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An increasing percentage of what I read is from federated instances. If Beehaw isolated itself I'd probably make an account elsewhere and hook into the fediverse from elsewhere, leaving Beehaw behind. Beehaw is great, but it's not enough of a community by itself.

Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.

I’ve noticed a small uptick in responses like that (which, admittedly, may just be confirmation bias).

I think it might be due to the large influx of reddit refugees (full disclosure: I’m one, too). It takes a while to get used to the fact that the “atmosphere” of fediverse instances is different. It takes time for people to realize that this isn’t a toxic environment that encourages assholes. They’ll just keep on being hyper-defensive, confrontational, and/or deliberate misinterpreters of things while they focus on irrelevant points. After all, that was the norm on reddit for years.

Good users grow out of that. Unfortunately, some users just don’t want to. We have to take the bad with the good, though. Defederating completely would make Beehaw much less interesting and fun. The community just isn’t big enough by itself.

TL;DR: Yes, Beehaw benefits from federation. Federation has its drawbacks, but they are massively outweighed by the advantages.

I think we still have two "shields" protecting our ways in Beehaw:

• the lack of downvotes. Perhaps people will downvote you from other instances. But you won't see those, so you will not care. I find that this removes a lot of negativity on its own.
• when someone posts from another instance, you can see it in their name: so you can take what they say with a pinch of salt. "Oh, he is not from Beehaw; it is more normal for them to behave like that. No use to argue strongly against them".

As long as we have those, and as long as the federated instances moderate harmful content, it is OK for me to remain federated with them.

Elitist in his ivory instance over here. (Kidding). But a little offense with me and my Taylor Swift community over here, other instances aren't bad by any means, and the more federation the more communities.

Nah I like what beehaw is doing, and defederation should always be the last line of defense. However the middle ground is good moderation and enforcement of the rules. Mods are overworked on beehaw, maybe it's time for others to stand up and offer to take on some of the mantle.

I was merrily using Lemmy, and later on Kbin in addition to that, for many months.

But then in recent weeks the culture seemed to change: More aggressive, insulting, and rude posts, even over nothing; some of them first responses to posts, others over nothing particularly political, just pop culture opinions and the like. And way, way more downvotes. And that last one was particularly new to me personally.

I've always been a laughably polite person, even irl, according to folks who know me, and had been the same online unless someone was outrageously offensive and mean (though in recent years simply handled that by a process of mute > report > block, rather than waste energy). But in recent weeks I'd noticed way more downvotes coming my way on innocuous posts, which was a first for me. I'd even told folks who were unsure about joining Lemmy, "Ah, don't worry about the Marxist-Leninist reputation and the bad rap; I've never experienced any tankie stuff on there, and only ever had positive experiences - I mean, look, I've barely ever been downvoted, only ever received kind upvotes for what I've tried to ensure are thoughtful, positive contributions!"

Lately it's turned nasty, and negative. I joined Kbin and most discourse on there was either polluted by the same culture rising on Lemmy, or dominated by people mocking Beehaw for wanting no part of what many agree is a recent influx of bad habits from Reddit folks. This theory is particularly popular on Mastodon, where people pointed out the switch from Twitter to Mastodon was more politically motivated, whereas the Reddit exodus was more about convenience. I thought that was an interesting explanation for these more negative experiences of late.

I'm sorry if this is a long post that doesn't at first seem to address the actual question, haha! I guess I'm just trying to contribute my own personal perspective that is related to the topic - and demonstrates why I've recently arrived at Beehaw, as an online space that appeals to me, in contrast to those other aforementioned places.

Beehaw already isn't really federated since it has blocked lemmy.world, which is 10x the size of Beehaw now and will likely be more like 100x the size of Beehaw at some point.

I personally'd prefer if Beehaw was fully federated (especially with lemmy.world), but I think this weird half way point is bullshit. Fully defederating would be better than the current situation.

As for arguments/etc... I don't think the quality of discussion here is any better than Lemmy.world.

