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?
Yeah, they weren’t expecting the influx or better put they were unprepared for the obvious. If they just wanted to use the Lemmy code but be a more closed community, they should have stayed entirely unfederated from the start. This middle-of-the-road “we federate just with some instances” isn’t gonna cut it long term. You can’t have the cake and eat it too.