Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.
Edit: A lot of people are asking why Beehaw did this. I want to keep this post informational and not color it with my personal opinion. I am adding a link to the Beehaw announcement if you are interested in reading it, you can form your own views. https://beehaw.org/post/567170
It’s important to note that the admins of beehaw are not happy about this solution, either. And they hope to refederate once they have better tools and enough mods / admins to deal with it.
They point wasn’t to shadowban, that was a side effect. The point was to protect their member–who specifically wanted a certain type of safe friendly instance–from hostile weirdos sending dick pics and stuff like that. Nobody’s happy with the situation, but it’s the best they could do under the circumstances with the resources they have.
I also don’t think it’s wrong for instances to have their own strong rules and preferences. This is one of the GOOD things about the Fediverse. The software features and how people use lemmy will catch up eventually.
As for the confusion / chaos around multiple/redundant/competing communities and so on…that will get better over time as people figure things out. Honestly it’s not that different than reddit with all of its splinter subs like “true-” whatever.
As for the confusion / chaos around multiple/redundant/competing communities and so on…that will get better over time as people figure things out. Honestly it’s not that different than reddit with all of its splinter subs like “true-” whatever.
That’s true for just the duplication problem, but the defederation / shadow banning issue is not one that reddit has and is pretty confusing and poor user experience for new users coming in.
This isn’t reddit 2.0. It’s a different platform with different mechanics that hasn’t had over a decade to mature.
Change is hard. People need to learn to adapt.
Right, but even non-reddit users would be confused by it. When everyone advertises lemmy as seamlessly integrating with all the different instances, it doesn’t matter what instance your account is on, this definitely is not that.
It’s a young platform experiencing unprecedented growth. There’s going to be growing pains where misunderstandings and misinformation are bound to happen. We need to correct the misinformation and set proper expectations.
The ability for a server admin to choose what servers they federate with is a core concept of the fediverse and needs to be properly communicated.
The idea behind federation is, that individuals host their own instance and connect (federate) with others individual’s instances.
But that’s not easy for less tech savvy people.
Except you’re not making a case for why they should rather than go to some other alternative once it pops up soon.
One of us is confused, I’m not sure which. I’m not “making a case” for anything. I stated a fact, “Lemmy != Reddit”. It’s a completely different platform, with different underlying technology, that can perform a similar task. Anyone who’s representing it as a 1:1 reddit clone that you can just hop to with no effort to learn how it works, is misleading others.
I’m not trying to win any arguments nor convince anyone to stay. If another alternative pops up, try it, if you like it use it. If you like lemmy use it. Hell, use them both or use neither. That’s the benefit of having choices.
Expectation management… people need to stop pitching this on Reddit as the new Reddit then.
But… It is essentially identical in design to Reddit apart from the decentralised concept.
Well, new Reddit might easily mean better but also diffderent Reddit. Also, I am not sure whether people actually call it a new Reddit. Most of the time I heard the destription was a Reddit alternative which by definition doesn’t imply that it’s identical or even better in all ways.
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But… It is essentially identical in design to Reddit apart from the decentralised concept.
Which is a massive change that tbh I’m still not sold on.
Federation seems to cause more problems than it solves and it’s created so many fractured communities that it’s impossible to get involved in niche ones anymore.
It’s definitely more messy. I suppose the reason i left Reddit was that the corporate structure ended up compromising their ability to live up to the responsibility of running a community space. As running the community became increasingly subordinate to revenue the decisions of the corporate body became increasingly out of whack with the best interests of the community. The federated concept feels like a possible solution to that problem.
I foresee a lot of issues with defederation and the proposed mod tools in the future, as well. They can refederate but it’s not a good look for the platform when the federation can be fractured so easily. We have not seen the last of this issue.
I also question what it’s going to look like when these moderation tools are implemented. Lemmy has more avenues for moderation/admin abuse than Reddit, and less recourse for users. There are a lot of concerns here that just seem to be swept under the rug under the pretence that “you can always go to another instance”.
Ultimately it’s not an issue with the function of the fediverse, but with the moderation philosophy of the people running these instances. Particularly when it comes to the viability of voting. That’s a huge opportunity for suppression that I don’t trust certain admins not to abuse.
How does Lemmy have more avenues for admin abuse than Reddit? On either platform, the admins can technically do whatever they want. (Including editing users posts, spez). Lemmy makes it easier to just go somewhere else. At the end of the day that is all you can do.
