Alt text:
A three panel meme of someone riding a bike.
- First panel: Someone riding on a bike. "Reddit is imploding, quick let's get on Lemmy"
- Second panel: The bike starts to tip over on its own. "Oh shit there's too many of us, we're being defederated?"
- Third panel: They've fallen on the ground by the bike, holding their knee in pain. "Fucking Beehaw"
Imma be honest, Beehaw feels empty in comparison to the other instances and they've made some weird decisions (no downvotes?). Why am I even here when browsing world in my browser not even logged in seemed to be an infinitely better experience... I don't get this place
I guess you haven't seen what ANY community in Lemmy looked like before May 28th. Relative to today it was a barren wasteland in terms of content numbers, whereas in terms of community feel it was tight-knit and cozy. The busiest communities had like 5 or 6 posts a day, most with 0 to a handful of comments each. Whole instances like Beehaw and lemmy.ml might each have had around 20 posts or so a day on a good day.
Beehaw's top priority has been to keep that cozy feeling of friendliness and community even as we have grown more than 10x in size. It's not easy, and being a copy of Reddit or seeking mainstream levels of growth isn't part of Beehaw's current vision, as far as I've read into the admins' treatises on Beehaw ethos.
It doesn't feel empty to me, personally (just thought I'd be clear that this is only my opinion) but it is definitely somewhat slower than Reddit or some of the other Lemmy and Kbin instances that are out there. IMO, I think a lot of people coming to Beehaw who're acculturated to Big Social or Big Social-ish experiences are inevitably disappointed with the amount of content because it's not a massive stream of content being funneled into your feed anymore.
But I've been on the Fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy, etc.) for about four years now and gotten used to the slower flow, that going to Reddit or some other Lemmy instances or Twitter now feels like I'm drowning or being inundated/overwhelmed with content which flows faster than I can give a due-diligence response to. Either I could say nothing, just vote, write a one-off low-effort response, get in a heated debate, or try to take the time to write something more thoughtful (and then by the time I was done with that, the moment would already have past or I'd get some smart-ass reply that would end the engagement for me). Plus there are some concessions involved in getting all that content delivered to you.
Some people like that but it's just not really for me anymore, it doesn't feel healthy. I like being able to slow down and actually talk to people, and I like that I can trust I'll see them again later. I like that I can post something and no matter whether it's popular or not, someone will engage, even if it takes time.
On the other part, I don't really understand how no downvotes is a "weird" decision; it's definitely not uncommon considering some of the subreddits I participated in on Reddit did the same thing. But in any event, Beehaw does have some posts/comments around explaining the reason for certain choices.
I guess it's not that dead. Biggest issue is I had is my feed set to Local instead of All by default, after switching that things look more like how I'd expect, not unlike my mastodon account. I I've set up an account elsewhere regardless, no idea how much I'll switch back to this one since none of the content I want to see has actually originated from beehaw anyways...
And that's okay, we can all enjoy the Fediverse on our preferred instances and platforms. Whether that be lemmy.world, lemmy.ca, beehaw, etc. or another platform like Kbin or Mastodon. That's the beauty of this federated design.
Beehaw is for the people who want a safe, friendly place, no one's twisting your arm to be here. People here still have different views and people still argue. It just isn't vitriolic.