I find this news disconcerting coming from such a large instance so early on. Many of the criticisms of Lemmy I’ve been fighting against on Reddit have had to do with defederation and the possibility of getting cut off from your favorite communities on your main account. I handwaved that away as being extremely unlikely save for the exception of NSFW or extreme political content. But this news has taken me quite by surprise. Perhaps I should have seen it coming given the community Beehaw is trying to foster.
This really makes me wonder what will happen to instances that make this decision. Will their communities diminish in favor of the more accessible ones? Will this decision hurt Beehaw in the long run? What does this mean for the Fediverse in the near future when fighting against its detractors has been such an uphill battle?
Thoughts?
I’ve read the post: my take on it is that there’s not enough moderation tools, and the only one that really works against servers with open registration is defederation.
Don’t the admins create all the communities there? So, instead of spreading the moderation role it’s concentrated amongst the 4 admin? Seems like they just bit off more than they could chew.
yeah that’ll never work. Even with reddit… the idea is that you build an instance for people to build communities. You set instance wide rules and the mods of said communities have to adhear to and enforce them or they lose their community.
Everyone running an instance is going to have to adopt this methodology or they’ll be overwhelmed in 2 seconds flat. The internet is big and with lemmy getting popularity it’s not going to get eaiser from here. Even with tools, 4 people can’t moderate a ton of communities.
I know this is an unpopular move for many Fediverse users including Beehaw. I support this move by the Beehaw admins because they are overworked enough managing the site, they don’t have the energy to be constantly chasing trolls spamming accounts posting harmful posts and messages onto their community.
They have a stated ethos, and they should do whatever necessary to be able to keep up with the growing user base. Of course it will stunt their growth but between pursuing growth and keeping the vibe on that instance, they choose the vibe and I respect that decision.
