Beehaw Support

Hi,

I'm speaking on behalf of the admin team of Lemmy World - we feel like we have to step in here and give some feedback to the things being said in this thread and give our perspective.

About "Supporting nazi's":

So we support nazi's because it took us 'long' to defederate from exploding heads? That's straight up false. We were one of the first instances to defederate with them and advocated heavily to have them defederated on other instances. FYI Lemmy World as a whole is just over 2 months old and so is this post: https://lemmy.world/post/747912

There was an issue early on with the original moderator of the Lemmy World https://lemmy.world/c/conservative community which was handled instantly:

1. The problematic moderator https://lemmy.world/u/OptionHome that was posting misinformation (and worse) was banned
2. The https://lemmy.world/c/conservative community was given to other moderators.
3. We asked people to stop bombaring the /c/conservative community with anti-conservative posts as to allow civil discourse. https://lemmy.world/post/149519
4. The https://lemmy.world/c/maga community was also banned

We take a hard stance on extremism from both sides of the political spectrum, and we believe that civil discourse should always be the first option. We ban hate communities on sight no matter whose side they are on, and we work hard to resolve the hundreds of reports we receive each day. As of today, 3733 users were banned from Lemmy.World, and that number will probably have gone up by the time you read this comment. We follow-up on moderation teams if we see reports that stay open for too long and if communities are abandoned we actively look to replace the moderation team.

So we ask everyone to keep sending in reports when you see any post that breaks the Lemmy World rules which can be found here: https://lemmy.world/legal.

About Beehaw's decision to defederate with us: Even though we don't agree with it, we have always been supportive of Beehaw and their choice to defederate with us until the mod tools improve. Even when the question gets posted in our community we defended the decision: https://lemmy.world/post/895811.

But wether or not Beehaw will refederate with us is ofcourse 100% your decision.

From where I'm standing, I can't really much has changed unfortunately.. which really sucks..

Lemmy.world has grown substantially meanwhile the moderation tools have not improved at all. All I can say about the moderation tools is that we now know that the tools suck more than they used to.

Here's a list of moderation problems that we have discovered since then:

• If a Berson is reported on another instance, we never get the report.
• If a mod is banned from the community they mod, they can still take mod actions
• If you get site-banned from Beehaw while you are from another instance, you can still post on the community and people from that instance and kbin can see your posts
• People from other instances can't know who if someone is an admin on the instance they're interacting with
• People from other instances can't see when we use the shield function to signal we're talking "officially / as a mod"
• The modlog is not chronological
• The modlog breaks if you ban someone for more than 4 digit days.
• A banned user's description is still visible so if they link to a scat image in their description, it is still visible to moderators.

Despite these newly known problems, there have been exactly no improvement whatsoever to the moderation tools. It is honestly unsettling and terrifying.

I trust the admins. I was attracted to beehaw specifically because of the tight moderation. If they think they can keep to the same high standards and refederate, great. If not, oh well. I'd rather miss out on some content than expose myself to rude assholes, bigots, fascists etc

I’m from kbin, here’s my perspective.

Stay defederated from lemmy.world. The admins are at the very least sympathetic towards fascists being on their instance as long as they’re “polite.”

Shit just works is mostly fine, but world is a shithole and honestly I wish everyone would defederate them to force them to be broken up or isolated.

Honestly I would suggest defederatibf from lemm.ee as well. I have noticed a ton of fascists originating from there.

I can only say that I spend less time on beehaw because there are communities on both of those instances I want to interact with. This isn't really an argument to refederate because as an end user I can filter the noise and focus on the communities I want, but I know admins don't have that luxury. It's more of an impact statement. I like beehaw, and I don't want to leave, but I do probably spend more time with my other account just because there's more activity I'm interested in there. So I fully support whatever decision gets made and certainly support this community, but I can't be the only user whos spending less time here than I otherwise might.

Yes it is. Yes it is.

If you really interact with the lemmy community you know they are very pro "freeze peach", which means it comes with all the fascists, all the phobias, and the trolls.

I like Beehaw for what it is. Tight moderation.

I would like to note that sh.itjust.works hasn't had unverified sign ups enabled for a while now. I have an account there too so it really doesn't make much of a difference to me but I would like an updated stance from the admins here. The initial concerns they voiced don't seem as relevant as they once were.

As for lemmy.world, it's the biggest, and issues can arise from that, so that makes more sense to me.

Stay defederated. On top of all the great points already made, I don't understand people demanding instances behave a certain way. If you don't like the way this instance is handled go find another one.

stay defederated. even now whenever I see some transphobic or hateful comment it's because I accidentally browsed all

edit: apologies everyone!!! it's called "Everything" 🤦 I'm sorry for the confusion I feel dumb now

My understanding is admins of some of those communities actually agreed with the decision because of the lack of proper moderation tools to handle their new scale. Some are basically un-moderated as well.

The amount of moderation actions from those instances were a lot higher than from elsewhere, specifically lemmy.world. With how lemmy.world is now after browsing it for ~5 mins I can confidently say that that would be the case again if we were to refederate

I feel torn on the issue. I spend 90% of my Lemmy time on here, but the growth feels much slower than many other communities. I'm mostly ok with that. Content is pretty good, but still not much chatter on many posts. I mainly go to World to post to !superbowl, but even with 10x the users as here I only just started getting decent up votes, and I don't want to mod, so I don't feel like starting it here and trying to build an audience again.

Lemmy is probably still going to be finding its legs for another year or 2, so keeping multiple logins is probably the best way to roll for now.

Count or discount my opinion as a non-Beehaw member as you will but...

I think the instances should do what they set out to do. Federate, defederate in line with the instance's ideals.

I'm not on Beehaw, but I do like seeing its content. But I also like seeing (most) of the content on Lemmy World and sh.itjust.works; and I can get both from the instance I am on.

Honestly, I think it's best that we stay the way we are here and not re-federate.

My experience after leaving all the toxicity of Reddit behind was that it was really a blessing to find a community where moderation actually mattered and made a difference in the culture of site. I did a lot of lurking on Lemmy even before leaving Reddit, enough to know it was not a place for me. I tried Kbin when I did finally leave Reddit, but did not like the experience there much, so eventually landed here.

While I can appreciate people's concerns about the defederation, and in particular some of the stresses for the admins which are certainly really challenging, I think it would all be far more negative if at this stage the decision were to be reversed. Not every community needs to be "the biggest, baddest, baddy in the room" so to speak. I just get the impression the vision for Lemmy is something along those lines. No one seems to care about that here (that I can tell), they just care about having civil and open discussions which, more than anything else, feel safe. It's why I stay and am glad to support it. If that changed, I would most likely move on and not return.

I genuinely recommend against re-federation for Beehaw.

My unique take and experience from lemmy.one is simply the number of users who simply seek to stir the pot.

My blocklist is full of people from lemm.ee and sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world as well as lemmy.ca . When I compare the number of blocks to the number I've blocked from beehaw or even my own instance; a paltry one or two; I'm only ever seeing trolls or idealogues coming from those instances to argue with my posts no matter how well reasoned they may be. For context; if I tell someone they are absolutely wrong and they persist; they automatically meet my block list. I won't suffer people who aren't going to discuss things civilly or rationally.

I value the principled approach and slower pace, the low tolerance for stirring. Moderation has such a huge effect on feel and the big ones never did enough to try to build healthy communities. Beehaw has mostly taken the sting out and I'd hate to see that lost.