Regarding Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, this post goes into detail on the why and the philosophy behind that decision. Additionally, there is an update specific to sh.itjust.works here.
For now, let’s talk about what federation is and what defederation means for members of Beehaw or the above two communities interacting with each other, as well as the broader fediverse.
Federation is not something new on the internet. Most users use federated services every day (for instance, the url used to access instances uses a federated service known as DNS, and email is another system that functions through federation.) Just like those services, you elect to use a service provider that allows you to communicate with the rest of the world. That service provider is your window to work with others.
When you federate, you mutually agree to share your content. This means that posting something to a site can be seen by another and all comments are shared. Even users from other sites can post to your site.
Now when you defederate, this results in content to be no longer shared. It didn’t reverse any previous sharing or posts, it just stops the information from flowing with the selected instance. This only impacts the site’s that are called out.
What this means to you is when a user within one instance (e.g. Beehaw) that’s chosen to defederate with another (e.g. lemmy.world), they can no longer interact with content on another instance, and vice versa. Other instances can still see the content of both servers as though nothing has happened.
- A user is not limited to how many instances they can join (technically at least - some instance have more stringent requirements for joining than others do)
- A user can interact with Lemmy content without being a user of any Lemmy instance - e.g. Mastodon (UI for doing so is limited, but it is still possible.)
Considering the above, it is important to understand just how much autonomy we, as users have. For example, as the larger instances are flooded with users and their respective admins and mods try to keep up, many, smaller instances not only thrive, but emerge, regularly (and even single user instances - I have one for just myself!) The act of defederation does not serve to lock individual users out of anything as there are multiple avenues to constantly maintain access to, if you want it, the entirety of the unfiltered fediverse.
On that last point, another consideration at the individual level is - what do you want out of Lemmy? Do you want to find and connect with like-minded people, share information, and connect at a social and community level? Do you want to casually browse content and not really interact with anyone? These questions and the questions that they lead to are critical. There is no direct benefit to being on the biggest instance. In fact, as we all deal with this mass influx, figure out what that means for our own instances and interactions with others, I would argue that a smaller instance is actually much better suited for those who just want to casually browse everything.
Lastly, and tangential, another concern I have seen related to this conversation is people feeling afraid of being locked out of the content and conversation from the “main” communities around big topics starting to form across the Lemmiverse (think memes, gaming, tech, politics, news, etc.) Over time, certain communities will certainly become a default for some people just given the community size (there will always be a biggest or most active - it’s just a numbers game.) This, again though, all comes down to personal preference and what each individual is looking to get from their Lemmy experience. While there may, eventually, be a “main” sub for <topic xyz> (again, by the numbers), there will also always be quite a few other options for targeted discussions on <topic xyz>, within different communities, on different instances, each with their own culture and vibe. This can certainly feel overwhelming and daunting (and at the moment, honestly it is.) Reddit and other non-federated platforms provided the illusion of choice, but this is what actual choice looks and feels like.
[edit: grammar and spelling]
Beehaw admins really seem like a bunch of cocky and snoby people. First the requirements for registration - need to write a short essay why you are worthy of joining the sacred community. Now this, leaving fediverse which looks like trying to separate from cousins living outside of their town. Just defederate and vanish in obsolescence of interwebs.
Can we please get rid of these people who insist on remaining uninformed and then going out and spreading their ignorance by attacking others? It’s contrary to the vision of this instance to allow them to continue this behavior.
This is where the fediverse is both powerful and a bit of a challenge to moderate. The best way to deal with these things is to be vigilant in sharing information that supports the contrary; since there’s no real way to filter out bad information unilaterally (and even if so, I’d find that to be a dangerous precedence as who constitutes “good” and “bad” across the federated instances).
While the post was quite toxic towards the admins, the opinion of the user was done in what I see as exasperation at the situation without necessarily understanding the logic of these choices made for the beehaw instance as a whole; so there’s an opportunity to redirect them to a different path or understanding. I’m aware that there are likely several others who share this opinion and may learn from this (just taking a moment to review some of the kbin.socal and lemmy.world threads on this subject shows this as a common concern). Moderation and intervention is more about systemic patterns of an individual’s behavior that clashes with a community’s ethos. Following the ethos of our admins, we take a measured response based on history and engagement.
As for now, things appear to have resolved through disengagement, so mission accomplished: we got the information out there and addressed their concern (and possibly inform other lurkers and the various instances that federate with us on this point).
As an fyi, feel free to remove redundant comment threads - if twenty people come in and just post “defederation bad”, after a certain point you can clean it up as noise.
I think creating fragmentation at this sensitive/important time is kinda irresponsible.
I disagree; while this is a critical juncture, experimentation is absolutely necessary. Whether a push to expand the user base/migrate from failing centralized services succeeds or fails, this is where lines get drawn and precedent gets set. An instance must be free to defederate from another instance, just as a user must be free to leave and pick up an account on another instance, should they disagree with the decision.
“A short essay” is required? That’s a blatant lie.
I wrote “it was on the recommended list at join-lemmy.org” and got accepted.
I wrote mine a week ago and cannot come into it, I would like to create and debate in beehaw because looks the most interesting instance for me but if they don’t accept me I won’t cry.
You are posting in Beehaw right now.
You are creating and debating in Beehaw at this very moment.
Lemm.ee (your home instance) is federated with Beehaw. You can do everything on Beehaw that a member can. This is how the Fediverse works. No need to wait for acceptance, no need to cry. Welcome to Beehaw, Lugado! <throws lei around your neck, hands you a beer>
There was an unfortunate email glitch where if your username was already present in the instance, it would silently deny your application, and the beehaw admins would be none the wiser. See https://beehaw.org/post/562922
Additionally, there has been some issues with the beehaw’s email provider that has recently been fixed and the backlog has started to decrease. See https://beehaw.org/post/604680
Funny the thing about the whole short essay thing, because I basically only wrote “I wanna try Lemmy and I want an active instance where I can be active in”
Beehaw didn’t left the fediverse, it defederated from two Lemmy instances over the more than 20000 that exist in all the fediverse. The number of instances that Beehaw defederates from (which, of course, is bigger than two, as there are intances that are globally defederated) is tiny in comparison with the size of the whole ActibityPub -based fediverse.
Make sure you understand how the fediverse work before resorting to lying.
You don’t have to write a short essay, I didn’t write much more than “I heard about you on reddit and I wanna check it out” and I got accepted
That was my answer for why I wanted to join, too! And I answered the “what will you contribute?” one pretty simply too, with the same things I try to bring to any conversation: my knowledge and empathy wherever they can be helpful.
I took the questions as the same kind of very basic filtering that my husband does for his tractor enthusiast Facebook group; he’s not looking for essays, he just wants to know people will actually read (and follow!) the rules and not be jerks.
I think with the registration questions they’re just trying to solve two things: preventing bots from signing up, and preventing trolls. It doesn’t seem so bad, really.
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