Thinking about the direction of Beehaw
Thinking about the direction of Beehaw
Over the years I’ve been trying to encapsulate, as simply as possible, what Beehaw interactions would look like ideally.
I kept coming back to all of my personal memories having holiday meals (Thanksgiving and Christmas for example) with very close family and friends.
Thinking back through decades of these meetings, I cannot remember anything but everyone being kind and charitable in action as well as speech.
Many pages of very thoughtful and reasonable philosophic explanations have been written, on our sidebar, about the behavioral expectations of Beehaw.
Let’s go back to the holiday meals for a moment and imagine having an open invitation for anyone to join. What do you think the outcomes would be?
This is the problem that our endeavor is experiencing. The open nature of ActivityPub (allowing anyone to join our table) is defeating our purpose.
The administrators, moderators and community members have been thinking about this for several months.
I, personally, believe that we all will come to a comfortable consensus moving forward.
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I feel like lots of thinking like this or adjacent to this is going on around the fediverse, and part of the problem we're all encountering is that many or even most of us don't really understand this "design space" of homely/kind/safe/wholesome/fulfilling online placed particularly well. And so we're either reaching for established models (reddit/twitter etc) or expecting too much of new technologies (decentralisation and federation).
In the case of holiday meals and beehaw, while reading your post, my immediate thought was how it's simultaneously a fantastic metaphor and an inapplicable one for social media. A holiday meal, I'd say, is defined by its rarity and specificity. Once a year, family members and close friends gather together for the purpose of being together. I don't see that mapping onto online social media ... like at all ... however desirable that demeanor and vibe is desirable.
And while being kind and open etc is obviously a good aim for a social media space, so long as it is social media, which means open ended discussions/topics, (relatively) open membership, relative anonymity, constant activity, and, let's be honest, some expectation of providing some form entertainment to lurkers ... the personal bonds and purpose of a holiday meal just can't exist. Which is a problem, IMO, that goes beyond ActivityPub, because the moment you make a social media space more closed or exclusive while trying to still be a form of social media, it will become quieter, duller and less compelling to users (for better or worse) and eventually fall into relative disuse and so seem to fail at social media.
If you then want to recast social media, you then, IMO, need to think a lot about formats, UIs, media types and framing and how people are presented and interact ... like to a large extent ... because this whole "sending text messages to each other in a public space" can only go so far (which is a big problem I personally have with the fediverse).
I say this not to dismiss your and Beehaw's goals ... but really just to say ... "that's great, but underestimating how hard this stuff can be would not serve you or beehaw well IMO".
Hope it goes well though and will be curious to see what happens to beehaw!
A holiday meal, I’d say, is defined by its rarity and specificity. Once a year, family members and close friends gather together for the purpose of being together. I don’t see that mapping onto online social media[...]while being kind and open etc is obviously a good aim for a social media space, so long as it is social media, which means open ended discussions/topics, (relatively) open membership, relative anonymity, constant activity, and, let’s be honest, some expectation of providing some form entertainment to lurkers … the personal bonds and purpose of a holiday meal just can’t exist.
Familial relationships are the product of time-tested, intimate bonds. They can't be manufactured, and attempting to do so is likelier to limit comfort and expression from users in the absence of functional knowledge of others' boundaries. Social media should, ideally, encourage cordial free expression, dissent, and disagreement, when (1) the focus of those activities are on ideas rather than people (e.g., other users), and (2) those ideas are not harmful to any other person or people. I actually don't think Beehaw is great at this currently, with the strong caveat that I also believe it is much, much better and more earnest in its endeavor to do so than any other alternative I'm aware of. But I fear further seclusion would be a move in the wrong direction.
the moment you make a social media space more closed or exclusive while trying to still be a form of social media, it will become quieter, duller and less compelling to users (for better or worse) and eventually fall into relative disuse and so seem to fail at social media.
