This is more of a question for the admins, but this can certainly be a more open discussion.
Per this thread, beehaw defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works two months ago, around the time that the reddit exodus was happening. Lemmy was blowing up, those instances had an open sign-up policy, and this meant that admins of other instances (like Beehaw) that wanted to heavily moderate their communities became quickly overwhelmed with the number of users from these two instances. Beehaw defederated to make the workload more realistic.
Two months on, I’m wondering if this defederation is still necessary. It seems to me that Lemmy overall has slowed down a lot, and maybe the flow of users from these outside servers would not be as overwhelming as it was before? I respect the decision of the admins one way or the other - I know that the lack of moderation tools was another factor in this decision. I’m just curious if this is something that has been considered recently?
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 just finished writing a small book in a thread about federation on literature.cafe yesterday, the thrust of which is that moderation, not federation is the threadiverse’s killer feature, and when in doubt smaller instances shouldn’t federate with larger ones. This list makes a perfect post-script to my point. Do you mind if I crib it? I’m a big fan of what you’re doing here. I’d also love your feedback on my observations if you have time.
No, you are definitely right. There is a time and place for federation, it’s like a town deciding to incorporate with a larger region. If the town is too early in its infancy, the overall culture and debate will be drowned out by larger servers. But the risk of also not federating the town means that there is a chance of the community dying off. I’m thinking there should at least be a snaller period of considering the effects of opening up your server to the network, and consulting other instance admins about the idea.
I hope the moderation tools improve! There are a few niche l.w communities I was looking for a few weeks ago
Despite these newly known problems, there have been exactly no improvement whatsoever to the moderation tools. It is honestly unsettling and terrifying.
It’s bewildering how the development team has ignored the problems with data not federating properly and the performance of the app.
JFC there are a lot of typos in your comment! No worries since most of it is discernible. I’m in agreement with all of these points regardless.
I think I corrected them - feel free to tell me more specifically if you still see some.
Berson
😁
Berson = Beehaw person.
TIL
And the plural is Beeple.
If a mod is banned from the community they mod, they can still take mod actions
Why not remove them as mod? I don’t understand why you would keep anyone in the mod team that has been banned from the community?
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
Yes that is a problem with Lemmy in general. But why this only seen as a problem for people from Lemmy World and sh.itjust.works?
The modlog is not chronological
We fix this by having enough admins to go through these reports as soon as possible.
The modlog breaks if you ban someone for more than 4 digit days.
Why ban for 9999 days if you can leave it empty and perma-ban?
Anyway, I agreed that there are a lot of issues that haven’t improved, but at least I heard that users will be able to block instances themselves soon so fingers crossed. But Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and sh.itjust.works very early on and in the meantime they are federated with instances that are as big as Lemmy.World was back then.
Why not remove them as mod? I don’t understand why you would keep anyone in the mod team that has been banned from the community?
Oversight - that simple.
Yes that is a problem with Lemmy in general. But why this only seen as a problem for people from Lemmy World and sh.itjust.works?
That is not actually a problem with Lemmy in general - community bans do block posting unlike site bans. As for why, well, it was done at that point in time because Lemmy.World and Sh.it just.works took a lot of moderation time - for one reason or another, bad actors liked to go there. I have no reason to believe this has changed now that .World is now many times bigger than it was.
Why ban for 9999 days if you can leave it empty and perma-ban?
Oversight or malice. You can break the modlog of everyone you’re federated with because of this - that is dangerous.
But Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and sh.itjust.works very early on and in the meantime they are federated with instances that are as big as Lemmy.World was back then.
Size doesn’t necessarily mean problems though. I think it’s probably a culture problem as the root cause but I don’t think .World wants to tackle that problem so all I can do is wait for better tools.
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:
- The problematic moderator https://lemmy.world/u/OptionHome that was posting misinformation (and worse) was banned
- The https://lemmy.world/c/conservative community was given to other moderators.
- We asked people to stop bombaring the /c/conservative community with anti-conservative posts as to allow civil discourse. https://lemmy.world/post/149519
- 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.
We ban hate communities on sight no matter whose side they are on
Can you please give examples of liberal or left-leaning hate groups you have had to ban?
Can you please give examples of liberal or left-leaning hate groups that even exist?
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.
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
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.
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.
Nothing’s wrong with discussing things with the intent to make them better for everyone
Yes, instances can do whatever they want and users should seek instances that match their needs but:
- Per the thread OP linked, it’s suggested this could be temporary. “this is also not a permanent judgement” is my context in saying as such.
- The post did not feel demanding. Though perhaps you’re making a more general reference?
Edit: context
Edit2: Not intended as advocation for refederating. I’m content with the content available to me so I don’t have a strong opinion.
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.
Lemmy World is not a “free speech” platform.
Point 1 in the “Principles that Guide Us” section: https://lemmy.world/legal
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Speaking for Lemmy World - we look for new moderators when we notice communities are un-moderated. We follow the reports closely and if we notice they aren’t picked up by that community’s moderators we reach out.
