My reaction in a word:

Beesnuts

Beehaw and Lemmyworld are two instances I do not like, with their weird stances on federation, and especially LW's pro-Zionist/Israel/NATO politics.

Beehaw should have not done so much defederation, which left a bad taste in my mouth, as one of the core people that helped build, moderate, de-raid and shape up Lemmy in the past 3 years to the proper Reddit alternative it has become today. I moderate privacy and technology at lemmy.ml instance, and was solely responsible for r/piracy subreddit migration to Lemmy.

Looking forward to Tildes way of doing things is a red flag to me. I would use Reddit before using Tildes.

While I would understand your reasoning for doing so, I would be disappointed to see it happen. There's decent discussions on Beehaw that I enjoy taking part in, however if you guys decided to defederate or switch to a different platform entirely, I doubt that I would make another account somewhere else to follow. I like Beehaw's content, but I have enough accounts to keep track of these days after everything split from Reddit, so it would ultimately be a loss for me.

I'm not sure if this is a commonly-held opinion for those of us outside of Beehaw, though.

I don't think you guys cared when you defederated from the rest of the fediverse and turned up your nose at everyone else. I'm not sure why you care now. You guys go and do your thing, but I don't think you're very relevant to the fediverse.

You speak very vaguely, and I don't think you're being fully honest with your reasoning, but by this point, I don't think it really matters.

I'm subbed to some communities on Beehaw and I would miss them. But not enough to make an account on Beehaw to get them back.

Without the loaded malice of some of these comments, sincerely, I forgot beehaw existed. It looked like the place to go during the migration and was constantly getting good word of mouth on all the Reddit move channels. Then the barrier to entry went up with the essay application, which was 100% fine as a decision, but obviously made it a hassle for the masses trying to find a home. Couple that with no open community creation, leaving no landing spot for niche communities and I went elsewhere.

But even after taking a shotgun approach and making accounts on multiple instances when stability and federation was still struggling, beehaw started defederating from everything. Again, 100% your decision. But the reasons were often blatantly showing that beehaw was not willing to engage in the learning process of this new interface with the rest of us.

So, again no malice, I literally forgot beehaw existed till seeing this post. So if your admins and users think you can achieve whatever elsewhere, I don’t see why you shouldn’t.

I feel like I've given my answer to this question regarding Beehaw once before...

But as I see it, the main driving force and overall source of value for services like Lemmy, Kbin, Mastodon, etc., is federation. That is to say, federation among a wide variety of different users and servers across the fediverse using protocols like ActivityPub is what sets this entire thing apart from legacy centralized and corporate social media, like Reddit or "X".

I was initially on Beehaw myself and I liked the mature and kind atmosphere, but I ended up splitting for Kbin due to issues with defederation (on top of being curious and interested in Kbin as an alternative software to lemmy). But whether we're talking about "Beehaw.org" or "Kbin.social", in my view the federation is a huge part of the appeal, and I wouldn't see myself continuing to use a server if it cut itself off from the rest of the network, regardless of whether they did it for "good reasons" or not.

Like, if Beehaw wants to be just a significantly smaller and more highly moderated centralized alternative to Reddit, that feels like a pretty weak pitch which, at best, might end up with a community roughly the size of a classic forum. I'm not really interested in that. I want the Fediverse to succeed as a decentralized, open, scalable, and community-moderated alternative to legacy social media. Frankly, my interest in Beehaw as a community hinges completely on it being a part of that movement or not.

I can understand how federation may have posed significant challenges towards your goal of detailed moderation and creating a safe and friendly space, but only in the sense that you were possibly not fully prepared for the level of exposure to a large number of federated users. But even so, if Beehaw is ever to grow into something bigger (which, to be honest, is not a given, especially if you set out on your own as just another disconnected and insular social media website), you will eventually have to deal with the harsh reality that the kind of moderation that you're interested in doing is going to be a significant challenge as your community scales, federated or not. (For example, you may be prepared to moderate content in English, but are you prepared to moderate content in other languages? How will you know when someone starts spreading disinformation and hate speech in Burmese?)