Observing from my own experience here (and the admins would obviously be well-suited to prove otherwise), too much of the contributions to this community are weighted toward the admins and mods rather than general users. Discussions get decent traction, but I notice that many of the posts themselves are coming from the elevated accounts. If this is accurate, it's a significant point of failure that would conceivably hasten the "fall into relative disuse" in the event that just a few of these power users are unable to contribute as prolifically. Federation helps fill this gap.
All this being said, I want to counter-balance my criticisms by extending my gratitude and admiration for the admins and mods who've made this community what it is. I have an account on Kbin as well that can view much more of the fediverse, but I spend roughly 85% of my time here on Beehaw because of the strength of the community (and, admittedly, to a lesser degree because there are no good kbin mobile apps). It's clear to see the amount of time, effort, and diligence it takes to create this space, and I am extremely grateful for it. For my own sake, I hope that Beehaw remains here (or on another federated service), but whatever direction is chosen I wish the experiment enormous success.
I actually don’t think Beehaw is great at this currently, with the strong caveat that I also believe it is much, much better and more earnest in its endeavor to do so than any other alternative I’m aware of. But I fear further seclusion would be a move in the wrong direction.
I'm curious in what ways you think we could improve? Would you care to expand upon this?
I'll try, hope this makes sense. As a leftist space, Beehaw is a bit of an echo chamber. On its own, this is kind of a neutral value, maybe even a positive one (we've seen with brutal transparency what "free speech" platforms actually are). But echo chambers are vulnerable to the creeping growth of some inhospitable characteristics (being dismissive, derisive, reductive, etc.) toward ideas outside the narrow lane of the chamber. We treat conclusions as foregone and perceived opposition as hostile. And that's the main thrust: I firmly believe that internet culture, broadly, mistakes and/or conflates things like ignorance, diverging personal experience, or even sufficient inarticulateness as opposition and treats it accordingly.
One of the most frequent examples I see here is the devolution of a minor disagreement (there was a relatively recent example concerning the fairness of a news headline) into a hyperbolic declaration of someone's overall character (e.g., "because of how you've conducted yourself in this conversation, or the ideas you've expressed, you probably would have supported the Nazis" as a demonstrative example). At other times, I've seen relatively harmless stubbornness responded to with blocks or bans, which felt extreme to me despite the fact that the stubbornness was indeed frustrating and potentially (but not actually, yet) malicious.
I want to be explicit that I don't think any inclusive community is well-served by being tolerant of harmful ideas. Harmful ideas should be countered, blocked, banned, censored, and burned in a fire. But I'd like to see non-hostile opposition, ignorance, diverging personal experiences, etc. treated with more cordiality and grace up until the point that they are effectively exposed as malicious. I think there are good people with bad ideas (I've been one of them and expect to be again) who could learn and grow in a community like this with the right balance.
Thanks for elaborating. It's tough to decide where is 'too far' and when someone is behaving in a way that if left unchecked results in a slow decline into a space where nice people no longer want to participate. We tend to err on the side of caution because we've seen how evaporative cooling can ruin a nice place, but with strong checks/balances to try and reduce/minimize inappropriately stepping in, as well as inappropriate deletions and bans. We're human though, we make mistakes, and ultimately it's important to us that we create a space we haven't been able to find elsewhere and sometimes there just aren't enough people with enough emotional bandwidth to do the messy work of differentiating between someone who's just stubborn and misinformed, and someone who's being malicious (let alone issues that crop up with neurodivergence and not understanding what nice behavior is).
I truly do wish we had enough bandwidth to provide more cordiality and grace to everyone. Speaking of which, if you or anyone else who does have emotional bandwidth, extra time, and passion for seeing places like this exist on the internet and wishes to step in and help us stick to our principles, we'd love the help 💜
I should acknowledge how easy it is for me to commentate from my position as spectator! You and the rest of the team have very clearly put a lot of research and thought into cultivating Beehaw and it shows. I'm very lucky that this was my gateway to the fediverse during last summer's exodus.
I wish I could volunteer to help but I'm rather flaky and inconsistent with my online time, as it's necessarily well down my list of priorities. If that still sounds like a situation I could contribute through, let me know.