Is defederation from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works still necessary?
Is defederation from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works still necessary?
This is more of a question for the admins, but this can certainly be a more open discussion.
Per this thread, beehaw defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works two months ago, around the time that the reddit exodus was happening. Lemmy was blowing up, those instances had an open sign-up policy, and this meant that admins of other instances (like Beehaw) that wanted to heavily moderate their communities became quickly overwhelmed with the number of users from these two instances. Beehaw defederated to make the workload more realistic.
Two months on, I'm wondering if this defederation is still necessary. It seems to me that Lemmy overall has slowed down a lot, and maybe the flow of users from these outside servers would not be as overwhelming as it was before? I respect the decision of the admins one way or the other - I know that the lack of moderation tools was another factor in this decision. I'm just curious if this is something that has been considered recently?
Hi,
I'm speaking on behalf of the admin team of Lemmy World - we feel like we have to step in here and give some feedback to the things being said in this thread and give our perspective.
About "Supporting nazi's":
So we support nazi's because it took us 'long' to defederate from exploding heads? That's straight up false. We were one of the first instances to defederate with them and advocated heavily to have them defederated on other instances. FYI Lemmy World as a whole is just over 2 months old and so is this post: https://lemmy.world/post/747912
There was an issue early on with the original moderator of the Lemmy World https://lemmy.world/c/conservative community which was handled instantly:
- The problematic moderator https://lemmy.world/u/OptionHome that was posting misinformation (and worse) was banned
- The https://lemmy.world/c/conservative community was given to other moderators.
- We asked people to stop bombaring the /c/conservative community with anti-conservative posts as to allow civil discourse. https://lemmy.world/post/149519
- The https://lemmy.world/c/maga community was also banned
We take a hard stance on extremism from both sides of the political spectrum, and we believe that civil discourse should always be the first option. We ban hate communities on sight no matter whose side they are on, and we work hard to resolve the hundreds of reports we receive each day. As of today, 3733 users were banned from Lemmy.World, and that number will probably have gone up by the time you read this comment. We follow-up on moderation teams if we see reports that stay open for too long and if communities are abandoned we actively look to replace the moderation team.
So we ask everyone to keep sending in reports when you see any post that breaks the Lemmy World rules which can be found here: https://lemmy.world/legal.
About Beehaw's decision to defederate with us: Even though we don't agree with it, we have always been supportive of Beehaw and their choice to defederate with us until the mod tools improve. Even when the question gets posted in our community we defended the decision: https://lemmy.world/post/895811.
But wether or not Beehaw will refederate with us is ofcourse 100% your decision.
From where I'm standing, I can't really much has changed unfortunately.. which really sucks..
Lemmy.world has grown substantially meanwhile the moderation tools have not improved at all. All I can say about the moderation tools is that we now know that the tools suck more than they used to.
Here's a list of moderation problems that we have discovered since then:
- If a Berson is reported on another instance, we never get the report.
- If a mod is banned from the community they mod, they can still take mod actions
- If you get site-banned from Beehaw while you are from another instance, you can still post on the community and people from that instance and kbin can see your posts
- People from other instances can't know who if someone is an admin on the instance they're interacting with
- People from other instances can't see when we use the shield function to signal we're talking "officially / as a mod"
- The modlog is not chronological
- The modlog breaks if you ban someone for more than 4 digit days.
- A banned user's description is still visible so if they link to a scat image in their description, it is still visible to moderators.
Despite these newly known problems, there have been exactly no improvement whatsoever to the moderation tools. It is honestly unsettling and terrifying.
I’m from kbin, here’s my perspective.
Stay defederated from lemmy.world. The admins are at the very least sympathetic towards fascists being on their instance as long as they’re “polite.”
Shit just works is mostly fine, but world is a shithole and honestly I wish everyone would defederate them to force them to be broken up or isolated.
Honestly I would suggest defederatibf from lemm.ee as well. I have noticed a ton of fascists originating from there.
I can only say that I spend less time on beehaw because there are communities on both of those instances I want to interact with. This isn't really an argument to refederate because as an end user I can filter the noise and focus on the communities I want, but I know admins don't have that luxury. It's more of an impact statement. I like beehaw, and I don't want to leave, but I do probably spend more time with my other account just because there's more activity I'm interested in there. So I fully support whatever decision gets made and certainly support this community, but I can't be the only user whos spending less time here than I otherwise might.
I would like to note that sh.itjust.works hasn't had unverified sign ups enabled for a while now. I have an account there too so it really doesn't make much of a difference to me but I would like an updated stance from the admins here. The initial concerns they voiced don't seem as relevant as they once were.
As for lemmy.world, it's the biggest, and issues can arise from that, so that makes more sense to me.