Finally, I think you might want to consider the general movement towards federated social media. Between ActivityPub and the Fediverse, Meta's interest in federating Threads, BlueSky being developed around federation to some extent, federation support in things like WordPress, and a number of other social media platforms tip-toeing their way into the idea, I personally feel that there is a pretty interesting paradigm shift happening right now. Some of that has to do with moderation, responsibility and government pressure on big tech, I think.

But nevertheless, social media is gradually moving towards federation, and I think that's a good thing for the internet as a whole. You nice people at Beehaw will really have to search yourselves to determine whether you see the value in federation (both in terms of connecting people, but also in terms of allowing various communities to self-moderate to some extent) or not.

I do hope you'll stay, even though it means facing the growing pains of moderation challenges sooner rather than later, because the fediverse is better with us all connected and communicating together. I'll be sticking with the fediverse with or without Beehaw, but I do wish you all luck in your goals should you decide to set out on your own.

Beehaw is my home in the fediverse, and I'm happy here. I like that they try to maintain a positive community. But if Beehaw left the fediverse, I wouldn't come along. Which is a change from thinking I might last time I saw this topic come up.

If beehaw ends up in a silo I think it will just have too little to offer for me. And that's ok. This isn't about me, it's about creating a safe space for your disenfranchised users.

I hope Beehaw stays, but I understand if they don't.

You don't really explain why activityPub is limiting you. It's hard to help you here.

I would be disappointed. I like the content from Beehaw and I enjoy being able to see it in my federated feed. I also think Beehaw fits a good niche in the Fediverse that would otherwise leave a hole if it was not there. I also think beehaw is a good influence on the Fediverse as a whole.

Have you considered that a part of your goal could be to make things better for disenfranchised people in a more general way? I think your presence in the Fediverse has a positive effect that goes beyond your own instance. And I think that's worth preserving.

Beehaw has already chosen not to be a part of the fediverse. There's no real purpose in asking us; only you can resolve Beehaw's identity crisis.

I'd leave Beehaw 🤓

It's not nearly big enough to be its own thing, and since the "quality" of posters is no better than other instances at this point, there woild be no reason to stay. I would certainly miss the communities there tho.

Also, Tildes is not a very good site to look up to. Why would anyone want another admin power-tripping place online?

You've already defederated lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, so I don't care

I don't think lemm.ee is federating correctly, but I'll give my take here if some one can sees it.

Beehaw will go the way of every other reddit alternatives, because the existing community is not enough to sustain the critical mass of activity needed. In fact, with the current instance policy, Beehaw is struggling to sustain itself as is with federation, which will only get worse if you defederate.

I'm not sure why Beehaw refuse to use Lemmy's white-list federation feature and selectively pick and choose who to federate with instead of going full scorched earth.

It's ultimately up to the admins at Beehaw to make this choice, but I would like to say, grass is not always greener on the other side, defederation will harm Beehaw more than it helps.

I would not like it.

I understand the issues for the people running Beehaw and they are totally real and understandable. That being said you have to appreciate that Beehaw is setting an example as one of the most popular instances on the Fediverse. What y'all are doing is not just limited to what you directly control but is also influencing this new and developing sphere that is the Fediverse. I understand that some people are resentful of how Beehaw enforces the rules of its own community, and I understand how a barrage of that can be extremely demotivating and tiresome. I have also heard about the absolutely despicable content that some mods have had to deal with which is extremely traumatizing which ideally shouldn't have to be experienced by anyone. I would understand anyone who would want to never have to deal with that again since that would probably be my reaction.

In terms of ideas, I really appreciate that Beehaw is making a firm stand in the interest of free expression without being bogged down by prejudice and economic interests. The success of Beehaw compared to other instances demonstrates that the project y'all are working on is desired not only by Beehaw denizens such as myself but also those from general instances. This is despite what I assume is a barrage of negativity, complaints, trolling, and legitimately criminal behavior by those who do not support the kind of place which Beehaw is. I know it's a big and unfair ask to want you guys to continue experiencing the things that cause you to want to make you abandon the fediverse, and honestly I wouldn't blame you if you do, but it is very clear to me that the existence of Beehaw as it is is a huge draw to the fediverse and is establishing norms which can't be accommodated outside of what we have here. Reddit sure as hell can't offer what I've been experiencing on the fediverse, and I think that Beehaw is a huge reason for why that is.

the only thing of substance are links to your websites and discord

Ah okay so this is what this is about. Very creative way to peddle your shit.

