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 * alyazamodadmin to Beehaw Support
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ANNOUNCEMENT: DEFEDERATING EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY FROM LEMMY.WORLD AND
SH.ITJUST.WORKS
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ANNOUNCEMENT: DEFEDERATING EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY FROM LEMMY.WORLD AND
SH.ITJUST.WORKS
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 * alyazamodadmin to Beehaw Support
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766 Comments

hey folks, we’ll be quick and to the point with this one:

WE HAVE MADE THE DECISION TO DEFEDERATE FROM LEMMY.WORLD AND SH.ITJUST.WORKS. WE
RECOGNIZE THIS IS HUGELY INCONVENIENT FOR A WIDE VARIETY OF REASONS, BUT WE
THINK THIS IS A DECISION WE NEED TO TAKE IMMEDIATELY. THE REMAINDER OF THE POST
DETAILS OUR THOUGHTS AND DECISION-MAKING ON WHY THIS IS NECESSARY.

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we have been concerned with how sustainable the explosion of new users on Lemmy
is–particularly with federation in mind–basically since it began. i have already
related how difficult dealing with the explosion has been just constrained to
this instance for us four Admins, and increasingly we’re being confronted with
external vectors we have to deal with that have further stressed our
capabilities (elaborated on below).

an unfortunate reality we’ve also found is we just don’t have the tools or the
time here to parse out all the good from all the bad. all we have is a nuke and
some pretty rudimentary mod powers that don’t scale well. we have a list of
improvements we’d like to see both on the moderation side of Lemmy and
federation if at all possible–but we’re unanimous in the belief that we can’t
wait on what we want to be developed here. separately, we want to do this now,
while the band-aid can be ripped off with substantially less pain.

aside from/complementary to what’s mentioned above, our reason for defederating,
by and large, boils down to:

 * these two instances’ open registration policy, which is extremely problematic
   for us given how federation works and how trivial it makes trolling,
   harassment, and other undesirable behavior;
 * the disproportionate number of moderator actions we take against users of
   these two instances, and the general amount of time we have to dedicate to
   bad actors on those two instances;
 * our need to preserve not only a moderated community but a vibe and general
   feeling this is actually a safe space for our users to participate in;
 * and the reality that fulfilling our ethos is simply not possible when we not
   only have to account for our own users but have to account for literally tens
   of thousands of new, completely unvetted users, some of whom explicitly see
   spaces like this as desirable to troll and disrupt and others of whom simply
   don’t care about what our instance stands for

as Gaywallet puts it, in our discussion of whether to do this:

> There’s a lot of soft moderating that happens, where people step in to diffuse
> tense situations. But it’s not just that, there’s a vibe that comes along with
> it. Most people need a lot of trust and support to open up, and it’s really
> hard to trust and support who’s around you when there are bad actors. People
> shut themselves off in various ways when there’s more hostility around them.
> They’ll even shut themselves off when there’s fake nice behavior around.
> There’s a lot of nuance in modding a community like this and it’s not just
> where we take moderator actions- sometimes people need to step in to diffuse,
> to negotiate, to help people grow. This only works when everyone is on the
> same page about our ethos and right now we can’t even assess that for people
> who aren’t from our instance, so we’re walking a tightrope by trying to give
> everyone the benefit of the doubt. That isn’t sustainable forever and
> especially not in the face of massive growth on such a short timeframe.
> 
> Explicitly safe spaces in real life typically aren’t open to having strangers
> walk in off the street, even if they have a bouncer to throw problematic
> people out. A single negative interaction might require a lot of energy to
> undo.

and, to reiterate: we understand that a lot of people legitimately and fairly
use these instances, and this is going to be painful while it’s in effect. but
we hope you can understand why we’re doing this. our words, when we talk about
building something better here, are not idle platitudes, and we are not out to
build a space that grows at any cost. we want a better space, and we think this
is necessary to do that right now. if you disagree we understand that, but we
hope you can if nothing else come away with the understanding it was an informed
decision.

this is also not a permanent judgement (or a moral one on the part of either
community’s owner, i should add–we just have differing interests here and that’s
fine). in the future as tools develop, cultures settle, attitudes and interest
change, and the wave of newcomers settles down, we’ll reassess whether we feel
capable of refederating with these communities.

thanks for using our site folks.


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alyaza
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7•18h

deleted by creator


@realChem
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2•18h

deleted by creator


ram
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41•5h

Not a beehaw user directly, but I use many beehaw communities.

I appreciate the forwardness and transparency in this matter. As you’ve
outlined, both in this post and in subsequent comments, this seems to be, rather
than a full defederation, a conditional one. I’m totally for that, and I think
the ability to do so is one of the key concepts that makes Federation such a
useful and powerful tool. Those instances who cannot or do not moderate content
that your instance doesn’t believe in can simply be removed from the equation.

I hope to see more of this accountability being held between instances in the
future. At the end of the day, our communities are fragmented by nature, and
there are times we should remove separate communities explicitly. A good example
I can think of is on Mastodon all the instances with CSAM or nazis.