I'm on Kbin and subscribe to some Beehaw communities and enjoy interacting with them (in a good way I hope!). Generally for the fedi to work I think people need to forget about where people are posting from and deal with comments and users as they stand on a case by case basis

I think you kind of say this yourself:

For the most part I feel like this community lives up to that; users of this instance are generally thoughtful with their responses.

Basically things are generally working except for a few people who have just started using Fedi instances. Maybe discuss with them, report them or whatever but defederation when things are more or less working out seems a bit OTT to me

If Beehaw were to remove federation, then it would no longer be part of the Fediverse. I would be sad to see it go, but I am only interested in the Fediverse.

I think people who visit here have been pretty cool. Not any worse or inferior to people with accounts here.

I’ve found myself unsubscribing from beehaw communities that I had previously subbed to initially because I find they have a certain style and direction that isn’t balanced enough. Your message posed as a question more or less explains why I feel like that. Now I only see beehaw content when browsing ‘all’ because of it.

@bijuice
Hey, from Fosstodon here. If I hadn't already created an account at fosstodon, I'd probably be at Beehaw. Yes, it does benefit from federation. Smaller-like minded communities are usually better at self policing than one large one that does it for them which is why I think the model works.

I am not even sure what elitist means in any real sense. Just an attempted jibe I guess. Ignore it.

Behaw benefiting from Federation, sure it does. I would not be here without it. As for trolling, I have not seen it. Maybe I look at different communities

Frankly what the threadiverse needs is more collaborative and granular admin and user mod tools. Reason I joined Beehaw is so trolls would get push back and blocked. Sad we lost lemmy.world and that lemmey.ml does not accept subscriptions though. Loosing st.itjust.works was a loss too.

To me, I see fewer and fewer beehaw posts as it gets quieter, and as other servers like pawb.social blossom. I'd like to see it refederate sooner rather than later, it kinda needs it in order to keep thriving.

Responses from those users are more likely to pendantic, overly argumentative, and unhelpful.

I can't always be sure for the first two for myself. I do try to be helpful though, which seems a little easier to judge. Now, when I find it difficult to judge how my own comments can be perceived, how is it possible to be sure about other people's posts and comments..

The rest of my thoughts are pretty much what @HappyMeatbag@beehaw.org said.

Just a thought. So far I've only had a bad experience with two people. One was unabashedly transphobic and was banned.

The other was overly argumentative and pendentic, and wouldn't let up. That made me think about inclusivity. What if this person has autism? Shouldn't we be extra patient with some people?

To be perfectly honest if I'd have to choose between meeting either of them irl I'd probably prefer the transphobe.

What do you think?

Hello from kbin, I was having this discussion with someone on another post about users views of the Reddit alternatives. I made a comment that I slightly prefer Raddle to the rest of the Fediverse because it is a closed community, largely for anarchists and queer folks. I've definitely noticed a creeping toxicity since I opened my account with kbin after moving from Reddit when everyone else did and, to prove my point, was reduced (down voted) by a conservative reactionary, judging by their posts.

Federation is a interesting and I wonder how things would be here if politics was less reactionary and more about discussion and consensus. Any instance benefits from federation through an increased user base but that necessarily comes with the impact of not being able to manage who is in that user base.

When an online forum, social network, blog, etc. has a lot of users, it's easier that bad elements are present inside those communities. That's something that not only happens online, but in general. Compare a tiny village with 1.000 inhabitants, to a big city with 7.000.000 inhabitants. Where do you think there are more murderers, robbers, kidnappers...?

But defederation must not be the most useful resource to avoid those bad elements. You can't place a dome above that big city with 7.000.000 inhabitants to avoid those murderers from going to other places and starting murdering. Good laws and police officers can do really good to minimize the damage. In the same way, good admins and moderators can really improve how nice a server is.

It's true that when another server has bad policies or bad admins, we can't do their job from here, because that's not only our responsibility. If we do the hard work while they do nothing, it's obvious that defederation can be a good tool, until situation improves over there. But that's one thing, and another thing is complete and absolute defederation. Nobody deserves that, and, in the end, everything will be detrimental.

As time passes, people will realize that things in the fediverse are completely different to things on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram... and they'll adapt their bad behaviour, influenced by those trash places, to a more healthy one.