hey folks, here’s a quick update on our decision to defederate from sh.itjust.works! (and here’s sh.itjust.works’s side of this update)

we got in touch with the head admin over there, The Dude, and we had a pretty good chat about our concerns and reason for defederating. while immediate re-federation is just bluntly off the table with the rudimentary state of Lemmy’s moderation tools, we now have a pretty good idea of the roadmap to refederating with them. we think we’ll eventually be able to do this, although we don’t have a timetable on when yet.

we’re also now collaborating with him on how to move forward–and in the weeks and months to come we’ll be pushing to expedite the process of developing some of the necessary tools. this decision has really helped us make connections that can hopefully realize those tools both on the desktop side and in apps being developed for Lemmy. we’re also hoping to collaborate with other Lemmy administrators who have needs like our own, or just generally want more granular tools at their disposal.

we did also get in touch with the lemmy.world owner prior to defederating to share the concerns that prompted us to defederate[1]–but we have not received any communication from him since it was levied, so there’s no roadmap at all there as of now. we’re always open to reconsidering and collaborating to end the defederation with him, but for now the earliest i can give you is “when mod tools are in a better state”.

that’s all for now folks. if any new significant developments take place we’ll announce them as needed.


  1. we’re only bringing this up now because it was just not useful information in the context of our announcement. it almost certainly would have been interpreted as some sort of callousness and/or brought unnecessary sectarianism and grief to him. at the end of the day he has his reasons and desires for running lemmy.world how he does, and we have ours for running Beehaw as we do. because of social and technological circumstances those are just incompatible right now, and that’s fine. ↩︎

  • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    In my application here I cited the decision to de-fed from them as why I chose to sign up for beehaw. I was looking through shitjustworks and was absolutely not liking how it seemed to be absorbing some of the worst “libertarianism and rationalism are my excuse to insult people” types from reddit. I’ll be interested to see whether their admins succeed in wrangling their ‘hives’.

    • halictuz@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      This is in the nature of the domain name. If you name your site “shit just works” you can’t be surprised if you build a bubble for idiots in the first wave of registrations.

      I’m not bashing on the site or their Admins.i say that out of own experience over the last 25+ years on the internet and some exp in hosting forums and all that myself.

    • bartera@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      Fun fact. Your take just made me sign up there too.

      I actually seek different perspectives and don’t quite agree with any particular place that is very “ideologically packeted” like most tend to. Where “they insult” and “we don’t, because if they feel insulted is because of Reality and how right we are”.

      I’m new to all this fediverse and I’m curious to see how different niche interests develop and if we can actually form the usefulness that Reddit threads could have or if it’s a unique and different usefulness…

      • theblueredditrefugee@beehaw.org
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        3 years ago

        Sometimes I wanna see what everyone else sees. That’s why I also have an account on another instance. But sometimes I don’t want the risk of seeing people question my right to exist (how often on reddit do I come across someone who’s “just asking questions”). That’s why I’m here. So glad reddit is dead now bc we’re all here instead.

        • bartera@beehaw.org
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          3 years ago

          I’d word it as, you don’t want the risk of other people writing a specific opinion on a specific topic that you don’t agree with.

          Because the whole “right to exist” thing is very relative and dependent on framing.

          It’s very common that criticism of X is taken as “you are -ism” or if you’re not voting exactly how I tell you to then you are denying my rights to exist. There’s lot of nuance In conversations of “where does my rights end and yours start” but the typical thing I see is “I want there to be no discussion about this, only axiom A”.

          Reddit is not dead, only time will tell what happens with but I’d say Reddit is pretty much like what you talk about, with some slight variations on niche places.

          • MeowKittyWow@beehaw.org
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            3 years ago

            There have been open calls to “eradicate transgenderism”, along with a nearly endless amount of anti-trans legislation in many parts of the world. Their rhetoric frequently borders on genocidal. It is 100% about our right to exist.

            We’re not some hypothetical to have a pleasant debate over tea about, we are real people with real lives being directly harmed by real policy. Some of us are tired of being nice about it.

            • bartera@beehaw.org
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              3 years ago

              I don’t know why you would share that link thinking it reflects what you initially said.

              I will avoid continuing this conversation because I don’t think it will get anywhere but to me, it’s clear who is bullying whom and who misrepresents opinions as “denying your right to exist” and allows no debate.

              It’s easy to think being righteous does not make you a bully but that’s exactly how mobs operate, by thinking their righteous ends justify the means.

                • bartera@beehaw.org
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                  3 years ago

                  Only if that rule is accurately defined. It’s definitely not occuring in the link provided unless you consider “getting bullied and disagreeing with other user” transphobia.

                  I’m not going to engage with the other user anymore. They want freedom to insult and censor because “they’re righteous”. It’s not an attitude that’s specific to one group, mind you, but it’s definitely an enlightening interaction in the context of this thread.

