Skip Navigation
Remote View
Beehaw Support @beehaw.org
alyaza [they/she] @beehaw.org

an update to defederating from sh.itjust.works

hey folks, here's a quick update on our decision to defederate from sh.itjust.works! (and here's sh.itjust.works's side of this update)

we got in touch with the head admin over there, The Dude, and we had a pretty good chat about our concerns and reason for defederating. while immediate re-federation is just bluntly off the table with the rudimentary state of Lemmy's moderation tools, we now have a pretty good idea of the roadmap to refederating with them. we think we'll eventually be able to do this, although we don't have a timetable on when yet.

we're also now collaborating with him on how to move forward--and in the weeks and months to come we'll be pushing to expedite the process of developing some of the necessary tools. this decision has really helped us make connections that can hopefully realize those tools both on the desktop side and in apps being developed for Lemmy. we're also hoping to collaborate with other Lemmy administrators who have needs like our own, or just generally want more granular tools at their disposal.

we did also get in touch with the lemmy.world owner prior to defederating to share the concerns that prompted us to defederate[^1]--but we have not received any communication from him since it was levied, so there's no roadmap at all there as of now. we're always open to reconsidering and collaborating to end the defederation with him, but for now the earliest i can give you is "when mod tools are in a better state".

that's all for now folks. if any new significant developments take place we'll announce them as needed.

[^1]: we're only bringing this up now because it was just not useful information in the context of our announcement. it almost certainly would have been interpreted as some sort of callousness and/or brought unnecessary sectarianism and grief to him. at the end of the day he has his reasons and desires for running lemmy.world how he does, and we have ours for running Beehaw as we do. because of social and technological circumstances those are just incompatible right now, and that's fine.

167 comments

  • I genuinely think Reddit lowered my expections of moderators so much over the years without me even realising, it's great to come to a place like this where everyone on both sides sounds reasonable and competent at what they're doing. Really excited to see how Lemmy and the Fediverse more generally develops.

    • been thinking about this comment all day, you put into words what I was feeling too. I’m very grateful for the warm community experience and discussion. I agree with all the directions taken so far and overall feel hopeful to see what the future holds here.

  • The replies to the post by the sh.itjust.works admin are fascinating. Admin's post is calming, reasonable, minimises outrage and indicates ways forward which will improve the platform. Win win win, with some temporary inconvenience. So of course others are forgetting all of that and inventing things to get upset about. How do we (collectively) unlearn this habit? I learned by observing it in action and reading others' writing about it. Maybe someone will learn something from reading this. Tiny drop in the vast ocean but I don't know how to scale it. We need to figure it out though.

    • People need to learn that the point of the fediverse isn't clustering, but distributed governance. Everyone can have the fediverse experience they want by picking a server that self-governs and federates with other servers the way they want. The idea isn't to distribute load (though it is a nice benefit), the idea is that Beehaw can be very friendly, sh.itjust.works can be very permissive, lemmygrad can be very tanky, and exploding-heads can be very supportive of American-style conservatives. What people are upset about is that the system works haha

  • I'm really glad everyone seems to be on the same team here and there's no bad blood between the mods.

  • I find the decisions made so far entirely understandable and I really appreciate the transparency and updates.

    • Have to say the same thing. I really appreciate the hard work the admins and mods are doing and support the decisions they have made.

  • The comment section of sh.itjust.works is much more understanding of the issue at hand than those from lemmy.world. Crazy how opposite they are. They do showcase a prominent disagreement with the beehaw mods actions, but nonetheless remain respectful in their opinions. At least compared to lemmy.world which stance was basically "lol they shot themselves in the foot".

    • Just above you the lemmy.world admin answered, so things are advancing :D

    • It seems like the admin of lemmy.world is eager to work with our admins, but yeah, I also noticed the community response on sh.itjust.works was mostly "I get it. It's not what I would want, but I get it" while the community response on lemmy.world was mostly "Fediverse ruined, day ruined, beehaw a bunch of fascist dictators." Which is a little bit wild to me since sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world both have very similar moderation styles. I guess it just goes to show the difference a sidebar can make in setting a tone. sh.itjust.works has a very basic sidebar with some rules of the road, while lemmy.world has a sidebar that says the sidebar is TBD. I wonder, and this is purely speculation, how many people signed up for lemmy.world explicitly because they wanted to be a problem. sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world both have the same signup process, but then they picked lemmy.world because "Oh hey, there's no rule against being a bigot (yet)." Me, I would have assumed that was just... Implied, but it's truly fascinating that they have such different communities already, and I wonder anthropologically why that happened.

