can someone explain me what happened with beehaw?

I read that they "defederated"... What does this mean? And why did they do this? And what are the consequences?

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Beehaw admins explained the move in this post: https://beehaw.org/post/567170
This post explains what it means for lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works users: https://lemmy.world/post/149743.
In short, they were having trouble maintaining their moderation standards. In an incredibly short-sighted move, they've split the lemmyverse... offloading the costs of their moderation choices to the rest of us who now have to deal with incredibly confusing asymmetrical replication.
They've called this move temporary, but there's no schedule for restoring federation and no set list of criteria for what will enable that to happen. I would say it's more "open-ended" in that they haven't committed to defederating forever, but there's no useful limit on the duration of the defederation either.
- Personally, while i think it's not the best solution...they don't owe us an audience or a megaphone. If they owe anyone anything, it's their own users. If they're overwhelmed, and i totally believe that they are, they should do what they have to in order to deal with it
  
  This view is technically correct, but I think very narrow because it takes no account of the external costs to the rest of the fediverse. Admins of major instances that host a double-digit percentage of the lemmyverse userbase SHOULD be expected to conduct themselves in a way that promotes the overall health of the ecosystem in addition to the health of their local instance. Jumping straight to defederating other major instances imposes massive costs for folks outside Beehaw, as described in my comment further down this thread.
  There is an aphorism often deployed against free-speech absolutists, and I think paraphrasing it is applicable here... They have the right to use defederation carelessly and to the detriment of the rest of the fediverse if they choose to, but they don't have the right to be free of the consequences of doing so. If the rest of the fediverse abandons Beehaw communities as risky and poorly moderated (and cutting off more than 30% of the active fediverse without cause IS poor moderation), that's a reasonable consequence. If admins of other instances decide they don't want to deal with this nonsense and band together to permanently defederate Beehaw from the majority of the lemmyverse, that's also a reasonable consequence. No one else owes them a megaphone either, though so far other admins have shown more care for the health of the lemmyverse than the Beehaw admins have and have left the door open for them to rejoin the lemmyverse on normal terms, in spite of the high cost in confusion and user-unfriendlyness to everyone outside of Beehaw in the interim.
  
  Another way to look at it is that they suffered a DOS attack (in the form of more trolling than they could handle with their current staff), so they blocked the source. It sucks that some of it was coming from our instance.
  Not everyone has the same level of resources available to deal with the same problems.
  
  Another way to look at it is that they suffered a DOS attack
  Extending this analogy to a global scale, their response would be similar to Google shutting off search in the southern hemisphere because they were getting ddos'ed by a few thousand hosts in South America. The response is not effective because attackers can move to other geographies or proportional because many users unrelated to the attack impacted.
  These properties, lack of efficacy and lack of proportionality make their response a poor one, even if they think it's the best they're capable of. I also do not believe it's the best response they're capable of. The favor this particular response because in a world of tradeoffs they greatly value the culture within their instance, and care very little for the health of the fediverse beyond its walls. This is a choice, not a hard constraint.
  Not everyone has the same level of resources available to deal with the same problems.
  That's certainly true. Also not everyone has to host an instance with double-digit percentage of the lemmyverse active userbase and communities. If one DOES choose to do that, doing it badly can negatively impact others, and they can speak out about those impacts.
- This sounds incredibly dumb. The nice thing about the feddyverse is that you can receive content from other servers and comment on it imho. Very disappointing.
  
  Wel, they explain that in this case, it wasn't all that nice to receive content from other servers, because it was a lot of work to moderate posts of users from two instances with no sign up requirements. They also said they couldnt wait on moderation tools being developed. They'll refederate once the storm dies down I strongly believe.
  
  To describe this as defederating from "two instances" really undersells the impact. Those two instances represent 40% of the active userbase of the top ten instances in the lemmyverse in the last month, or well more than 30% of the entire active lemmyverse. When you add beehaw's active user count into the mix, over 50% of the lemmyverse has been cut off from each other. This is an absolutely massive disruption to the federated network that will impact everyone for months to come... and has already created far far more moderation and support work than it has saved. See https://the-federation.info/platform/73 for user stats.
- How are the offloading moderation to others? Closing signups to avoid spam etc seems pretty useful
  
  They didn't close signups. They, as a top-five instance, defederated with two other top-5 instances, which will now lead to massive ongoing confusion related to asymmetrical federation. Did you read the second link from my comment?
  The defederation will:
  Increase the workload of admins on other major instances, who now have to moderate these high emotion threads and figure out how to respond to the defederation at a time when they are equally overloaded.
  Increase the workload of volunteers who answer new user questions, as there will now be an ongoing flood of confusion around asymmetrical federation.
  Sunder established communities that people outside Beehaw have invested in, many of which will now once again struggle to find the "critical mass" re-establish themselves.
  Reduce confidence in the lemmyverse in general, as one of the formative experiences of new users will be this confusing mess of trying to re-establish their subs after having just gotten settled.
  The external costs of flip-flopping the federation status between major instances is huge, and will be primarily born outside of Beehaw. If Beehaw admins want to have a very strict moderation policy, that's entirely their option. If the costs of those moderation policies spiral out of control, that's also entirely their problem. If they try to solve that problem by swinging a giant banhammer around at 30 thousand lemmings representing more than 30% of the active lemmyverse... that's using your power as a major instance admin to make your own life easier and the lives of everyone else in the lemmyverse worse.

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