I feel torn on the issue. I spend 90% of my Lemmy time on here, but the growth feels much slower than many other communities. I'm mostly ok with that. Content is pretty good, but still not much chatter on many posts. I mainly go to World to post to !superbowl, but even with 10x the users as here I only just started getting decent up votes, and I don't want to mod, so I don't feel like starting it here and trying to build an audience again.
Lemmy is probably still going to be finding its legs for another year or 2, so keeping multiple logins is probably the best way to roll for now.
The amount of moderation actions from those instances were a lot higher than from elsewhere, specifically lemmy.world. With how lemmy.world is now after browsing it for ~5 mins I can confidently say that that would be the case again if we were to refederate
Count or discount my opinion as a non-Beehaw member as you will but...
I think the instances should do what they set out to do. Federate, defederate in line with the instance's ideals.
I'm not on Beehaw, but I do like seeing its content. But I also like seeing (most) of the content on Lemmy World and sh.itjust.works; and I can get both from the instance I am on.
I genuinely recommend against re-federation for Beehaw.
My unique take and experience from lemmy.one is simply the number of users who simply seek to stir the pot.
My blocklist is full of people from lemm.ee and sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world as well as lemmy.ca . When I compare the number of blocks to the number I've blocked from beehaw or even my own instance; a paltry one or two; I'm only ever seeing trolls or idealogues coming from those instances to argue with my posts no matter how well reasoned they may be. For context; if I tell someone they are absolutely wrong and they persist; they automatically meet my block list. I won't suffer people who aren't going to discuss things civilly or rationally.
Honestly, I think it's best that we stay the way we are here and not re-federate.
My experience after leaving all the toxicity of Reddit behind was that it was really a blessing to find a community where moderation actually mattered and made a difference in the culture of site. I did a lot of lurking on Lemmy even before leaving Reddit, enough to know it was not a place for me. I tried Kbin when I did finally leave Reddit, but did not like the experience there much, so eventually landed here.
While I can appreciate people's concerns about the defederation, and in particular some of the stresses for the admins which are certainly really challenging, I think it would all be far more negative if at this stage the decision were to be reversed. Not every community needs to be "the biggest, baddest, baddy in the room" so to speak. I just get the impression the vision for Lemmy is something along those lines. No one seems to care about that here (that I can tell), they just care about having civil and open discussions which, more than anything else, feel safe. It's why I stay and am glad to support it. If that changed, I would most likely move on and not return.
I value the principled approach and slower pace, the low tolerance for stirring. Moderation has such a huge effect on feel and the big ones never did enough to try to build healthy communities. Beehaw has mostly taken the sting out and I'd hate to see that lost.
I feel like that might be a topic where it's important for the community to voice their opinion.
Here are my two cents as an outsider looking in. I spend ~15-30 mins a day on Lemmy (usually while doing other things), so I see a decent amount of content but I am not at the leading edge of posts. When I look at posts, I rarely, if ever see spam. For the most part there is civil conversations and those that attempt to derail them are downvoted and, in some cases, banned.
Does this mean that moderation isn't a problem? No, I am but one user. However, it does indicate it is not a chronic issue. Personally I would like to see you guys refederate, as that could only increase the quality of discussions throughout the fediverse.
I spend most of the time on Kbin, sometimes lurking and sometimes commenting on different posts.
I can't talk about sh.itjust.works because I rarely see content from that instance. Sometimes a meme, or sometimes a techie news post. But very rarely, as I said. If you stay federated or defederated with sh.itjust.works, I don't really care, because I don't really know that place or the content it's published there.
However, I strongly prefer to stay defederated from lemmy.world. I really can't understand why an instance with the .world domain is so US-centric. I don't give a shit about Iowa, Idaho, Florida, Montana, Texas, California or whatever posts from related communites I see while browsing all on Kbin. Besides, being myself anti-nazi, anti-fascist and anti-tankie, I support when other instances defederate from far-right and far-left instances, but I don't understand why they defederate instantly from certain instances and take some time to defederate from other certain instances. It's sad, but lemmy.world is the most similar thing to reddit right now, and it seems that they want to monopolize everything, because there are communities on other instances, as well as on Kbin, that have few activity, if any, in favour of .world ones.
And then there is a cryptic reply to a comment I made on another post.
Given how unstable Lemmy's performance is, adding even more incoming activity is likely to cause more crashes and problems. And it isn't as if there are aren't 1200 other Lemmy instances out there who are showing content from Lemmy.world
I remember when Beehaw's signup code in Lemmy was so broken that there was a huge backlog.
It seems to me that Lemmy overall has slowed down a lot,
That's helped with the crashes in recent weeks, less data, less crashing. Lemmy.world has over 9000 communities, moderating all those entrances is huge, and the SQL performance problems in Lemmy are aggravated by all that additional data.