowhere.
But in the case of Beehaw, it actually did happen quite abruptly, and it involved 3 of the largest servers at the time. We know that Lemmy slowly bled tens of thousands of users in the months following the reddit API exodus as users drifted back to reddit. Although it's impossible to know how many of those users were annoyed by the defederation drama, I think it's safe to say that the number wasn't zero.
The steep decline in active users on Beehaw in the months following the decision is probably the best source of hard evidence supporting my claim.
The removal of downvotes is not something that I have any particular problem with, although I wouldn't choose it for myself. I'm just pointing out that in this specific situation of wanting to mitigate tankie posts, the downvote is self-evidently an effective tool.
Can't it be both? If certain moderation tools existed then you could use them to solve the problem. But they don't exist, so other instances are currently using the strategies that I have mentioned in order to deal with the problem as best they can.
Sh.itjust.works does have open signups.
I totally understand and respect your perspective as a beehaw user, even as I obviously have a completely different perspective as someone who has never been a part of the beehaw community but instead has been observing from a distance.
Frankly, if this is a concern to people and I believe it does concern some, they should not use federated platforms as this will always happen.
You're saying that the decline in active users on Beehaw is a result of these defederations while simultaneously acknowledging that Lemmy as a whole lost users. Maybe it is true, maybe it is not. I could not make such a claim with this information.
You bring up good points. I can't say I ever truly understood why beehaw defederated from that particular instance. You think beehaw is going to die? I'm not sure most on here want it to get bigger. This isn't a commercial enterprise. But maybe the mods understand the intricacies of the SJW thing better than I do and will reconsider. Anyway, lemmy.ml sucks and is a problem, at the moment.
Thank you. I don't necessarily think beehaw is going to die and I agree that it doesn't need to get bigger.
But this was just my perspective as a sh.itjust.works user and admin that I've been wanting to get off my chest. SJW got cut off from beehaw users and communities soon after I joined Lemmy and it's been bothering me ever since and this seemed like a good opportunity to communicate my perspective.
Thank you for sharing it! Through interactions on an alt I can see why world is still defederated, but sjw has been positive in my recent experiences.
My experiences with beehaw users have also been largely positive, but I don't really use my alt that much, so I don't have many encounters.