And yes, we were also told initially that it was because of a lack of moderation tools but now @Lionir@beehaw.org seems indicate a “cultural” difference. But we are left wondering what the difference with LW and the other instances they federate with are.
Having accounts on both instances, I can say the “cultural” difference is the moderation style, and user expectations:
- Lemmy World: Reddit-like rules, a huge influx of Reddit refugees who think every comment has to go against the parent one, free registration which makes it easy to create an account and go troll mode on federated instances.
- Beehaw: Very open-ended but at the same time strict “be nice” moderation with minimal rules, users who had to “write an essay” (sic) to create an account, a general non-Reddit culture of… well, being nice.
- Lemmygrad, Hexbear, Exploding heads, etc: I think the cultural differences are obvious there.
- Other instances: they have much smaller user bases than Lemmy World, so even when there are cultural differences (dbzer0, lemm.ee, etc), they are not overwhelming (yet) the mod team on Beehaw.
we look for new moderators when we notice communities are un-moderated
The problem is not just having moderators on LW, but moderating LW’s userbase on federated instances. Some number of LW’s users seem to be hostile towards Beehaw, and there is little LW can do about that other than banning their accounts, which I don’t think would be that much better for anyone.
users who had to “write an essay” (sic) to create an account, a general non-Reddit culture of… well, being nice.
Didn’t have to be an essay, it just had to be something that answered the 3 questions it asked about why you want to join beehaw.
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The kind of people who keep calling it an essay are the exact kind of people I don’t want around anyway.
The TLDR behavior and won’t click offsite links and references and want a constant stream of tiny little ideas. There was a time when Reddit wasn’t like that and it became the culture of TLDR and downvote-disagree.
Reddit could have single-handedly taken on clickbait in 2014 or earlier by people replacing news headlines with sincere earnest descriptions. But the clickbait became what people swam in.
My friend put some pretty simple stuff and got denied. Granted it may have been during a negative influx
Feel free to message me on Beehaw or email at support@beehaw.org, I’ll review the message and say why I might’ve denied it though I can’t answer for others.
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.
Not sure what you mean by ton of fascists originating from lemm.ee, but please be sure to report users if you notice something weird, rather than trying to create random defederation in the fediverse.
thank you for your take! being here on beehaw (and being relatively new to lemmy in general), i have not had a ton of interactions with either of these instances. This came up for me because there are well-populated communities in those spaces that i want to subscribe to. That said, if World is that rife with fascists, then it is obviously not worth the gain in communities.
I have an account on world, and I’ve not come across any fascist stuff. Then again, I’ve blocked several communities like politics, where such people may tend to congregate.
Personally, I treat Beehaw as a standalone community. I do not really see the point of Beehaw federating with others, when the rules, and feel of the community, is so different.
I prefer using a Beehaw account for Beehaw, even gave it a yellow colored theme so it’s clear that I’m browsing Beehaw, and know that it’s “safe” browsing Local/New.
I appreciate your take! For me, I don’t really want to make multiple accounts for Lemmy, even if that seems to be a common way to use it. I like the size of beehaw - it keeps me away from the “endless feed” nature of Reddit.
Defederation should only ever be used as a last resort. Every instance will have some amount of problematic users, or even users you simply don’t agree with.
If we’d all defederate from one another because some users on each instance are out of line, the Fediverse would die out quickly.
I agree, this is kinda hurting the fediverse.
I came here because I happened to see a post on lemmynsfw (coming from lemmy.world through federation) about Threads, and I was looking to reply from beehaw (because replying with a lemmynsfw account gives a certain “flair” of course) so I was looking for that post here. But I couldn’t find it anywhere. Then I started looking into the reason here. Then I found this post which explained it.
But I think it’s important to realise that this way the fediverse will stay very niche and fragmented. It would be better to let the users have a choice who they want to see. And defederate only in very heavy situations (for example, nobody would expect beehaw to federate with gab.com because they support actual total nazis). But blocking lemmy.world as one of the biggest instances is… strange.
The thing is, I came here as a new user because spez makes reddit so inhospitable with his dick moves. So I went to https://join-lemmy.org/ and found beehaw. (well in fact I went to lemmy.ml first but didn’t like the attitude there). But join-lemmy doesn’t describe this whole complex fabric of defederation, it appears as if I could see the whole fediverse from beehaw. Because lemmy.world is a really major instance this is a little bit disingenous. For a new user like me (and a very technical one) this is really hard to grasp. And will lead to users being put off.
I think this whole fragmentation thing is a much bigger threat to the fediverse than Threads is to be honest.
I saw the same on Mastodon, with a lot of German sites instantly blocking federation as soon as another instance doesn’t copy exactly the same set of rules word for word (so no incidents are even necessary). In my opinion this hurts the fediverse a lot. As a user I don’t want to maintain accounts everywhere, the whole point of ActivityPub was not having to do that.
And don’t forget that not all communities on lemmy.world might necessarily bad. Reddit itself is full of toxic communities like the old the_donald (now banned of course). But also really good ones. The same is true for lemmy.world. By by defederating we’re blocking the chance of even seeing them.
