The Beehaw project is entering some significant challenges

There is a lot of discussion happening in the background of our project here. We could not anticipate all of the challenges that we were going to face a few years ago. One of the reasons for this was because we had no idea what our choice of a platform would bring.

Specifically, we chose Lemmy as the software that we would use to launch our endeavor to attempt a safe space for marginalized persons online.

In the first year or so, this choice was completely successful for a very small number of users. And then we all experienced an enormous influx of users when Reddit announced/implemented their shutting down of third party apps.

Since then there has been a huge number of people that have joined the Beehaw project. This tsunami of users initiated technical problems, and otherwise, that we could not foresee.

Thankfully and fortunately, we have had a couple of incredibly knowledgeable persons that have swooped in to ’save the day’ and keep this site running.

Unfortunately, these persons will NOT be able to continue to support the Beehaw project much further. They have life commitments and other factors, including careers and family life, that will prevent them from contributing to our project in an ongoing fashion.

All that being said, Lemmy (the software that Beehaw runs on) development is incredibly slow and is riddled with problems that makes administration/moderation very painful.

Therefore, we are left with some options that may feel uncomfortable to us. For example, we may want to consider leaving the Fediverse for another software platform that does NOT include ActivityPub. To explain, Fediverse/ActivityPub are very positive concepts on the foundational level. However, the Beehaw project is struggling to include this because most of our moderation/content/ethos is being jeopardized from OTHER federated instances (i.e. it, mostly, is NOT coming from within our own Beehaw registered user base).

The aforementioned persons, that have ’swooped in to save the day’, have been discussing/working with us to come up with the best solutions that would enable the Beehaw project to continue while NOT needing incredibly experienced/technically adept persons around.

Right now, we are testing alternative software platforms and evaluating them based on everything that we want Beehaw to become in the future.

Thank you all for your continued support of the Beehaw project and entrusting us to make this happen.

Gaywallet,
@Gaywallet@beehaw.org avatar

Locking this post for now because it’s quickly going off the rails. We will have more for you soon. Please be patient.

mojo,

If there is no ActivityPub integration, may as well kill the project right there.

mooncabbage,

I would probably follow beehaw elsewhere as long as it was safe to do so for me. I think this is something important to keep alive wherever it may be. I also think for anyone who wants to stay on lemmy and would miss beehaw, if you can create your own. It may not be the easiest thing thing for everyone to do but I’m sure there are more people out there who want a space that has the simple fundamental rule of be nice. We need more of this online and honestly trying to keep it within the confines of lemmy alone doesn’t make sense. Spread kindness and let the spirit of beehaw grow far and wide.

communist,
@communist@beehaw.org avatar

If there’s not going to be federation via activitypub I will not continue to use beehaw at all, so, this was very unfortunate to read.

sparklepower,

I appreciate the transparency and willingness to discuss with the community.

I was a rexxitor in July, trying out different online communities after deleting my account there. I was very affected by the lack of moderation on Reddit, and subsequently every other platform that I’ve tried since then.

It’s pretty clear to me that safety is an issue that affects all humans who use the internet. A sense of safety and security allows our minds the freedom to create. If Beehaw can find a sustainable way to keep us feeling safe to express ourselves, the people will come. The content will come, I can guarantee it.

Ultimately, the decision is up to the leadership here and I trust and respect that. I have no clue about any of this stuff. I just want to find a place where I can post my art and hopefully? maybe? not have to endure hate.

dawt,

Thank you for being upfront and honest about the challenges you’re facing. I’d like to also put my vote in for going whitelist only rather than moving off the fediverse altogether. However, I’m a big fan of beehaw and would likely follow a migration, but only if there’s a good mobile experience on the new site.

Rentlar,

I’m a big proponent of federation and the Lemmyverse. While it would be sad for me to see Beehaw leave ActivityPub, I’ve always said that the admin team should do what they think is best for themselves and Beehaw and I will respect such decisions.

I probably wouldn’t make a new account on another service because that would require a new app on my phone, but I’m OK with that if the idea of Beehaw prospers in another space.

@PenguinCoder @admin If I may suggest something on Lemmy as a stopgap measure, Beehaw can enlist the help of one of the AutoMod programs of Lemmy, so that any comment not on an approved user or instance list are removed on the specific “safe-space” communities. It might take some testing/tinkering but this may give you some of the granularity in moderation that has been requested.

spaduf, (edited )

It’s a shame how much of Lemmy’s recent downturn appears to stem from slow and misprioritized development. At this point significant instances are dropping like flies and users are leaving in droves. I do not have high hopes for the future of this platform.