The` point was to protect their member–who specifically wanted a certain type of safe friendly instance–from hostile weirdos sending dick pics and stuff like that``
They are making community policy around a single person?
I am not following.
With that being said, they can do as they please and other can do what they want. That’s the beautity of the protocol.
However, people shoudnt be surpised when others take the ball and play else where.
Looking forward to seeing how this works out.
I think they just dropped the s off members.
I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be “members” and missing the s is a typo.
That was just a typo. Beehaw has advertised itself as being a largely positive, safe online space. People who sign up for it would generally be considered to want that same ethos.
It’s not ideal at the moment but until the moderation tools improve it’s the best way forward if they want to stick to their ethos. I enjoy Beehaw and the admin do seem like they want to refererate when it’s possible to.
I’m on both Beehaw and Lemmy.world so I between the two I can interact with everything I would want to see.
Disclaimer: pretty new to Lemmy a federation (older than this account though).
From what I gather, defederation is supposed to be a function of this whole system, but intended to cut off whole instances that refuse to moderate or are active cesspools. In saying that, I don’t understand Beehaw cutting off two of the other biggest instances. I know they have a weird mentality over there of no downvotes and saw some odd conversations condemning someone’s political views while admitting to not know the person at all (dafuq?).
It seems to me it would make more sense to block a single community rather than the whole instance.
Maybe they want a walled garden, but as new people come in and want as much content as possible to show that this is a better venue than Reddit, to me they give off the wrong message.
Am I mistaken somehow? Anyone able to enlighten me?
I recommend reading Beehaw’s statement: https://beehaw.org/comment/263590
As it is just text on a screen, I think there are more and less generous ways to read the post. But I think a lack of scalable mod tools (to combat an internet-sized influx of “bad actors”) is a reasonable (and hopefully temporary) rationale for defederation.
Having read this, I get what they’re going for, but also question the venue a bit.
With Lemmy being about federation, it sounds like they want to have a de federated mini Lemmy to themselves where they can decide who is allowed in or not. Not that that is a bad thing, if there’s a demand for it, but I think it’s different than what every other instance is about and maybe would be better as something like a Discord server (or FOSS alternative).
Again just my 2c, I just know I’m looking for a better quality alternative to Reddit, and an isolated instance isn’t my cup of tea.
I disagree, they definitely don’t want their own mini Lemmy. They want a safe space they are happy with, and defederation the only way they can do that with Lemmy’s current mod tools.
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works make up about 20% of the acitve users in the threadiverse (source). That is a lot, and it sucks, but it’s far off from making beehaw an isolated instance.
Imo for now new users should be discouraged from joining Beehaw, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works, since all the content can be seen from other instances anyways.
Fair point. But I will say as a pretty new comer to Lemmy, it is hard to find an instance that you know will be a good fit.
“Safe space” for who?
They want a political echochamber.
When your life and right to exist as who you are is political, it’s nice to not have to deal with “debates” over that.
Beehaw is pretty explicitly a safe space for queer people and other members of minority groups, and their allies or just anyone who can take the time not to be bigoted or “Just Ask Questions”. They don’t exactly hide this fact ;p
They are much more proactive about it than other places, sometimes too much for my personal tastes (though I think about making an account there for when I don’t feel up for dealing with shit >.<) even if I respect what they are doing.
I don’t agree at all. The fact of the matter is I can’t even talk about my lived experiences being nonbinary in beehaw so to call it a safe space for minorities is blatantly false.
This is the “I have a black friend” of online communities.
From what I see, you said you said something about your ex “”“pushing”“” their daughter “into” LGBTQ. Which is stupid. 99.999% of the time this a bad faith argument from trolls and even if not you cant make someone queer just as much as you can’t make someone straight or cis. Queer people are exposed to intense social pressure to be cishet and yet we are still not. You can feel pressure into hiding or self-repressing or self-denying, but that’s a different thing >.<
Also, you can be bigoted while bieng a part of a minority group.
I think a thing to note is that their community was here and well established well before rexxit. Rexxit put a lot of stress on many instances and their moderation ability, so it makes perfect sense that they might prioritize protecting their established community from abuse over being connected to every instance that intends to be a reddit alternative. There are plenty of instances they remain federated to that share their more careful moderation.
I expect that some time in the future they may reconnect with some more popular instances, as rexxit slows down and modding tools improve.
The nice thing about federation is you can choose to join more or less connected instances depending on what type of moderation you are looking for.