      • I think it's a lot less nefarious. About every post or article about Lemmy that links to Lemmy instances has links to (in this order in almost every article I remember) lemmy.world, lemmy.ml and beehaw.org. Of these 3 only lemmy.world accepts new users without vetting. Lemmy.ml doesn't accept new users at all and beehaw doesn't really look that welcoming to someone who knows they might stir some shit up in the future and also getting into beehaw requires more effort. So with lemmy.world usually being the first on the list and additionally requires the least effort to join, this is where all the world and their uncle end up on. They just get the biggest unfiltered influx and with that the biggest amount of toxic people. (I want to make sure that I'm not calling lemmy.world users lazy or toxic or anything like or that this is their target audience. It's just a fact fact that someone who can't be bothered to do research and/or "write an essay" as someone called it, will most likely end up on lemmy.world)

      • this is honestly not a bad theory. when there's a lack of gatekeeping and a lack of specified rules, online spaces seem to overwhelmingly tend toward being more reactionary and more permissive of bad social behavior because there's no deterrent for it (and by the time there is one, often the culture is set and really hard to undo).

  • Thanks for the update!

    While exploring kbin I've been checking out lemmy world a bit and there's a surprising level of toxicity towards beehaw going on. From a vocal minority of course but some have seem to have taken the degeneration as personal slight and some are just aggressive towards beehaw on a general term.

    A lot of people seem to understand the reasons and even if they don't agree with it they're at least understanding.

    The toxic minority is hard to grasp though.

    Then again, I suppose the ones that caused the issues in the first place are among that group.

    • Amazing how fast tribalism takes form

    • I understand the decisions made but I would be pretty annoyed if I had a lemmy.world or a sh.itjust.works account and I'll explain why below.

      Looking on https://browse.feddit.de/ Beehaw has the largest communities for Gaming, Technology, Chat, News, Programming, Politics and Music (and probably more). These are staple communities that the majority of users will be subscribed to one or more.

      Those users now need to make a decision, they either make a new account on Beehaw (or another instance that isn't defederated by Beehaw) so they can continue to browse those communities, or they instead keep their accounts on lemmy.world / sh.itjust.works and join smaller and less active communities to replace the Beehaw ones.

      Unfortunately trolls can create a load of accounts in instance ABC and spam Beehaw until Beehaw defederate instance ABC until there are no large instances left.

      It's good that Beehaw are looking to refederate with both instances, but I imagine that the majority of people expressing their opinions thought defederation was a final decision.

      • I think there may also be a bit of a defensive reaction in that without the full context, there's sort of an implication that Beehaw admin thinks everyone on these other two instances are just terrible people. Couple that with Beehaw's...erm...opinionated language, and it's a recipe for hurt feelings.

        I've seen some comments mentioning that it feels like guilt by association, and it seems somewhat reasonable to take that personally -- especially as people are still wrapping their heads around how federation works and how blunt the mod tools are at this stage.

        I also think there's maybe some harsh feelings over the idea that Beehaw's ideal state is Beehaw users being able to comment on other instances but not the other way around. There's some sentiment I've seen that this amounts to Beehaw taking the big communities for itself and hanging everyone else out to dry. I don't really think that's Beehaw's intention, but when the big conversations appear to be happning behind closed doors, it makes sense that some feathers would be ruffled.

        And last, I've seen some users commenting that the only reason the two defederated instances got users is because the signups are open and anyone who was put off by Beehaw's registration either can't use words effectively or was born to antagonize Beehaw's users. I really don't think that antagonistic view other other instances' users is helpful, and it's definitely making the situation on the ground worse. For example, the reason I didn't register with Beehaw is that I just couldn't think of any actual reason I wanted in there versus anywhere else -- I just wanted to be where the people were, so I could use a social platform to talk to strangers, and the way Beehaw's reg page is worded, it sounds like this would likely not be a good enough reason to be allowed to participate there. So I just went somewhere else that seemed more interested in having me around.