Cube6392,
@Cube6392@beehaw.org avatar

I think the threadiverse as a concept has a lot of promise but neither of the threadiverse apps are primetime ready yet, and there’s sort of some priority setting issues that make me feel like these two are proofs of concept that some future app will fully realize

cubedsteaks,

I’ve been using Lemmy.today and have yet to experience a downtime issue.

comicallycluttered,

I understand some of the negative reception to this, especially from users of other instances, but I also understand the reasoning here.

Don’t know if ditching ActivityPub entirely is a great idea, but I do get why. Perhaps a whitelist on another ActivityPub service would be a better option, although I’m struggling to think of any (other than kbin) which exist in this kind of form.

So, my only curiosity is which alternative platforms?

There aren’t many in this particular form (social news/link aggregation), as far as I’m aware. Most others are traditional forums, microblogging, and general social networks.

And moving to something new, potentially in alpha/beta, with an equally or just as small dev team may end up just being a horizontal jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, with eventually similar issues when it comes to tools and capabilities of the platform.

Basically, are we looking at something new entirely in terms of UX or something familiar? And are we looking at something centralized or using some other federated service?

pinkdrunkenelephants,

Reason why federation simply doesn’t work

communist,
@communist@beehaw.org avatar

This isn’t a reason federation doesn’t work at all, that implies a fundamental issue with federation, this is why focusing on performance instead of mod tools and helping content filtering doesn’t work, the same would’ve happened to a massive centralized service without proper mod tools.

Segnis,

Beehaw will go back to being a very small platform if you move away from the fediverse

newtraditionalists,

Beehaw is wonderful and I will follow wherever it ends up. I have another lemmy account, and accounts on other sites for when I’m looking for memes and nonsense.

BitOneZero,
@BitOneZero@beehaw.org avatar

All that being said, Lemmy (the software that Beehaw runs on) development is incredibly slow and is riddled with problems

The developers of Lemmy have been running it on the Internet for over 4.5 years, but they only had a few thousands posts in 4 years… it lacks moderation (and spam) tools and it drops and alters data silently that shows they really don’t use it or focus on the data.

kbin is newer, but it is only now starting to have an API - so Lemmy has attracted all the app developers because of API - and kbin also struggles with moderation and spam.

we may want to consider leaving the Fediverse for another software platform that does NOT include ActivityPub.

I can entirely understand that. Reinventing the wheel of basic forum features ties up a lot of kbin and lemmy development - and federation is the wild west. People can participate in your forum without having the context or understanding, or worse, to do attacks at an entire server to server level - manipulating votes and having wildly different policies.

Thank you for sharing your thinking.

furrowsofar,

Just a few thoughts.

  • Is there a way to configure lemmy to have some private Beehaw only communities and some public ones too. Maybe this is some code changes, but one would not think that this would be crazy hard. Might need to have some user preference settings too about restricting what us in the site feed too.
  • Would there be a way of running two instances. One federated and one not or the one not only federated with beehaw.
  • How serious is the adim time issue and the skills gap issue. Maybe worth thinking about what your issues are and what would need to happen to fill them. More people, hiring things out, etc.
  • I agree too, you guys have to decide personnally your priorities. Not having clear personal limits can eat you up. So do that as well.
frog, (edited )

I’ve seen this suggested a few times throughout this thread, so I’ll just add my support for considering defederating instances that don’t follow similar behavioural expectations to Beehaw. The best thing about Beehaw, and what drew me here rather than any other instance, was the Be(e) nice rules, and the fact that it’s a safe place to be myself.

While I do think the majority of users from other instances are good people who are fine with following Beehaw’s rules when they’re visiting this space, the fact that Lemmy as a platform doesn’t have adequate moderation tools for dealing with bad actors (as I understand it, the issue is that you can’t block specific users from Beehaw, which means you’re continuously chasing down bad actors’ individual comments?) means it comes down to a question of what’s more important: being federated with other instances, regardless of whether their values align with Beehaw’s; or being more protective of the vibes of this space, even though it means becoming a more isolated space.

Coming from the perspective of someone who’s part of a marginalised community, I favour the latter. There are lots of big, hostile spaces out there, where bigots can run free and say whatever they like without consequences. There’s a lot fewer spaces that require everyone to treat others with respect. Defederate with the instances that don’t share our values, with a view to being open to re-federating with them at a later date when Lemmy’s moderation tools eventually catch up.

Edited for typos.

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