I am one of the admins of Beehaw and I’m trying to get some feedback on our potential move.
Let’s start out with a little Beehaw history before judgements are passed, please.
A handful of us were beta testing Tildes when we decided to have discussions on a Discord server.
We decided that our ‘Northern Star’ or guiding principle would culminate as ‘Be Nice’ with purposefully vague/flexible interpretations. Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.
We talked for a little over a year and some of our members became impatient. Then someone stepped in to suggest a couple of platforms that we could consider getting started with.
One of those platforms was Lemmy. None of us knew, at that time, anything about ActivityPub.
During the Reddit exodus (surrounding the API outcry and blackout), our instance exploded. We were, initially, crippled by the mass amounts of users seeking refuge.
Thankfully, someone stepped in and volunteered hundreds of hours of work to stabilize our instance and refine it further.
After many hours of talks, it became clear to us that our overall goal could be achieved outside of Lemmy/ActivityPub.
Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.
I don’t think you guys cared when you defederated from the rest of the fediverse and turned up your nose at everyone else. I’m not sure why you care now. You guys go and do your thing, but I don’t think you’re very relevant to the fediverse.
You speak very vaguely, and I don’t think you’re being fully honest with your reasoning, but by this point, I don’t think it really matters.
While I would understand your reasoning for doing so, I would be disappointed to see it happen. There’s decent discussions on Beehaw that I enjoy taking part in, however if you guys decided to defederate or switch to a different platform entirely, I doubt that I would make another account somewhere else to follow. I like Beehaw’s content, but I have enough accounts to keep track of these days after everything split from Reddit, so it would ultimately be a loss for me.
I’m not sure if this is a commonly-held opinion for those of us outside of Beehaw, though.
My reaction in a word:
Beesnuts
Beehaw and Lemmyworld are two instances I do not like, with their weird stances on federation, and especially LW’s pro-Zionist/Israel/NATO politics.
Beehaw should have not done so much defederation, which left a bad taste in my mouth, as one of the core people that helped build, moderate, de-raid and shape up Lemmy in the past 3 years to the proper Reddit alternative it has become today. I moderate privacy and technology at lemmy.ml instance, and was solely responsible for r/piracy subreddit migration to Lemmy.
Looking forward to Tildes way of doing things is a red flag to me. I would use Reddit before using Tildes.
You don’t really explain why activityPub is limiting you. It’s hard to help you here.
I would say it’s probably the philosophy of the fediverse that limits them. There is a spectrum of opinions on every subject, including strong opinions and dangerous ones, sometimes both at the same time.
Having a safe space requires either control or exclusivity in my opinion. The fediverse affords you little control of instances outside your own besides outright defederation and banning of external users. Though arguably that lack of external control is one of the benefits of the fediverse as well. However, if their goal is a safe place for those they feel are disenfranchised and marginalized, they might be right that this isn’t the tool for the job. Though, adopting a different platform or strategy might limit their reach. I think that is their dilemma.
Aside from beehaw… The lack of a central control structure within the fediverse is fascinating to me. It’s reminiscent of the old internet, where everything was ran as its own little web island, and yet it has many of the benefits of the mainstream “mass market” internet of today. Over time, it will be an interesting experiment to study and be a part of.
bye bye we won’t miss u
it’s nice when the trash takes itself out
Without the loaded malice of some of these comments, sincerely, I forgot beehaw existed. It looked like the place to go during the migration and was constantly getting good word of mouth on all the Reddit move channels. Then the barrier to entry went up with the essay application, which was 100% fine as a decision, but obviously made it a hassle for the masses trying to find a home. Couple that with no open community creation, leaving no landing spot for niche communities and I went elsewhere.
But even after taking a shotgun approach and making accounts on multiple instances when stability and federation was still struggling, beehaw started defederating from everything. Again, 100% your decision. But the reasons were often blatantly showing that beehaw was not willing to engage in the learning process of this new interface with the rest of us.
So, again no malice, I literally forgot beehaw existed till seeing this post. So if your admins and users think you can achieve whatever elsewhere, I don’t see why you shouldn’t.
I think it’s honestly a good way for them to die out. They’re basically a niche of a niche of a niche at this point, and that’s unfortunately probably not the most sustainable thing long-term.
With that said, maybe they are fine with that.
Beehaw has already chosen not to be a part of the fediverse. There’s no real purpose in asking us; only you can resolve Beehaw’s identity crisis.
I think the fediverse would be better off without Beehaw, so yeah, get off Lemmy and go build your own platform by yourself. I wish you the absolute best of luck, and thank you in advance for taking all the worst kind of people off the fediverse with you.
yall are made up of butthurt anticommunists lemmygrad chased off lemmy years ago, you won’t be remembered at all
Your website will rot on the vine.
Didn’t that instance pre-emptively defederate Hexbear and Lemmygrad for not being liberal hellholes? Lol
Edit: I just realized this was blahaj, not beehaw. I can’t keep none of this stuff straight.
That was lemmy.world. Beehaw was federated for a while but then if I remember right kept saying we’re not actually trans/gay friendly because we’re too tankie. Then they kept insulting one of our admins, who is a trans woman herself. Like they’d say we’re faking how queer we are. Then it turns out they have a really bad chaser problem and a bunch of our trans posters kept getting death threats or weird stalkers from over there. Also they’re so anti-tankie they occasionally swerve into outright saying reactionary stuff. They also like saying slurs.
There was an attempt at damage control, then I think we decided to cut them off. Do I have all of that right? I really have problems remembering my Hexbearian lore, I’m sorry. We need a Bible
Yup, that’s all blahaj. Beehaw was the one that pre-emptively-as-a-last-resort defederated Hexbear before we had even turned on federation at all
yeah, now I remember. They said something like we’d push a certain ideology and that’s unacceptable for some reason. Yeah, we’re the only ideological ones
That would be great