The Fediverse gives us a greater ability to fine-tune our communities and curate
the experience members thereof get to have, as well as what content they can be
exposed to. I’m glad to see people taking strong action in favour of their
community, and so long as it comes from this perspective, with genuine
communication with the community, everything will work out.

/rant


@UnitCircle
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21•
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5h

Well I was worried, but I can still access the communities I’m subscribed to
from those instances so I can appreciate this more.

My biggest issue with Reddit has been the lack of nuanced discussion. Everything
is just black or white. If we can keep that element out of this instance I’ll be
happy.


Ghostalmedia
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13•5h

It looks like I can still see new beehaw content in instances like LW. Also, I
can POST to beehaw communities in LW. For example: Beehaw folks didn’t see this
post to beehaw News, but LW folks did.

https://lemmy.world/post/158352

Isn’t this super dangerous? Couldn’t I post a bunch of hateful content under a
beehaw community flag that a large portion of the Lemmy user base would see.
What’s stopping trolls from posting !lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org and making it look
like c/lgbtq_plus is a place for lgbtq+ hate?


Celediel
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8•3h

That’s a version of !News@beehaw.org that’s entirely local to lemmy.world. No
one outside of lemmy.world will be able to see it.


@randomguy
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6•4h

Seems like federation oriented projects have more disadvantages that I initially
thought.


@Lost_Wanderer
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2•4h

I can’t see that post from my Kbin magazine of @news@beehaw.org which is good
news.


@UnitCircle
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10•4h

Wow. Yeah this seems like big oversight


@thgs
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3•3h

Not entirely sure on what is the oversight.

I’ve been reading for AP these days so it’s out of my understanding so far… I
might be wrong.

So from my understanding, the owner is the one that is responsible for holding
the master copy. Given that the community is a owned by beehaw, all other places
except LW that actually accepted the message(s) shouldn’t see it.

Otherwise LW would have to ask beehaw every time if the message should be
accepted, which would be very problematic and not close to federation but more
like replication (“every server using activity pub is an active relay”).

Imagine sending an email and your server not accepting until it receives a
positive answer from the recipients server that your mail was accepted. You
wouldn’t see your email at the sent folder up until 4 days. You wouldn’t even
know if you actually sent the message after you click the send button.

Also excuse my lengthy post, I think it’s because understanding AP is recent for
me.

If anyone that has a better understanding than me, please feel free to correct
me


Ghostalmedia
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4•2h

The concern is that, if you go to LW and are still subbed to beehaw communities
over there, you can still post to those communities. Beehaw users will never see
those posts from LW, and LW users will never see new posts from BH users, BUT LW
users will see LW posts to the old community appendage.

Meaning, you can now effectively impersonate a beehaw community on LW after it
has been de-federated.


camel-cdr
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5•1h

There is already a related issue:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/1307


Ghostalmedia
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1•10m

Oh thank god.


@thgs
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1•
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2h

Oh, I see what you mean now. I think I was looking at it from a more technical
perspective. One could say that essentially LW is phishing the beehaw
communities right now :D


@Synthclair
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10•5h

The posts and communities are frozen from the time the defederation took place
onwards - only a “local” Beehaw copy remains.


Ghostalmedia
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3•5h

Then why do I still see new beehaw community content in LW?


@1993_toyota_camry
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10•
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3h

Those posts were made by local LW users, and can only be seen by local users of
that instance.

Compare it to the real thing https://beehaw.org/c/news


@OverfedRaccoon
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1•2h

So is this a defederation thing? I’m going to assume. Otherwise, what’s the
point of being federated if I sub to another community on another instance and
only the people from my instance can see those comments? Or am I missing
something?


@1993_toyota_camry
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5•
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2h

Yeah, it’s because of the de-federation.

A cached copy of the community exists on the remote instances, and users are
able to engage with it.

It seems de-federation stops the updates, but doesn’t remove remote copies of
the communities. It’s not really an ideal situation, as I’m sure many users
don’t realize they’re not engaging with the real community.

I’ve actually seen some posts to that effect: “oh defederation isn’t so bad, I
can still see everything / post”. Those users will be in for a surprise in a day
or two when they realize.


@OverfedRaccoon
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2•2h

Okay, cool. I appreciate the quick reply. I thought for half a second I didn’t
really understand all of this like I thought haha. That makes way more sense.
Thanks again!


@1993_toyota_camry
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3•2h

np.

I love how fast the discussion can be here. Near-instant.


Ghostalmedia
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5•2h

Ahh, that make sense now. Super confusing though. New users are going to think
that content is coming from beehaw, but it’s not. Yikes.


@1993_toyota_camry
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3•2h

For sure.

This is definitely a situation that could be handled better by the lemmy code.


Helix
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34•
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3h

If anyone has an issue with defederating to reduce stress (and worse) for our
volunteer mods, please watch the Documentary “The Cleaners” (2018) about how
moderators in Manila for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter & Co. got PTSD (and worse)
from moderating content. Or at least this video about the traumatic life of a
Facebook moderator by The Verge.