                  Authortiarianism doesn’t sit well with me and I consider it an absolute no but I’m playing by the instance rules. I don’t think they are but it is what it is.

                  We’ll see how this space develops. Individual users are not relevant, anyway, but the aggregate.

              • theblueredditrefugee@beehaw.org
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                3 years ago

                just fucking defend the reactionaries why don’t you. Bet you’re the type who sees nazis committing genocide, and minorities fighting back, and says “man why can’t both sides stop fighting???” Enough with the fucking respectability politics already. In an uncivil age, y’all motherfucker’s calls for “civility” are just a device to squash all protest so you can get your way, not actually an argument made in good faith.

    • GuyDudeman@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      Hahaha!

      On a separate note, it is very interesting that the creator of Lemmy.world is non-responsive. That is concerning, seeing as how his instance is one of the biggest.

        • GuyDudeman@beehaw.org
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          3 years ago

          Well, it was pretty big news that Beehaw was defederating from them, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort to reply real quick to someone reaching out to you from Beehaw. You could just say “thanks, let’s talk about this when I’m not so busy” but to just ignore it seems weird to me.

          • JohannesOliver@beehaw.org
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            3 years ago

            I don’t think I’m the only person who won’t reply to an email until there is something actually productive to say.

            • GuyDudeman@beehaw.org
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              3 years ago

              I guess I’m just the weird guy who appreciates acknowledgment because without it I feel like I’m being ignored.

      • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgOPM
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        3 years ago

        That is concerning, seeing as how his instance is one of the biggest.

        he’s probably just busy, and we’re not going anywhere so as far as i’m concerned it’s not a big deal either way

        • wet_lettuce@beehaw.org
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          3 years ago

          That was my take. I imagine most of the admins/mods of the larger instances are very busy these last few days. It will shake itself out over time. The thing thats really interesting about the fediverse concept is that something like this can happen–for better or worse.

          I personally appreciate the level of curation and moderation being done here. I looked at the blocked list and even some of the names just skeeve me out. I dont want to have to deal with that, and if the mods here can see lots of trolls or bad content coming from particular places, I like that they would take action to deal with it.

          Shoutout to The Dude for being responsive and receptive, but I wouldn’t write off the lemmy.world admin yet.

      • livejamie@lemm.ee
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        3 years ago

        It’s the end of a crazy week, his instance is just a few weeks old, and there are many things to do. I’m sure he’s busy and not intentionally ignoring beehaw.

        I reached out to him on matrix and pointed him to this thread.

        • GuyDudeman@beehaw.org
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          3 years ago

          I guess I just don’t typically give people the benefit of the doubt, especially online. I need to work on that.

          • PlasticExistence@beehaw.org
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            3 years ago

            I blame reddit’s culture rot for that. A decade ago or more, reddit was an overall better place to be. It’s going to take time to shake that off.

            But the admins here are doing an amazing job fostering an environment where having overwhelmingly good experiences is the norm!

            • GuyDudeman@beehaw.org
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              3 years ago

              Yeah, I agree. Reddit was great when it first started out. I love what the Beehaw folks are doing.

      • Powderhorn@beehaw.org
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        3 years ago

        As one of the biggest, it could be as simple as that they’re overwhelmed, and Beehaw refederation is not a top priority.

    • Gork@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      Why am I not surprised that the head mod for an instance called sh.itjust.works is called The Dude. lol

  • RuudLW@feddit.nl
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    3 years ago

    Lol … tried commenting from my lemmy.world account but duhh that’s defederated… This is @ruud@lemmy.world

    This was my reply:

    Hi there! Lemmy.world calling!

    I read here that I’m unresponsive, but after a chat with one of your team, the last mesasge I got was:

    "Sorry for the bad news especially after we’ve had such a good conversation but we have defederated. It was not an easy decision and I hope it doesn’t hurt our relations. It’s not personal, it’s just that our goals don’t work together, we wish it was possible to “limit” a la mastodon… I hope you understand "

    I didn’t know that was a question… ;-)

    I would very much like to get in touch with you, I have also been in touch with the sh.itjust.works admin. If there’s anything we could do to solve your concerns, let us know.

    You can reach me on matrix @ruud:h-y-p-e-r.space or mail info@lemmy.world (But I’ll be asleep the next 8 hours hopefully, so I’ll be unresponsive)

    • Lionir [he/him]@beehaw.orgM
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      3 years ago

      That’s my bad, I had kinda assumed you’d reply something so the silence was a bit unexpected. I apologize.

      • Jessica@lemmy.one
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        3 years ago

        @Lionir@beehaw.org, @alyaza@beehaw.org I realize a three day old buried comment chain is not the best place for this, but seeing as how the fediverse is difficult to search, and as a moderator of a medium-sized community on lemmy.world where I have not personally seen any content needing moderation, I’m curious if there has been a public statement somewhere on Beehaw you can direct me to that explains the specific issues and reasoning behind defederating with with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works?

