Like many of you, I woke up this morning to discover that our instance, along with lemmy.world, had been unexpectedly added to the beehaw block list. Although this development initially caught me off guard, the administrators at beehaw made an announcement shedding light on their decision.
The primary concern raised was our instance’s policy of open registration. Given my belief that the fediverse is still navigating its early stages, I believe that for it to mature, gain traction, and encourage adoption, it is crucial for instances to offer an uncomplicated and direct route for newcomers to join and participate. This was one of the reason I decided to launch this instance. However, I do acknowledge that this inclusive approach brings its unique challenges, including the potential for toxicity and trolls. Despite these hurdles, I maintain the conviction that our collective strength as a community can overcome these issues.
After this happened, the beehaw admins and I had a good chat about their decision. While our stances on registration policies might diverge, we realized that our ultimate goals are aligned: we both strive to foster communities that thrive in an atmosphere of safety and respect, where users can passionately engage in discussions and feel a sense of belonging.
Although the probability of an immediate reversal are slim given the current circumstances, I believe we have managed to identify common ground. It’s evident that, even in separation, we can unite to contribute positively to the broader fediverse community.
In the coming weeks or months, we plan to collaborate with other lemmy instance administrators to suggest enhancements and modifications to the lemmy project. Primarily, our proposals will concentrate on devising tools and features that empower us, as instance administrators, to moderate our platforms effectively.
In the meantime, while I understand may not be ideal for everyone, users who choose to participate on the beehaw instance will be required to register a separate account on their instance.
Thank you all for continuing to make this community great!
These people might lack technical knowledge of how federation works, but they get the ramifications of federation just fine. The fediverse didn’t invent federated protocols in 2015, there are some truly large and successful federated networks we can learn lessons from.
Email is often used as a cultural touchstone to introduce people to the fediverse. You know what a major email provider almost never does? Blackhole customers from another major email provider en masse. They understand that the value of their service is in its interconnectness, and an email address that can communicate with everyone you know is much much more valuable than an email address that can communicate with a confusing subset of people you know. They don’t eschew blocklists, which are an essential tool for combatting abuse. But when deploying a block, they consider their own costs and also the costs to the network as a whole. This wasn’t always a given, there were many walled gardens before and some tried to operate email that way, they were not successful.
The internet itself is the most successful federated network in the world. Do you know what a tier 1 isp almost never does? Depeer other tier-1 ISPs in a way that disrupts the global routing table. Again, they don’t eschew selective peering, every few years somebody plays chicken with tier 1 peering agreements that could isolate Comcast customers from Netflix or Verizon customers or whatever. But in the end they do consider the costs to the network, and understand that the value of their service is it’s ubiquitous interconnectedness. Again, this wasn’t always a given. In the early days there were vigorous debates about who got to join the internet.
Beehaw has about 13 thousand registered users. At this scale the garden party metaphor looks pretty silly. A much better metaphor is that each fediverse app is a world, and each instance is a nation. Beehaw has a problem with the immigration policies of other nations (registration), and it’s enacted drastic trade and travel sanctions as a negotiating lever. As an independent nation, it’s entirely within their purview to do this, but as in real life the costs of doing so are high both within Beehaw and beyond.
The idea of federation/peering as a negotiating lever is always popular when a federated network is young, has poor abuse management tools, and the cost of severely damaging the network is low. But as soon as the network becomes useful enough to matter, the value of interconnectedness dominates all other concerns and people suddenly find other ways to resolve their disagreements.
So I disagree that people aren’t getting federation. They get intuitively that interconnectedness dominates the value equation in networks that matter, and are treating the Lemmyverse like it matters to them. The Beehaw admins are treating it like a toy they can break if it doesn’t work the way they want, and in doing so they will ensure that it remains a toy until the network routes around them and makes them irrelevant.
In another example, cell phone companies allow users to keep their number and call anyone on any service.
However they also have laws to block people who use that accessibility to troll others (spam calls).
You’re expecting an open sourced, volunteer network to have the same controls as private companies with departments dedicated to keeping these issues in check. Your analogy does not work.
In your country example, each country has users verified (passports) and travel between two countries is not allowed without proof of their verified identity which comes with other controls for restricting individuals on a case by case basis as they break the laws of the country they immigrate to. Lemmy does not have those tools yet, so until they do the point is moot. How about you help create those tools since you view the current status as such a travesty?
Are you talking about the early days of the internet and email, or the Fediverse today? I can’t tell which.
You say that like I’m the admin of an instance with 13k users with the platform to crowdfund additional developers on the core project. I have a simpler idea though, what if I engineer a crisis by splitting the network and forcing existing devs to choose between working on my pet features or forking the network with no notice. That sounds way easier.
I think your phrase “the Fediverse today” is significant, because Beehaw didn’t feel a need to take a breather a week ago, and both of their mod announcements re: defederation have pretty explicitly called it a temporary change.
Seems to me the mod team just wants a moment to evaluate what the new traffic is going to look like a week from now. I can’t think of an objection to that.
I’m talking about the fediverse since tech has advanced quite a bit from when email was first starting up which has increased the capability of trolls to cause problems.
As for why you should help out, you’re the one demanding access to a community that has set rules and doesn’t have the tools to enforce it exactly the way you want so… Maybe step up and stop complaining so much? How is it such a crisis that a community closes it’s gates? It’s likely not permanent and can be reversed when said mod tools reach the usability needed.