The issue with this is beehaw is large enough that them defederating from other instances is potentially a serious threat to those instances. Social networks are inherently monopolistic because people follow the crowd, and federation is meant to counteract that tendency toward userbase consolidation. Moves like this could be interpreted as an attempt to become the dominant instance, defeating the purpose of the fediverse.
I am not 100% sure where you are going with this, however I am going to say I agree that the move by beehaw is a blatent move to exert control on other instances, and it was never in question, in my mind atleast that it was their goal from my reading of their first post. I however disagree that they pose a threat to the other istances, they pose a threat if instances give in, like it apears sh.itjust.works may have done given their new post. Beehaw, sense the begining has been going arround acting like they have quite a bit like they are the arbitor, and everyone else should join them. I for one think the other instances of Lemmy should band together and let Beehaw wall themselves off. I do not think they would sucseed in this goal, and they would either give up on their imperialistic conquest or they would die a death of isolation.
it is a threat if users jump ship to beehaw from the smaller instances beehaw has blocked. but when I wrote that comment I wasn't aware that lemmy.world is now three times the size of beehaw, at least according to this tally https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances. that should counterbalance things.
I am not sure I have seen, in my time watching beehaw block first justify later, a mass transfer to beehaw before, but I uderstand the potential threat now.
Social networks are inherently monopolistic because people follow the crowd, and federation is meant to counteract that tendency toward userbase consolidation.
It's just that network effects are real. I want to be where all the smart, fun people are, not on a ded site or nazi island. I don't really care about who's on my instance, just who's on the network. Federation and decentralization were never huge selling points for me. And as Mastodon demonstrated, most people just want to log onto a big network and don't care or want to think about instances.
I feel the same. I don't care about the instance, I just want to interact with the communities.
Is there an Out of the Loop thread for this? I'm new here and not sure what's going on.
Beehaw.org, one of the largest instances suddenly decided to also defederate from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works....
They are becoming an incredibly insular community which would normally be fine...but the frustrating bit is that many of us have been enjoying and participating in content from many instances and then suddenly it gets taken away from us.
If they had defederated from the very beginning or if they were a much smaller community it wouldn't be as frustrating imo.
I just want to be able to interact with people, not keep jumping through hoops to find which instances support other instances and making new accounts there.
To be fair, they've basically said they would not like to stay permanently defederated and are just waiting for the proper mod tools or whatever else they need to keep up.
They are having trouble keeping up with the large volume of people participating in their communities and moderating this huge influx of new users. When most of their workflow is apparently coming from these other servers I think they're justified in defederating.
It's lousy being blocked by an entire section of the site and now labelled a bigot because some trolls made their accounts on the same instance as me.
Agreed, it sucks. But their admins are talking to our admins, and so far ours seem like they have their heads screwed on pretty well, so I'm sure it'll only be for a short time.
Oust the shitheads, promote the stand-up sh.it.heads, I say.
To be honest I had no idea that people from this instance were doing it until one troll post bragging about getting us banned from Beehaw and explained how he did it, along with a comic book supervillian diatribe about how the Fediverse isn't safe and long live Reddit.
The hell, lol… do you have a link to that post?
I saw the same post the comment above is referring to and their description is accurate. And I also saw the offending post they put on beehaw. Some low effort troll homophobic thing. Their posts on both beehaw and sh.itjust.works were both quickly down voted and removed I think, because I couldn't find either again shortly after I first saw it.
Damn... Yeah, to be honest, it makes me understand things from beehaw's perspective quite a bit, then.
Who gets so weirdly defensive and territorial over a website? Not even their own one at that? I loved spending time on Reddit but I can't imagine finding other website and deliberately trying to make them a shittier place because I like Reddit.
The internet was a mistake
I mean, the url literally contains shit.
If we can't say naughty words on lemmy I'll have to find something else. Can't there be a website with a middle ground between 4th reich HQ and baby preschool?
Can’t there be a website with a middle ground between 4th reich HQ and baby preschool?
Sometimes it feels like the internet is in an unstable equilibrium. A space starts off as a blank slate, not pulled in any particular direction. Then as soon as it gets a critical mass of either miserable jerks or stuck-up prudes, it spirals in that direction until it's inhospitable to the average person.
Yeah, I'm sure it doesn't feel great, but I didn't get the sense that they were trying to personally attack everyone on the relevant servers, but more of a "we're only four people, did not expect our instance to become a "default" community, and are completely underwater from a moderation perspective. We need to pull a rip cord to get this under control"
Wait did sh.itjust.works do anything? I thought the story was that beehaw.org cut them and lemmy.world off, but only for people browsing on beehaw.
No Beehaw did not like how Sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world are run, did a complant session about how their mod tools are not talored to give them an excise of power on users not based in their instance, and then cut them off saying "they are willing to negotiate reopening." Personaly I see this like union bargoning, we are stronger all sticking together and not bending to beehaws wims
There's a lot of vagueness there. I'd be interested in hearing more details about what they want from mod tools.
For context, what has happened?
I think they were using the open sign ups to join and then harass people, a lot of which were in other instances, in particular beehaw.org. Now beehaw has defederated from sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world.
You'd be better off without them, they (the runners of the instance, not the userbase) are a bunch of absolutely cowardly little liars. They were more than happy to accept the massive boon this instance gave them and at the same time agitate and concern troll here to try to drive a wedge in the userbase. I find that shit deeply irritating, especially since they claim to be apolitical and merely blocking instances for "hate speech" which (aside from being a political concept) was seemingly the false pretext they have for also blocking hexbear.net, which is currently forked but is the only instance with substantial usership to mandate pronouns and has much more aggressive anti-racist moderation.
If you simper enough, I'm sure they'll be happy to have you back since they seem the type to feel they are never receiving enough sycophantic flattery, but that's a bad trade for you.
If someone claims to be "apolitical" it's a huge red flag, in itself.
but I use sh.itjust.works XD
Assuming your comment and post history has not been altered, then you my friend are a sh.it.head, not a shithead, and Cracks approved to boot.
Embrace it, it is a good thing (it's actually an extremely neutral thing, but it's a better label than Lemming anyway).
I also use it, but more because the servers (that I'm aware of) are based on Canada and Lemmy.ca took way too long to accept me even after writing an essay to join.
well that instance is run by like one dude out of his mom's basement and his server wasn't ready for the influx
What happened?
https://sh.itjust.works/post/107627
Basically, Beehaw defederated from some newer instances. Partially because some people were being shitheads, but for other understandable reasons as well.
The moral of the story is, it's ok to be a sh.it.head, it's not ok to be a shithead. Not the same.
hey, I have been here awhile, and while I am not 100% sure the exact issue that triggered this, what I can tell you is generaly the beehaw admin team has shown themselves not to be the most trust worthy team when it comes to lemmy instances, so I would take their story with a grain of salt
just replying so I remember to check back in