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.

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

Renacles,

I don’t have much of a stake in this but isolation is probably not the way forward.

M500,

I completely agree, I had a beehaw account and it was my main server until they defederated with Lemmy.ml

Too many communities were blocked, so I just switched to make my alt my main account.

usrtrv,

I’m on lemmy.ml, looks to still be federated?

loops,

Yup, or at least re-federated.

XPost3000,

Another .ml user here, and yeah it looks like it

It’d honestly suck to lose beehaw again, it’s such a standout server with a really lovely community

But if the devs and the technology just can’t keep up, then I guess there isn’t much that we can do

We still can’t even block instances yet, as far as I’m aware

furrowsofar,

Might be wrong, but my understanding is that we have never defenerated with Lemmy.ml. I think there may have been or are technical issues. Not tried recently but I am on Behaw since June and lemmy.ml has never accepted any of my subscriptions which is a huge issue.

M500,

They may have refederated already. But I noticed I was missing a lot of communities that I followed and then saw that they stopped federating.

It seems each week there is another community they dropped, and for the most part it didn’t affect the communities I followed, but when it did o decided to drop it.

Renacles,

Same here, I started out in Beehaw but left to a smaller instance because of all the defedersting. This way I have a feed with all the instances I like mixed together.

Cube6392,
@Cube6392@beehaw.org avatar

??? Beehaw is still federated with lemmy.ml

Are you talking about Lemmy.world?

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.

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.

mojo,

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

MJBrune,

It’d be a huge disappointment to see beehaw defederate everything. I’d be even more disappointed if it moved to common web forums or something else. One thing that’s lost is the ability to let other communities in.

I don’t know if it’s possible but you could deny federation by default for every other instance until their mod team sets up a communication line to make moderation easier towards both communities.

That said I suspect this response comes from the recent federation poll where it sounded like a lot of people wanted to federate back into the larger instances again. Beehaw doesn’t have the mod team to really do that and in some ways it’s counter to keeping the space nice since those instances aren’t moderate with being nice as a priority.

alyaza,
@alyaza@beehaw.org avatar

That said I suspect this response comes from the recent federation poll where it sounded like a lot of people wanted to federate back into the larger instances again. Beehaw doesn’t have the mod team to really do that and in some ways it’s counter to keeping the space nice since those instances aren’t moderate with being nice as a priority.

we’re working on coding the results and i’ll just say that no, this was neither prompted by the survey nor are its results informing what’s being talked about here.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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
keet,
@keet@kbin.social avatar

As a kbin.social user, we would all be diminished if Beehaw were to defederate. If I were to ever move instances from a kbin to a lemmy platform, it would be over to you guys. I hope that you guys are able to find the help you need to keep going as part of the wider fediverse.

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