@Clbull
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2•26m

Completely understand why you’re doing this. I think you want this place to be
more like an alternative to Tildes that doesn’t descend into rampant
shitposting, and that’s completely understandable.

It’s a good thing I made an account on lemmy.world too, so I won’t fully miss
out on the fediverse at large. Only reason I did was because I originally
thought my app to join Beehaw was rejected (in actuality, I just didn’t get the
sign-up email, couldn’t be arsed to check my spam folder and didn’t even try to
login for a month.)


@marco
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1•10m

I have nothing intelligent to add (except signaling my support) and to remark
that defederation and defenestration are incredibly close words.


@aka_oscar
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9•
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4h

Unfortunate situation, but I understand the lack of tools to deal with it left
you guys no choice.

Do you happen to know how long this defederation is going to take? Or rather,
are tools being developed as we speak or still being discussed? Im glad this is
temporary yet if its gonna be like this for years itd prove to be very limiting
and isolating.

I also understand its not easy to give the mod position to anyone who requests
it, but id encourage you to look for the right people in a more vehement manner.
It would be downright frustrating if this situation happens again due to a lack
of manpower.

One last thing: The defederation being effective Inmediately was very
detrimental to users who subscribed to comms from those instances. Its already
shocking to lose access to a comm you were a part of, a heads up and a couple
hours/a day would help many of us be at least aware of the situation and not be
blindsighted by it. I understand the pressure to do it asap, but i still think
it should be notified beforehand.


alyaza
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14•3h

> Do you happen to know how long this defederation is going to take? Or rather,
> are tools being developed as we speak or still being discussed? Im glad this
> is temporary yet if its gonna be like this for years itd prove to be very
> limiting and isolating.

no ETA but we’re in touch with the sh.itjust.works admin right now on how to
move forward/ways to resolve that defed. we’ve also pointed people at an idea of
what we’d ideally want a few times in this thread–we’ll hopefully have more
formal tool ideas publicized/github issues filed in the near future

> I also understand its not easy to give the mod position to anyone who requests
> it, but id encourage you to look for the right people in a more vehement
> manner. It would be downright frustrating if this situation happens again due
> to a lack of manpower.

i’ll reiterate another comment i made somewhere in this huge thread:

> we have a finite number of man-hours to work with, and trolling can
> disproportionately burn through those. while we can improve the number of
> man-hours by throwing more mods at it, there’s still:
> 
>  * only so much we and those mods can do with what the tools we have;
>  * and only so many people willing to be mods that we also trust to wield
>    those tools, particularly given the recency of the bulk of our membership.
> 
> additionally, the mods have a finite amount of time to work with themselves,
> and it’s just not reasonable to constantly lean on them for what is ultimately
> unpaid, not-infrequently-distressing volunteer work


@aka_oscar
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1•1h

I see. Thank you guys for your efforts. We appreciate it.


@unsunny
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5•1h

I’m glad to see you telling us and coming forward on this, and that these steps
are being taken. Lemmy is a small project, so expecting it to have robust mod
tools isn’t realistic. Former Redditors here probably know that some subs have
closed indefinitely simply because without good third party mod tools they’ll be
near impossible to run safely.

Everything does feel quite new and volatile on this side of the Fediverse. The
Mastodon instance I use has a very long list of blocked instances, especially
since it’s aimed at LGBTQ+ users. There’s some messed up people out there, and I
appreciate the action on the part of the admins. Just slapping a “safe space”
sticker on something does not automatically make it one, and it makes me feel
really good to be on an instance that understands that.


@Username
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16•3h

I am a moderator on the lemmy.world sailing community through my Beehaw acct.
Will this affect that?


alyaza
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20•3h

oh dear, probably yeah. you might have to register over there and get
re-appointed


@Sawnee
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3•1h

And now I don’t know what communities I’ve lost off my subscriptions. Great.


The Cuuuuube
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2•1h

At least for me when I look on my own profile I still see the defederated
subscriptions. I’ve added them all on an alt account on another server


mtset
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11•5h

Thank you for the transparency; I fully support this decision.


ShiftLeft
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4•1h

[Newbie question] I have seen and subscribed to one lemmy.world community
(ProgrammerHumor), I can see it in Beehaw, I haven’t tried to post yet but how
does this defederation works? Its only in one way so I can see these instances
communities by searching explicitly for them?

PS: I tried to find the answer in the comments but could not reach any
conclusion sorry…


@small44
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2•2h

Is it still possible to subscribe to communities from those two instances?


@mananevergone
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4•2h

Woohoo for Beehaw being the best! I love this place more already.



BEEHAW SUPPORT

!support
Create a post
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account,
for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search
field of your instance: !support@beehaw.org

Support and meta community for Beehaw. Ask your questions about the community,
technical issues, and other such things here.

A brief FAQ for lurkers and new users can be found here.

Our June 2023 financial update is here.

For a refresher on our philosophy, see also What is Beehaw?, Beehaw is a
Community, and A few thoughts on Beehaw’s design (second half).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
license.

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