Eh, I have accounts on both instances. I’ve appreciated the active moderation on some Beehaw communities - I’d rather discuss LGBTQ issues on Beehaw than other instances, for example. But I also like to see more content elsewhere, so I’ve got my Lemmy.world account too. It’s pretty easy to account hop when using an app. It’s reminds me of being a member of multiple hobbyist forums, in a way.
I’d rather discuss LGBTQ issues on Beehaw
Sooo… I’m nonbinary… and I got banned from beehaw for talking about my ex pushing their daughter into LGBTQ.
So who gets to decide what issues are acceptable to talk about?
I can’t speak to your personal experience in getting banned, but judging from your short comment history so far I wouldn’t want you on my instance, either.
Yet here we are communicating 👋
Seems like the system is working just fine!
Admins and moderators decide on behavioral standards for their instances, just as it has been for every discussion forum that has ever existed. I don’t care to personally adjudicate your experience with Beehaw - I am simply sharing my own.
Sorry did you mean to respond to me? I don’t really see how your comment applies to mine.
I’m still looking for an app that lets me browse using multiple accounts at once. I’d like to have a feed from Beehaw and Lemmy.World, for example. Defederation won’t be a problem if I opt in to moving in and out of their walled garden
You can still subscribe to stuff on Beehaw from elsewhere it’s just interaction with it is turned off for now. It would be nice if an app had a selector for what account to post/vote as on the fly though.
So the question is it turned off for the blocked instances or is it just not visible to Beehaw. If I make a post from Sh.itjustworks, can someone from Lemmyworld see it? Or can no one see it?
As far as I understand, Sh.itjustworks and Lemmy.World are communicating like normal right now. So users should be able to post to communities in each of those instances, comment, etc. unless that user is using a Beehaw login.
You can do dat with liftoff for lemmy. They have and everything “All” Section where all of your logged in instance in the app is combined into one feed.
Doing that on Jerboa right now. It’s great!
Choice is the point of federation.
It’s important to remember that federation is just a feature in the end. As an instance administrator, you’re absolutely free to choose who to federate with.
I don’t see anyone giving Hexbear any shit for not federating with anybody.
People are just salty because they have some of the largest communities.
But they’re rightfully salty if Beehaw defederating themselves deprives this platform of a big chunk of content and users, especially during this month
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That’s the thing. If someone defederates with you, and you wand a community on that instance. Then you are free to make the lost community in your instance. And if re-federation happens, both community can co exist without problems.
Also you can make an account on the instance that defederated. So you still can view the community you want.
I think it’s also important for the this context to understand what beehaw is. They are an instance specifically created to be a more friendly, empathetic community. That made them a bit of a target when the migration started happening, as you might imagine.
Ultimately, they can do whatever they want. I understand that decision might rub some people the wrong way, but in the end it’s their community.
Frankly, after seeing the downfall of other reddit alternatives like voat, I think they’re justified. Young internet communities seem to be prone to being overrun by trolls and neonazis.
That’s not why voat is full of racists. Voats population surges came from racist Reddit communities getting banned. This is the first time there’s been a reason for other people to migrate off the site.
That’s not to say those racists don’t also share the same reason for migrating this time, too.
Thank you for the source
this is completely reasonable, they own the instance and should be able to do whatever they want with it.
If you don’t want to color with your opinion, use a different word than shadowban. They didn’t do this with malice as the connotations of that word would imply.
And this is why the fediverse will never work out - if I gamble wrong and set up shop on an instance that gets in a pissing match with other ones, I either have to make an account elsewhere (and then have to do it again later the next time two instances defederate each other) or live with only seeing some of my subscribed content.
Okay, guess I just won’t use it then if they defed from my primary instance. Glad they did this now and not later when they became bigger and more important.
If they’re that into making a safe space then fine. Hopefully some other people will also make more free spaces and both of them can exist and everyone can be happy.
I realize that is a highly optimistic outlook to put it mildly. I must remain hopeful to avoid losing my mind, if I haven’t already -.-
Why have they done that? Has Lemmy World done something? Or are they trying to keep themselves exclusive?
Since Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works had fully opened sign ups with no vetting during the big migration, Beehaw was getting a lot of trolls and spammers coming from those instances. Since Lemmy is kind of new there weren’t enough moderation tools for them to fully deal with that with their team so they defederated until those tools exist.
They’re curating a particular community to try to avoid trolls and shitposters and lemmy.world was growing so fast that they didn’t have the mods or tools to keep everything in line to their satisfaction on their own instance. Once they’re happy with their mod abilities they’ll probably refederate.
