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.

negativenull,

Tell me if I’m wrong, but I think moderation grows exponentially with numbers of instances. A single comment may need moderation on each distinct instance. The more instances, the more moderation needs for that comment.

That seems unsustainable. I understand the conundrum.

jarfil, (edited )

Comments/posts get moderated at the community level, any instance subscribing to it, will also receive the moderation notification to update its cache, so it doesn’t need to be moderated again. In theory, an instance “could” ignore moderation actions for a community it’s subscribed to, but that makes little sense.

A problem comes when a community decides not to remove a comment/post, then it gets spread to all instances that subscribe to that community. Only in that case federated instances need to apply additional moderation.

Federated instances subscribed to a community would have the option to either block the user, the comment, the post, the community, or the whole instance (defederate). Fine grained options like blocking a single user’s every comment on a post, or on a community, or on an instance… or blocking every post by any user from an instance that they send to a community, or… etc. would be additional options… but Lemmy is lacking most of them.

So moderation isn’t inhrently an exponential problem, but right now is limited to a blunt tool that mostly relies on the good faith of everyone for things to work… and it’s been shown over and over that there are people acting in bad faith.

negativenull,

Thank you for that thorough explanation!

M500,

I think isolating is not a good move. I think many people on Lemmy are here to get away from centralization.

I stopped using beehaw about a month ago as too many servers were defederated.

I know beehaw has a great community, but being closed off is not appealing to me and I imagine it’s not appealing to many others as well.

s3rvant,
@s3rvant@kbin.social avatar

This was the case for me as well

loops,

I have two accounts. One for another instance that’s mainly local, and one for Beehaw when I don’t want to deal with bullshit; which is most of the time.

newtraditionalists,

Me too. I struggle to see why so many don’t want to use this option.

whoisearth,

Agree it’s not a good move. Disagree many are here to get away from centralization.

I prefer centralization. I believe many are ambivalent to centralization. What we are all here for is the community and anything to limit or shrink that community is a bad thing.

RiikkaTheIcePrincess,
@RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.social avatar

Well, that's kinda sad.

Sign of federated-not-Reddit-thingle carking it? Maybe. Sign that it's about time for myself to give up and leave? Maybe.

I blame everyone. Boo, us! scowls scoldingly at all, including itself

Cube6392,
@Cube6392@beehaw.org avatar
  1. Do what must be done, anyone who wants both the beehaw experience and the lemmy experience can handle two accounts
  2. Please pin this post, so people know what’s being discussed
db0,
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Is finding a new sysadmin an impossible task?

Quexotic,

I’ll follow if it’s time to go. I understand. Thank you.

ShellMonkey, (edited )
@ShellMonkey@lemmy.socdojo.com avatar

Just unticking the federation option would allow for a lot more direct control in itself. Pethaps more of a discussion of what the challenges of losing a couple technical resources are could help bring out some solutions. Maintaining an instance at a base level is pretty easy, performance is another matter perhaps.

leetnewb, (edited )

Selfishly, I would like to see beehaw remain on the fediverse. I enjoy the community, the curation, and desire for strong moderation. It is a great window to the broader fediverse link aggregator community. Beehaw’s ideals and structure clearly appealed to many Redditors and the like. The concept of federated communities seemed appealing, and beehaw is an important voice in the evolution of the moderation of a federated network.

However, the sacrifice that the admins have had to put into making the platform survive while the software finds its uncertain way through a mountain of growing pains seems unsustainable (just my pov through the last 3 months) - not just on the technical side. There’s that saying - when you find yourself in a hole, quit digging. It’s hard to see how moving from Lemmy to something more sustainable, if it exists, would be the wrong move.

Painful decisions rarely come with a flashing light that scream “now’s the time” - but the loss of your major technical contributors sounds stunningly close.

Edit> fixed a typo or two

Illecors,

Beehaw is a big part of the fediverse. May I suggest you have a look at fediseer? It’s the principle of public private key cryptography applied to lemmy whitelists. I can help you set it up - just reach out!

Amamsa,

Serious question; would it help if some of us left beehaw? I’m part of that influx and i first joined lemmy.world. Then i understood that it would be better to spread out among other instances and i created a few more accounts, one of them here on beehaw, because i really like the spirit of it. But if it would help, i would be willing to leave beehaw to help you cope with the load. If enough people would feel the same, it might lighten the load? Another option might be to close the instance for new people, until these issues are solved? I’m sure people would understand the reasoning for doing so?

If you would leave the fediverse, i would not follow. I’m not that big on social media anyway, the fediverse being the only exception.

Penguincoder,

Serious question; would it help if some of us left beehaw?

No. As noted in the post, the largest aspect of issues are other users and content federating to Beehaw. Less users on Beehaw won’t address that.

TheCompassMaker,

I think everything laid out here is perfectly reasonable. Lemmy hasn’t made it easy and easy doesnt seem to be on the horizon for that development team.

My personal thoughts is that I don’t think that the currrent implementation of lemmy is going to reach a point where the capabilities of the platform is going to meet the requirements of the beehaw project. Definitely not in the near term, and low probability in the scale of years.

If the worse comes about ill probably follow along to where ever beehaw ends up and ill just set up an lemmy acc elsewhere.

I don’t envy the situation

// the commenter gives yet another unsolicited solution

I think it would be interesting if yall and other like minded instance admins were to start a federation pact/ code of conduct which would layout the requirements for federation. In my opinion, fostering the kind of online community that beehaw strives to be (as I see it anyways), requires acting outside of the capabilities of the lemmy the platform. Granted, this would require a critical mass of instances willing to sign to such a pact but this may ease the workload from a moderation point of view.

Nimfi,
@Nimfi@beehaw.org avatar

Honestly that second idea sounds really nice, i wouldn’t mind beehaw being federated with a fewer number of instances/only federating with those that had similar values about moderation and code of conduct.

I personally don’t need a huge/endless stream of content, i’m fine with the feed being quieter if that means it’ll be safer and easier to moderate for the admins.

jarfil,

As a Reddit App-ocalypse refugee, I’m not going back to a centralized forum, much less without an app. Even Lemmy’s level of "hub-"alization is somewhat unnerving, but Beehaw has been a good compromise between moderation, federation, and app accessibility.

I would rather you could work out the kinks of the platform, instead of switching to another. I think Beehaw is highly positive for the Lemmy space, and that it would be best for everyone if the platform could be adapted to include meeting Beehaw’s needs.

trailing9,

Which features would you need to continue staying federated, possibly limited to white-listed instances?

bl4kers,
@bl4kers@beehaw.org avatar

Sorry to say I won’t be following if you leave the Fediverse

MiddledAgedGuy,

I like what Beehaw is, and I fully support whatever decision is made in the best interests of this community.

The idea of defederating, for me personally, feels too limiting. But even if Beehaw goes this route, I think I’ll stick around and try it out. Either it’ll be fine or it won’t. And if not, no hard feelings!

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