        So i guess for anyone who bothers to read this, please don't lump all users from the defederated instances under a banner of "degenerates" or whatever. They seem to really be taking it to heart, and I think it's more hurt feelings than actual antagonism for anyone who didn't personally harrass anyone.

      • Plenty of them make it clear that they very much wants the decision to be final and for beehaw to die off.

        But yeah, there are always going to be trolls online I suppose.

  • It's great how you're keeping us in the loop. I was really disappointed when I heard about the de-federation of specifically sh.itjust.works because it has some really good communities that I was missing from Reddit. I'm also really excited about the idea of different communities having different homes, but defederating too quickly can break that concept, and instead lead to only really having reliable access to communities on your local instance.

    That's all to say this update has put my concerns to rest. I trust the admins on this site are doing their best to foster community with everyone possible, while also trying to keep the community here safe. I really appreciate the work you all are doing.

    Hopefully you can link the Github issues created for the specific moderation tools you need, I'm excited to dig into the Lemmy codebase and hoping to contribute to the Beehaw community!

    Honestly it'd be neat to have a local beehaw community for this dev related work, if one doesn't exist already

    • Yeah the transparency of the mod team is the number one reason I love this instance so. Completely understood all of their decisions and how they came to them and I don't think anyone can get mad about it, its a passion project for the fine folk that admin this instance its understandable you would take precautions. I mean if a certain instance is not moderating at all or only has a handful of people moderating that workload gets pushed off onto these guys when those instances interact here. And with them being open and transparent and willing to make changes as development unfolds, it makes me more confident in the whole project.

    • Here's a post I did on the moderation tools we need : https://discuss.online/post/12787

  • And with this kind of cooperation and outreach, the Fediverse will be that much better! Thank you to all parties involved for communicating and working together!

  • I appreciate the update and link. While it seems like most of the people on the thread there understand that it's early days and this is more a reflection of kinks in Lemmy that need to be worked out than Beehaw being unreasonable, the exceptions to that underscore to a larger extent than the original defederation action why it needed to be taken.

    There's a lot of entitlement out there of the how-dare-people-who-put-in-time-and-money-into-a-passion-project-feel-they-have-the-right-to-any-level-of-control-over-said-project variety.

  • btw guys, there's no intent of defederating from kbin, right? We're good, right? I don't want to lose you, lol. You're really cool, it seems to me.

    • I think us kbinauts are fine for now

    • Kbin (platform, important distinction) will likely have some problematic instances which are defederated, but it will also have many many instances which are fine. And the good kbin instances will likely defederate the problematic ones as well. This is the nature of platforms using open source software and federation.

      Also, the reddit fiasco has dumped a lot of pressure on both lemmy and kbin before the software is sufficiently developed to cope with it. These two instances which Beehaw has (temporarily) defed'ed from aren't problematic in and of themselves, but they've both been hit with large numbers of problematic accounts in the influx.

      TL:DR Support your instance owner(s) regarding moderation :)

  • Thank you for the transparency! I definitely understand the original decision to defederate (especially looking at the troll's post, which was linked to in The Dude's side of things), but I also look forward to better, more granular moderation and administration controls to come out so that refederation can happen.

    I would also like to give kudos to the admin team and users over at sh.itjust.works - there's some good discussion going on over there in the thread linked here. I love that, despite the fundamental difference in views on how an instance should be run, it seems to be respectful on the whole. Even the people that firmly disagree with Beehaw's vision essentially leave it at "I think it can be done better, and want to demonstrate how." I think that's perfect, and encapsulates the benefit that Lemmy has over centralized platforms. There is also no support for the troll that triggered this situation to begin with.

    • Definitely agree, the people overall over there seemed like fine folks who understood once they saw both mod teams communications on the defederation. There were a few people who took the worst possible interpretation and were trying to run with it, but a lot of the users there were shutting them down and explaining where they might be drawing conclusions. Overall really happy with the interactions on lemmy, lots of nuanced discussion and really just feels more laid back and good faith for a majority of the userbase

  • Lemmy.world is free to ignore us, and we’re free to defederate from them. No corporate overlords are making the call. This is what the fediverse is all about. It’s not ideal, but few things are.

  • we’ll be pushing to expedite the process of developing some of the necessary tools.

    Yes, please. The mod-tools are pretty basic, if existent.

