Most of the topics in interested in have moved off of Beehaw and communities have grown elsewhere. I probably wouldn't even notice if Beehaw left.

I say do what's best for you and fuck what everyone else thinks.

To all the thoughts here already I’m going to ask something that may be wrong and may also be somewhat rude and or hurtful to the person/people it implicitly targets (which isn’t my intention unfortunately) … but which I feel is the tiny elephant in the room:

How much is the beehaw motive to leave the fediverse driven by a small and relatively unchallenged voice from technical person/people in the beehaw team who doesn’t like the fediverse and Lemmy for a bunch of technical reasons and who is certain that they can achieve better some how?

The relevance of this is that I honestly think the fediverse is somewhat plagued by the aggregate effect of the mentality of indy tech people to prefer to do their own thing and to find others’ work and cooperating with it/them insurmountable distasteful. Basically mass NIH.

Which is not problem on its own. Tech people do great things and being motivated to do what they want is pretty fundamental. Hell this is probably half of what’s going on with Lemmy’s development.

But beehaw’s goals are not technical, arguably not at all even to the point of being in spite of technical factors as a “safe space online for the disenfranchised” has intrinsic tension I’d say. And it seems that you’re very reliant on the technical heroes that have kept your instance healthy.

Which means their own technical tastes and motivations might hold too much sway and their promises might be too convincing.

I’m not sure this will help your reasoning, but I figured there was small chance that bringing this might help. The reality may be that the essence of the beehaw project requires fighting the nature of technology.

I started on beehaw but left for the current one, as I felt it was less about being nice and more about toxic positivity, very retrictive.

And since than I have not even once seen a beehaw community.

So id say go ahead, neither side likely will miss much, if anything.

Stop it, this is a bad idea.

Leave already

I'm on kbin, but have enjoyed the discussions I've had or read on beehaw. I've mostly lurked.

You're clearly trying to get social media right, and I respect that. Obviously it would be a loss for the fediverse if you left, however you are volunteers, it is your community. You owe the fediverse nothing. You should put the safety of your own users first.

If you do leave the fediverse for good, please let us know. I would consider joining beehaw or another forum/community to join/follow some of the discussions I've seen on beehaw. Especially discussions on sensitive topics that are harder to have in other parts of the fediverse.

The one thing I will say, is that leaving the fediverse will make you less known/accessible to people who need a safe online community. Of course, I suspect it'll also keep out some of the people who cause more moderation and safety concerns. So it's quite a dilemna.

I recall beehaw having some good communities when I was first on Lemmy this summer, but I haven’t seen much from there on Kbin or the lemmies I use - presumably because beehaw defederated for whatever reason. If you’re not going to be connected to the largest instances anyway, what’s the difference?

Sure, having a standalone forum is a legitimate thing to do, like it always has been since the start of the internet. Seems like it would be harder to grow the site without the network effect of the rest of Lemmy though.

I had assumed beehaw had already defeded. Since I've been using lemmy, there has never not been some discussion about beehaw and their federation/defederation choices and discussing the intricacies of those decisions. For whatever reason, I haven't really seen anything from or about beehaw since joining this instance so I presumed they defeded. Prior to that, it seemed hit or miss whether or not I'd get the privilege of seeing beehaw.

All that is to say, with the way you've handled moderation, if you left the fediverse it would probably just make everyone's lives simpler. It's going to be a "shit or get off the pot" from me, dawg.

When you say "leaving the fediverse", do you mean leaving the platform/protocol altogether, or just defederating from everywhere?

Either way, I would think it'd be a loss for the community and the broader fediverse, but ultimately it's your decision. There seem to be some free speech absolutists ITT, but personally I think taking the approach of aggressive defederation is perfectly valid.

I'm curious, what benefit do you see in total seclusion?

I replied to another user, but I'm sharing it in a main reply to add my voice to the base level comments.

I want a safe place to be, while looking out into a wider sea of content (albeit through the filter of Beehaw’s defederation, which I really appreciate). When the trolls and the assholes get too much, I like to be able to retreat back to just Local feed setting and be safe again. If beehaw was to be a separate platform, I’d lose that.

Beehaw is a shining beacon in an ocean of content, good and bad. I’d love that beacon to remain, so more people can find safety here if they need it.

Lol, so good I left Beehaw already. Do whatever you want now, not going to miss it, neither their admins.

I'd miss you guys. I've jumped in on conversations on your instance a couple of times and it always seems like a nice place

As a fellow lemmy.world user, I gotta say: Jesus Christ y'all are brutal lol

Decently new lemmy world user here, never heard of BeeHaw before. Don't think I'll miss it.

You should never have been on lemmy according to your stated goals of a 'safe' closed community. Your actions during the reddit exodus while you were still a big part of the lemmyverse (especially regarding communities) certainly did not do the rest of lemmy any good. Not that I think you care.

It's better for lemmy if you leave, it's better for your goals to leave so just do it.

Personally I think it would be unfortunate. I like some of the communities on beehaw I'm subscribed to, but I'm not sure I'd bother to switch over. Even right now, many posts I see don't get any interactions, others just a few and that's with users from other instances. I'd imagine starting over would kill many of these communities off almost entirely.