Yeah man beehaw is supposed to be like a safe space for minorities and stuff. It’s been around for a while and is strictly moderated. Once all this Reddit shit calms down and there are better moderation tools on the lemmy side they’ll rejoin - it’s just too much to deal with without the right tools right now Ave they are still working on making the tools.
This Reddit shit sped up a lot of stuff that was already in the works.
Ah ok, thanks for that. That’s a shame though, so far what I’ve seen of Lemmy has been so much less toxic than Reddit, you’d hope it wasn’t necessary for them to defederate. However if they feel it is necessary, then fair enough I guess.
Well, by definition you don’t see the crap that moderators are removing, so it’s hard to say how toxic it has truly been from their perspective.
Fair point.
Thanks, that’s really interesting and a good explanation from them. Appreciate the share.
Ironically, I couldn’t initially open the link in my app, probably because the defederation! Got it to open in a browser though.
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I mean, that is literally the purpose of fediverse and federation, right? so people can have their own little bubbles and be as connected as they wish?
How to block entire instances?
You can’t. Not unless you run your own instance of Lemmy and defederate them.
Instance admins can do it.
Can there atleast be a way to let users outside of beehaw see posts and comments but not participate, rather than completely detaching and leaving a void of content?
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I disagree simply on the basis that they hope to refederate eventually, and it might be good to already be subbed. But yeah.
I’m sure it will be announced. It will be big lemmy news, hard to miss.
Can you help me understand exactly how this will affect me? I actually have accounts on both lemmy.world and beehaw.org (I signed up for both when I initially found Lemmy and was trying to figure the whole thing out).
If I’m on my lemmy.world account, will I no longer be able to browse beehaw communities? On the flip side, if I’m on my beehaw.org account, will I no longer be able to browse lemmy.world communities?
Am I understanding things correctly? If that’s the case, then is the only solution to flip back and forth between the two accounts depending on which server the community I’m wanting to browse is on?
Basically. You can browse them with the opposite account but you can’t interact.
So it’s like getting banned from a subreddit, except you can’t even browse with the same account after being banned?
Yes browse. No post.
If you get an account on an instant that isn’t involved in this mess like FMHY you can browse both without any issue.
I might have to go here. I’m already tired of defederation and its histrionic champions.
This was my thinking.
Is there an easy way to check if anyone has defederated from your instance?
there should be an instances button at the bottom of the page that shows it.
Aren’t you only “shadow banned” from users of that instance? Wouldn’t folks federated with your instance still see your comments?
Pretty sure that’s right.
That’s confusing. Let’s say that there is antance A, B and C. (Instance A is Beehaw) Now let’s say A bans C, but not B. And B hasn’t banned anyone. That would mean instance A would still see the comments of C, when replying to B, right? If so, people from Instance A would feel like they are being gaslit more then people blocked from instance C.
Doesn’t ‘gaslit’ mean convincing someone they’re making things up? Or is that all in my head?
Gaslighting is convincing someone that they perceived or remembered things incorrectly. That’s a very specific kind of manipulation.
Why do people use it to mean bullshitting in general?
Like most buzzwords, gaslight has lost its meaning.
Gaslighting doesn’t exist, you made it up
Oh it definitely exists. Ask anyone who has experienced living/working/dealing with a narcissist.
I think they were joking…
Lmao. Well, woosh!
I guess I’ve just had too many real arguments with people on reddit about this and this comment flew right past me. :D
My understanding is that Lemmy isn’t peer-to-peer, it’s more like hub-and-spoke, relative to the instance that the community is on.
So if users on B and C are interacting with a post on A, then it’s the responsibility of A to be the postman and handle the syncing between A<>B and A<>C; B and C don’t directly talk in this case.
Thus, nobody outside of Lemmyworld sees posts from Lemmyworld made on Beehaw communities, because Beehaw doesn’t accept them, and therefore doesn’t pass them along to the other instances, either.
So let’s say A is Beehaw and C is Lemmy.world and B is a hypothetical instance that Beehaw and Lemmy.world approve. How does that work?
Does it just clip off viewability of the comments for A if a post from C is made?
Trying to understand your comment it sounds like your saying if A bans C, then no on other than C can view their comments?
Not quite. So imagine each Lemmy instance is a post office, responsible for receiving mail from other instances on your behalf, and also responsible for sending your mail to other instances.
The post office (instance) that matters is the one where the thread is taking place. When you write a message on a thread - if the thread is on your home instance, great! No outbound mail. If it’s not, your post office (instance) will send your mail across the fediverse to the instance where the thread actually lives, and the receiving instance adds it to the thread.