  • I remember reading a detailed post with a list of concrete mod tool improvement asks - things like the ability to filter the modlog to local only, or auto-report posts or comments containing certain keywords. Can anyone else find that? My searching is coming up empty. Maybe I dreamed it.

  • I'm curious what exactly you mean with "better modding tools". I am working on a iOS/Android app and I'm wondering if those are tools I could integrate into it.

    What exactly are your needs?

  • Being here from kbin.social, none of this directly impacts me, but I am more than interested in seeing how this all plays out. This is a whole new dynamic, and getting to see how it develops is fascinating.

    It seems to me that the whole point of a fediverse-based system is that different instances should defederate, if that serves the purposes and desires of the admins of a particular instance. I know that user accounts and their various configurations are currently locked to a single instance. (If you're from the Microsoft world, think of old NT4 domains where the PDC controlled everything, in comparison to Active Directory with multimastering.) At some point, tools will emerge to import/export your user configuration, making it easier to switch from one instance to another to suit your own personal needs better. And maybe a multimastering kind of thing can happen eventually, too, so you could take your ActivityPub-based account and log in with it to any instance.

    at the end of the day he has his reasons and desires for running lemmy.world how he does, and we have ours for running Beehaw as we do. because of social and technological circumstances those are just incompatible right now, and that's fine.

    Exactly. One is not better or worse than the other, they're just different, in some incompatible ways.

    • Appreciate your input, some of the comments on the shitjustworks thread were kinda wild, people absolutely have been assuming the worst when the mods here have been wholly open and transparent which is absolutely what I look for in a lemmy instance. Make sure your values are in line with the moderators running the instance. Because in the end that's what will affect your user experience the most and if you don't like that there's always the option to run your own instance so you can see all the federated networks you want and none that you don't. Ideally everyone would be running their own personalized instance where they can see everything and then go to a couple different silo instances where people go to post their content.

    • The part where things get tricky is that beehaw currently has ~15 of the top 50 communities across the entire fediverse and has become the defacto discussion grounds for gaming/tech/news/etc.

      One could argue this goes against the whole concept of decentralized communication in the first place, and this may be a position beehaw doesn't want to be in.

      Beehaw has every right to foster a tight-knit community that adheres to its desires.

      But there also is a level of responsibility and custodianship over these large communities they foster for the betterment and adoption of the fediverse.

      • Maybe I’m misunderstanding your “responsibility for the betterment of the Fediverse” conclusion.

        So Beehaw has been chugging along for a couple years, carefully curating their communities and their membership. What they did works really well, and the flood of new people from other instances were drawn to it.

        I don’t think it’s Beehaw’s responsibility to change because so many new people like to use Beehaw’s communities. Beehaw is not the Fediverse, nor is it Beehaw’s responsibility to foster the growth of the Fediverse. Beehaw is responsible for Beehaw, and only for Beehaw.

        If people like what Beehaw has built over the last couple years, they should model their baby instances on Beehaw’s experienced one.

      • I definitely see your point, but I'm going to speak as one of the ones that would argue that it goes against the concept of decentralized communication 😉

        I can appreciate that you think that there is a responsibility to the fediverse as a whole, but I feel like that responsibility comes second to the goals and intentions of the instance in question. As you suggested, Beehaw didn't request to become the go-to instance for gaming/tech/news. My idea of the fediverse response would be that, since Beehaw's technology community is defederated, then those instances should either spin up their own or go to another instance's. That may turn into a different instance's technology community becoming the de facto one, but that's a consequence that Beehaw has to accept with the decision to defederate.

        I will say that this bumps into the issue of community collision - that is, communities with the same name and/or subject across multiple instances, and I admittedly don't have a good solution in mind for that right now. As it stands, I'm actually interested to see how all of this pans out - this is the sort of issue that only comes to light when a specific set of circumstances is met, and I think some precedents are going to be set throughout this process. It is also likely going to be a significant push for the improvement of moderation and administrative tools since that's the major limiting factor here, so I think this whole situation is an overall positive for the development of the fediverse as a whole.

  • Thanks for the update. If any Github issues are brought up that would assist with getting the necessary moderation tools implemented be sure to broadcast them!

  • Some days it feels like there's a shortage of nice people. Today is not one of those days. Thank you.

167 comments