A discussion happening over on beehaw about problems with federation and moderation, and on fundamental issues with Lemmy itself, and what would go into making a fork vs starting something new.
Honestly, given the ruckus they’ve been raising for a while now, my feeling is that Beehaw wants to push themselves away from society as a whole. I don’t agree with their perspective, which is part of why I never engage with much of their content or users. All I can say is that I wish them only the best for their echo chamber.
It’s less an echo chamber and more simply an attempt at creating an Internet community that doesn’t constantly argue or insult people. Where you treat people like they are smart humans and where others return the same assumption. All different opinions are welcomed. I know I hold a few strong differing opinions than the norm on beehaw and have always been treated with decency. Taking those same opinions in to lemmy general I’ve been called names and attempted to be invalidated instead of people trying to see a different opinion. So if anything it seems like lemmy general is becoming an echo chamber and beehaw is trying to be a respectful discourse community.
The impression I get is that Beehaw is trying to seclude itself not to be an echo chamber, but because an admin saw CP get posted and is traumatized by that, and it’s really highlighting the lack of mod tools. They want to moderate the space to ensure it’s nice (and it’s frankly needed. I made a Beehaw account at one point in time. I reported quite a few not-bigoted-but-still-nasty posts) and right now being federated with everyone makes it way too hard because even if 1% of posts are anywhere from “not nice” to “you literally posted child porn,” 1% of 100 is easy but 1% of 100,000 could be a lot of work.
Ah, yes that too. I was thinking of the defederating with lemmy.world and sh.it.works when I was reading that. But Also, yes, they are likely moving because mod tools on the fediverse are a nightmare. Honestly, I see why the US Congress and major lobbyists want to hold service owners accountable for what their users post. Creating a platform for users to post whatever then not moderating it properly should be and I think is illegal in the USA. The fediverse at heart seems to be designed without any moderation in mind.
How is it an echo chamber?
I have been unsubscribing from communities on beehaw and finding their siblings on other instances so that if they decide to leave i have already mostly disconnected from them and my home feed wont become a shell of itself.
I too dropped all my subscriptions to beehaw groups way back when I realized they are problematic.
@stopthatgirl7 This seems like quite the lift and shift. Moving to a new platform would definitely split their user based. I would also thin that any form of aggressive defederation would split their user base as well. From what I can tell, there are not many (if any) fediverse platforms that have the level of moderation tools they they are looking for.
Unfortunately, It just looks like they are in a tight spot. One the could make or break that community.
I think part of the problem is that moderation tools, in general, on the threadiverse are extremely weak. It’s easy to share across platforms and instances on kbin and lemmy, but it seems to be a nightmare to moderate across platforms and instances, in a way that it isn’t on other Fediverse sites. I can’t tell if it’s by design or by oversight, but it’s going to only become a bigger problem in the future if it isn’t sorted soon. Beehaw’s issues with moderation seem like the canary in the coal mine.
This I think. Every platform that is not just a mess needs moderation. There are things you just cannot allow especially in a platform that is suppose to be a safe space or at least not a total shit fest. Some of this is the law too, CSAM for example or copyrighted material. The rest is just about not putting up with trolls. When lemmy was 1000 users total this problem is a lot different then 1 million to 10 million or 100 million. It is just that Behaw is a bit more particular on one hand and probably more of a target on the other.
but it seems to be a nightmare to moderate across platforms and instances,
Nobody needs to moderate across platforms and instances. Just moderate your own community, on your own site. Power is decentralized by design.
Looking at all the spam on the science community proves you wrong. It’s on lemmy, and the mods smack down all the spam quickly…On Lemmy. But people looking at it on kbin see constant posts of spam and advertising, making the community completely unusable, because the lemmy admins can’t moderate the page on kbin once it’s federated into the kbin server. Likewise, mods on lemmy and kbin might lock comments on a post that’s getting toxic, but that lock doesn’t carry over to kbin, and they can’t do anything about it. That’s the issue I’m talking about.
If the community is on kbin that the kbin mod removes the spam. If the community is on lemmy instance than mod on lemmy instance removes spam.
Isn’t that how it works? The mod on the community instances removes the spam and then it gets removed on all sites right?
Likewise, mods on lemmy and kbin might lock comments on a post that’s getting toxic, but that lock doesn’t carry over to kbin, and they can’t do anything about it.
Wouldn’t a lock on a thread on that community’s site prevent any new comments from coming back to that site over the fediverse?
Yes, but the problem is it doesn’t federate. A lemmy mod can remove spam on their lemmy community, but there’s no one to remove the spam once it federates to be on a kbin server. That’s why the science community seen on kbin is swarming with spam - the mods on lemmy remove it, but there’s no one to remove it on kbin until Ernest removes it, because communities default to him as the moderator of the kbin magazine version, and no way for lemmy mods to make someone on kbin a moderator for it.
Very well thought out post. It seems like they are considering pretty big measures. I think the next logical place to go for them is to whitelist instead of blacklist. Sucks for self hosters, but in general gives Beehaw what they want.
Moderation tools seem to be the biggest problem for the poster. They also say the devs don’t see it as a priority. They say they’ve even offered bounties to add better tool support. Moderation tools get brought up all the time on Lemmy—I agree that it should be the main focus or development right now TBH.
A big problem a lot of mods had on Reddit, and why they basically needed 3rd party apps - was that moderation tools weren’t up to snuff. So I don’t quite understand why getting good, robust moderation tools isn’t a top priority for the lemmy devs.
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