Likewise, when users reply to you, their instances mail their replies to the instance where the thread lives; the thread’s instance is then responsible for re-forwarding their mail to you.
In this case, Beehaw has unilaterally decided not to accept mail from, or deliver mail to, Lemmyworld. So your experience varies based on which is your home instance, and which instance you’re interacting with.
So exploring it by example, let’s consider we have three instances: Beehaw, Lemmy.world, and (shameless plug) my adorable little home instance of federate.cc, which is federated with both of the above (and is accepting membership applications by the way!)
If the thread lives on Beehaw, and you are a member of…
- Beehaw, then you can interact with the post (it’s your home instance), but you won’t see any replies from Lemmyworld users (your post office is refusing to accept letters from them)
- Lemmyworld, you probably won’t be able to see the thread at all (Beehaw refused to deliver it to their post office) - but if by some chance you can, you won’t see any comments by Beehaw users (Beehaw refuses to deliver them to the Lemmyworld post office)
- federate.cc, then you will be able to interact with the post (Beehaw delivers mail to our post office), but you won’t see any replies from Lemmyworld users (Beehaw refuses to accept mail from Lemmyworld users, and by extension refuses to deliver their mail to our post office)
If the thread lives on Lemmyworld, and you are a member of…
- Beehaw, you probably won’t be able to see the thread at all (Beehaw refused to accept the mail from Lemmyworld, returning it to sender) - but if by some chance you can, you won’t see any comments by Lemmyworld users (Beehaw refuses to accept mail from Lemmyworld, returning it to sender)
- Lemmyworld, then you can interact with the post (it’s your home instance), but you won’t see any replies from Beehaw users (their post office refuses to deliver letters to yours)
- federate.cc, then you will be able to interact with the post, but you probably won’t see any replies from Beehaw users (Beehaw’s post office refuses to deliver mail addressed to Lemmyworld)
If the thread lives on federate.cc, and you are a member of…
- Beehaw, you will be able to see and interact with the thread, since Beehaw’s post office both sends and receives mail from federate.cc; but you won’t see any messages from Lemmyworld users, because Beehaw’s post office will refuse mail that originated at Lemmyworld; when we try to forward that mail to Beehaw’s post office, it will be refused and returned to sender.
- Lemmyworld, you will be able to see and interact with the thread, since Lemmyworld’s post office both sends and receives mail from federate.cc; you will see messages from Beehaw users, because Beehaw’s post office will deliver mail to ours; but if you interact with them at all, they will never see it, because Beehaw will reject mail that originated at Lemmyworld (see above).
- federate.cc, then you will be able to interact with the post as normal, you will see replies from people at all three instances, and they will see yours
Phew! How confusing. A far better solution would be… don’t defederate, splitting the community!
But can C see A through B?
My understanding is that Lemmy isn’t peer-to-peer, it’s more like hub-and-spoke, relative to the instance that the community is on.
So if users on B and C are interacting with a post on A, then it’s the responsibility of A to be the postman and handle the syncing between A<>B and A<>C; B and C don’t directly talk in this case.
Thus, nobody outside of Lemmyworld sees posts from Lemmyworld made on Beehaw communities, because Beehaw doesn’t accept them, and therefore doesn’t pass them along to the other instances, either. .
My understanding is that Lemmy isn’t peer-to-peer, it’s more like hub-and-spoke, relative to the instance that the community is on.
So if users on B and C are interacting with a post on A, then it’s the responsibility of A to be the postman and handle the syncing between A<>B and A<>C; B and C don’t directly talk in this case.
Thus, nobody outside of Lemmyworld sees posts from Lemmyworld made on Beehaw communities, because Beehaw doesn’t accept them, and therefore doesn’t pass them along to the other instances, either.
I recommend reading this post on lemmy.world for a very clear understanding of how the defederation affects these instances: https://lemmy.world/post/149743
Newbie here. Is there an easy way to identify a beehaw community? I’ve been hitting the subscribe button left and right to build up my profile feed and I’m just winging it here. thanx!
Nice. Its been just 2 days for me using lemmy and im already banned for no reason in an entire server that i do not use just because im in another server. I whana say reddit moment but im getting mixed info into their reasoning. Some say its because they cant mod that much people and just defederated temporarilly while they fix stuff and others say their a radical echochamber that doesnt tolerate any slight deviants. So i dont know what to believe. If any of ya m8s could enligthen me some more that’l be sweet. Thank you.