        As of today, @ruudtest@feddit.nl has implemented a captcha on lemmy.world and sign ups are currently closed due to an influx of spam accounts being created, which he already banned as stated here: https://lemmy.world/post/293545.

        Lastly, why have other large instances with similar growth and open registration like kbin.social and lemmy.ml been spared?

        • Lionir [he/him]@beehaw.orgM
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          3 years ago

          What I noticed and why your experience probably doesn’t match with ours is that people signed up lemmy.world to harass in other instances that are closed like ours and usually centered on LGBTQ+ communities. That might be a significant factor.

          Here is the public statement we made about the issue a few days ago : https://beehaw.org/post/567170

          As for why kbin.social and lemmy.ml were spare : I’ve not personally seen many reports from lemmy.ml and kbin.social was not even federated when we made this decision so it wasn’t on our mind.

    • DarbyDear@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      Thank you for reaching out and being open to collaboration! I’m not an admin or mod, just a member of Beehaw, but I wish you continued success and luck with your endeavors running lemmy.world!

    • jherazob@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      Excellent! Paging @alyaza@beehaw.org , response from the lemmy.world admin :D

      Man, i insist that this shitstorm should have happened a year or two in the future when Lemmy was a bit more developed :P

      • realChem@beehaw.org
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        3 years ago

        Yep, haha, it sure would be convenient if the world only ever threw challenges at us when we were well and fully prepared to deal with them! 🙃

  • Rentlar@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    Thanks for the update. If any Github issues are brought up that would assist with getting the necessary moderation tools implemented be sure to broadcast them!

  • ɔiƚoxɘup@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    Some days it feels like there’s a shortage of nice people. Today is not one of those days. Thank you.

  • the w@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    I find the decisions made so far entirely understandable and I really appreciate the transparency and updates.

    • Icarus@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      Have to say the same thing. I really appreciate the hard work the admins and mods are doing and support the decisions they have made.

  • 🦊 OneRedFox 🦊@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    It’s quite unfortunate that Rexxit happened before the platform was ready for it. Looking forward to refederating when the time comes.

    • feetongrass@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      I think rexxit is the catalyst to get the platform ready. I don’t think rexxit is a one and done thing. It’s gonna be more of a constant trickle, and lemmy is in a very good place to absorb more users. I browsed /r/all today, and saw many comments of people saying the frontpage sucks because there’s no content. Spez might like to pretend there’s no impact to reddit, but there’s certainly going to be a big impact at least in the near term.

      • FaceDeer@kbin.social
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        3 years ago

        Indeed, I think that ironically the pattern we’re seeing from Reddit is pretty much ideal for getting this platform up and running. They sent a moderate surge of users over here to shake things down and start contributing, and then on June 30 a much bigger surge may come this way to see what’s been built.

    • rs5th@lemmy.scottlabs.io
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      3 years ago

      At the same time, Rexxit is getting more folks involved with Lemmy (both as users and developers). Lemmy’s already a 4-year-old project. I expect we’ll see it advance and mature a lot in the coming months from all the new attention.

    • aka_oscar@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      I dont see it that way. Software improvements can be pretty stagnant if there is a slow influx of new users. A good dose of new redditors will expose the main issues with the platform, and thats a good thing imo. Defederation is now on the spotlight for many users who were clueless about it, and that helps development since awareness can bring volunteer work onto said issues more quickly.

    • Valdair@kbin.social
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      3 years ago

      If anything it’s probably ultimately better (from this, specific perspective) that the Reddit blackout was only two days and only really drove 10k~100k over to try out Fediverse instances and not 100k~1m. In general I don’t think things are clear and digestible enough to start porting entire communities (even small ones), but I think with some stress testing and getting some QOL updates, apps, etc., we could be in that position in as little as a few weeks or months.

      • Powderhorn@beehaw.org
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        3 years ago

        only really drove 10k~100k over to try out Fediverse instances

        Even with open-signup instances available, I wonder what the backlog looks like elsewhere. I don’t think we can gauge the level of interest in alternatives four days after the larger Reddit community was faced with the blackout. Trends do not move in days in general.

        • can@beehaw.org
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          3 years ago

          We can’t forget that the third-party apps are still functional for a couple weeks still too.

  • PelicanPersuader@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    Related to the topic of defederation, I saw a post on kbin about an issue with an instance called exploding-heads.com being full of right wing troll types. Has the mod team investigated this instance? Would rather we be out ahead of it before they start coming over here to create issues.

  • EponymousBosh@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    I’m really glad everyone seems to be on the same team here and there’s no bad blood between the mods.

  • mizmoose@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    Thank you.

    Like I said previously, sometimes you have to shut the doors on bad actors. But doors can be reopened if things become better.