Can someone explain all the hate against Beehaw to me? I run a private instance, so I don't really keep up with Lemmy politics

When I first heard of beehaw I had really high hopes and was genuinely excited about the idea of a safe space for marginalised people, but when I saw this being framed as "be nice" without exception or nuance a bunch of red flags started waving, to paraphrase - "you can't be nice to everyone, because being nice to certain people is inherently cruel to others", and I was soon proven right in my concerns, with sprinkles on top - beehaw is a typical liberal (not leftist) space, where criticism of the status quo or swearing at bigots and bootlickers is seen as "not nice", but "polite" bigotry or even genocide denial are a-ok (those being the tankie-sympathising sprinkles I was referring to)..

Good luck to you I guess, but having already blocked your domain, you won't be missed, not by me anyway. ¯\(ツ)/¯

Personally I'd be sad to see Beehaw go. I enjoy several of your communities and I think the wider fediverse would be poorer for it. But you need to do what's best for you. Best wishes to you no matter what you decide ☮️💙🙂

With your abuse of defederation and the unability to create our own communities I don't care that you leave. Although lemmy.world abuse it too, at least there is a ton of communities that I could join

I would consider the users of Lemmy disenfranchised, whether they were the OGs or the refugees who did not want to be part of a corporate structure that is Reddit.

As for your goal of being nice, you can be a private instance with a very detail form with long list of questions that applies to your values. This will cut down new users joining and only those that are willing to go through the process of joining will show the commitment.

Having said that, having a closed door policy on the fediverse defeats the purpose of being on fediverse. If you truly only want, how you define disenfranchised, then fediverse may not be the right platform and you will always be left wondering.

We decided that our ‘Northern Star’ or guiding principle would culminate as ‘Be Nice’ with purposefully vague/flexible interpretations. Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.

Oh look, someone failed to absorb one of the lessons of Letter from Birmingham jail

https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Beehaw right now:

I abandoned Beehaw and went to Lemmy World because you made the decision to defederate after Reddit shat the bed.

So it wouldn't make much of a difference to me. I only left my Beehaw account dormant because that instance gave me the impression of being like yet another Tildes, and I kinda wanted to be with the main Reddit exodus crowd.

Don't know why you would ask here since it's a decision that should be made by your users for your users...

From Beehaws docs on defederation:

We are simple with defederating: we do not allow hate speech, and we must consider our own limits when it comes to moderating. If an instance allows hateful speech or in our judgement has users who are too much for us to currently manage given the state of Lemmy, we defederate with it.

If the goal is to limit hate speech and provide a safe space on Beehaw, then I think you should defederate from the fediverse. I think however the value in providing a safe(r) platform for engaging with the rest of the fediverse to be more valuable, but I am personally in no need of such a safe space myself.

I like the policy of "Be Nice" even when I get annoyed that I can't down vote. Tho a ultimatum like this would make me switch to another server. Why? Well first of all Lemmy is supposed to be federated imagine if Google did this with gmail, it would not end well. Secondly even if I like content from Beehaw communities I do enjoy and contribute to other instances, and would not follow BeeHaw if it where to defederate. The reason I chose and have stayed on BeeHaw is that ultimately it was my choice to use this instance and follow the rules, defederation would not allow me the freedom to be anywhere but on BeeHaw, and that sounds like the walled garden that I left behind. And those platforms end up hurting people allot. I would hate for BeeHaw to end up like it, and would way less be there to see it happen.

TLDR: I want the freedom to chose the rules I want to abide by and would not support this. And would migrate to another instance if this where to go forward.

If Beehaw defederates, I will no longer think or care about Beehaw, since at the end of the day, the power of federation is by far the coolest thing in the fediverse; I am not interested in joining another Reddit clone! No hard feelings though, do what you think is right!

I doubt I'd notice.

I joined because its federated and the people who run it. If beehaw defederates ill go somewhere else, albeit sadly.

Raddle.me is a good example. Because its not federated i just never go despite it being a fine community. Its not big enough to be its own thing worth visiting outside of it being federated content.

I wouldn't leave. Starting from scratch again would spin off too many users. Beehaw already has some subs that are already somewhat anemic. The fediverse still needs users and high-quality discussions since facebook, reddit, and digg ravaged the many forums of old that used to exist.

I am a kbin user and I like to see the opinions expressed by beehaw users.

I'm on .world, so I'm already defeated and it wouldn't impact me currently. Before we became deferred, I thought some of the communities there were good and it was a loss (though understandable) when we became defederated.

All that being said, I've often thought and said that Beehaw's lofty goal of a troll and harassment free space on the Internet wasn't well suited to having Lemmy as an underlying platform. I'd rather see you relocate someplace where you have a better chance of achieving your goals.

It would be sad. There’s great communities and members in beehaw and they make great contributions to the fediverse. What would be the reason to leave? What goals does beehaw have that are limited by Lemmy?

Please don't leave Fediverse. I am not a beehaw user but do want to interact with beehaw and I think the only way to do it is by fediverse.

Unsurprised.