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!
I fully support their right to defederate as they did, but I am a little concerned by the chilling effect that sudden removal of large userbases who had been communicating with each other creates. I don’t mean specifically in this particular instance because it happened very quickly, but what if the beehaw communities who are large and popular with many users from different instances get disconnected all of a sudden? You’ll get a retraction of users, communities and a general distrust of talking to users on other instances because that communication channel you’ve grown to rely on suddenly just poof disappears effectively on a whim of the instance admins. I do not disagree with Beehaw and what they chose to do. I am just trying to point out that it’s dangerous to defederate and should never be taken lightly.
Oh certainly. I wish that we had less nuclear options like more granular mod controls both on the instance and community level.