How would you feel if Beehaw left the Fediverse?
How would you feel if Beehaw left the Fediverse?
I am one of the admins of Beehaw and I'm trying to get some feedback on our potential move.
Let's start out with a little Beehaw history before judgements are passed, please.
A handful of us were beta testing Tildes when we decided to have discussions on a Discord server.
We decided that our 'Northern Star' or guiding principle would culminate as 'Be Nice' with purposefully vague/flexible interpretations. Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.
We talked for a little over a year and some of our members became impatient. Then someone stepped in to suggest a couple of platforms that we could consider getting started with.
One of those platforms was Lemmy. None of us knew, at that time, anything about ActivityPub.
During the Reddit exodus (surrounding the API outcry and blackout), our instance exploded. We were, initially, crippled by the mass amounts of users seeking refuge.
Thankfully, someone stepped in and volunteered hundreds of hours of work to stabilize our instance and refine it further.
After many hours of talks, it became clear to us that our overall goal could be achieved outside of Lemmy/ActivityPub.
Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.
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Not a fan of any of the idealistic instances and beehaw is not an exception. If there was some good communities then someone is just going to recreate those on a different instance.
Not a fan of any of the idealistic instances
But... doesn't the value of federation come from having varying communities with different points of view?
Even if you don't agree with them, there's value in having them.
Even if you don't agree with them, there's value in having them.
I hear this all the time but somehow it's never about instances full of rightoids or conspiracy theorists, it's always about some "can't we all be nice*" instances (Beehaw in 99% of cases) or some openly tankie instance that somehow gets a pass despite being just as politically extreme on the left as Alex Jones is on the right.
* "nice" as in "be nice by my particular definition or else"
There is value in having different opinions on a platform, but I would argue there's very little value, bordering on active detriment, to having fundamental disagreements about the nature of this space and the role of moderation in it.
If I wanted Beehaw's style of borderline obsessive nitpicking of writing and tone, I would be a ResetEra user.
Beehaw existing in the fediverse is only a boon so long as its team and users understand the basic point of this platform is to be able to interact with users from other instances, something they clearly never wanted in the first place.
This is also why Hexbear defederated, in a roundabout way.
They thought they were going to bully larger liberal groups and recruit from them, they instead got that quickly turned around on them and the users decided their perfect little tankie shitstirrer bubble needed to be protected from the real world where most of humanity does not want anything to do with them.
Communities should set the standard for interactions within them, instances should set the standard of what communities are welcome to exist on them (see: piracy and NSFW topics on various dedicated instances).
Any instance that demands the ability to set the standard of interaction for the rest of the platform is poisonous and should be heavily side-eyed and/or kindly encouraged to take a long hike off a short pier.
Concur. Beehaw is so precious and isolated, there is more wall there than garden. Sounds boring, kthnxbai. Please stay defederated or whatever.
Sure but we don't need to create compartmentalized echo chamber for every group. Those individuals are free to express their views and opinions as the members of more general instances aswell.