Indifferent

As a non-Beehaw I would like you to stay because I like nice people. But I understand if you have to go.

Can someone explain all the hate against Beehaw to me? I run a private instance, so I don't really keep up with Lemmy politics

I always got death-cult vibes from beehaw. I expected their flame-out to be a lot more dramatig than this, though.

I think the fediverse would be better off without Beehaw, so yeah, get off Lemmy and go build your own platform by yourself. I wish you the absolute best of luck, and thank you in advance for taking all the worst kind of people off the fediverse with you.

I replied to another user, but I'm sharing it in a main reply to add my voice to the base level comments.

I want a safe place to be, while looking out into a wider sea of content (albeit through the filter of Beehaw’s defederation, which I really appreciate). When the trolls and the assholes get too much, I like to be able to retreat back to just Local feed setting and be safe again. If beehaw was to be a separate platform, I’d lose that.

Beehaw is a shining beacon in an ocean of content, good and bad. I’d love that beacon to remain, so more people can find safety here if they need it.

As a relatively new Beehaw user (I deliberately waited for the reddit exodus to subside before applying), I understand the reasoning. The "default" open nature of ActivityPub creates moderation challenges for a "well tended garden" - much more so than a more controlled space. I also understand the software (lemmy) itself is somewhat problematical, both politically and from technical/maintenance perspective.

I wouldn't be against moving - and I'd follow. The Beehaw groups are active and contain lot of good quality discussions, I'd assume that wouldn't change outside fediverse.

I'd be still free to access the fediverse through other kbin/lemmy instances if I wanted to participate and I wouldn't close my Mastodon account just because Beehaw decided to move somewhere else, so I wouldn't personally lose very much - and I would stand to gain a "safe haven" - a more closed discussion forum I could always turn to when the noise of the outside world gets to be too much.

For the sake of everyone moderating Beehaw and our communities, I'd completely understand. Fediverse is a very rowdy bar and as volunteer bartenders, it must be somewhat tiresome for you.

In the long term I'd worry about building a too small echo chamber without the required diversity for Quality Discussions and I'd also worry about "hiding" - it would be harder for fellow disenfranchised cretins to find us - and perhaps we'd lose good members. I know the Beehaw strategy priority is not centered around growth, but nevertheless, some kind of strategy would have to be devised to monitoring the long term health and diversity of the community.

I thought you had been defederated for months now

Good riddance, Beehaw is terrible. It was maybe the single biggest exporter of concern-trolling about lemmy.ml and to my knowledge still entertains absurdly reactionary comms for no reason (though I haven't brushed up on my lore in a while). Go make your blue Raddle.

More constructively: Having your "Northern Star" be "intentionally vague" is not a good practice. Having clear rules is a much better way to avoid falling into "what did the mod who reviewed the report feel like doing at the time?" arbitration issues. If you want to serve disenfranchised communities well,* then have that be the foundation and clearly define what that means and why you are doing it.

*My experience with this was that Beehaw was more about first world radlibs patting themselves on the back, but I digress

Lemmy is even more left wing than reddit. Going full isolation would turn yall into hexbear, probably.

Are you okay with that risk?

it would be a net positive for the fediverse if beehaw left

I guess there is no need for further commentary on why the strict moderation of a "safe space"/walled garden cannot keep up with the growth of such an open space as activitypub.

So in response to the title, I would think this is fantastic news! You say your principle is "be nice", which I think is great and I wish it was the general norm, but from what I've seen and heard it would be more like "you better think like us, because we aggressively enforce political correctness and ideological censorship". It would be a pity to lose its users, but I simply hate to end up on beehaw by mistake and would be happier to see it disappear.