Yesterday, you probably saw this informal post by one of our head admins (Chris Remington). This post lamented some of the difficulties we’re running into with the site at this point, and what the future might hold for us. This is a more formal post about those difficulties and the way we currently see things.
Up front: we aren’t confident in the continued use of Lemmy. We are working through how best to make the website live up to the vision of our documents—and simply put, the vast majority of the limitations we’re running into are Lemmy’s at this point. An increasing amount of our time is spent trying to work around or against the software to achieve what we want rather than productively building this community. That leaves us with serious questions about our long-term ability to stay on this platform, especially with the lingering prospect of not having the people needed to navigate backend stuff.
Long-time users will no doubt be aware of our advocacy for moderator tools that we think the platform needs (and particularly that we need). Our belief in the importance and necessity of those tools has only hardened with time. Progress of those tools, however—and even organizing work on them—has been pretty much nonexistent outside of our efforts from what we can see.[1] In the three months since we started seriously pushing the ideas we’d like to see, we’re not aware of any of them being seriously considered—much less taken up or on the way to being incorporated into Lemmy.
In fact: even within the framework of Lemmy’s almost nonexistent roadmap and entirely nonexistent timetable on which to expect features it has been made clear to us that improving federation or moderation on the platform are not big priorities.[2] We have implicitly been told that if this part of the software is to improve we will need to organize that from scratch. And we have tried that to be clear. Our proposal is (and has been) paying people bounties for their labor toward implementing these features, in line with paying all labor done on our behalf—but we’ve received mixed messages from the top on whether this would be acceptable. (Unclear guidance and general lack of communication is symptomatic of a lot of our relation with the Lemmy devs in the past few months.)
Things aren’t much better on the non-moderator side of things. The problems with databases are almost too numerous to talk about and even Lemmy’s most ardent supporters recognize this as the biggest issue with the software currently. A complete rewrite is likely the only solution. Technical issues with the codebase are also extensive; we’ve made numerous changes on our side because of that. Many of the things we’re running into have been reported up the chain of command but continue to languish entirely unacknowledged. In some cases bugs, feature requests, and other requests to Lemmy devs have explicitly been blown off—and this is behavior that others have also run into with respect to the project. Only very recently have we seen any overtures at regular communication—and this communication has not hinted at any change in priorities.
All of what was just described has been difficult to get a handle on—and having fewer users, less activity, and more moderators has not done a whole lot to ease that. We honestly find that the more we dig and the more we work to straighten out issues that pop up, the more pop out and the more it feels like Lemmy is structurally unsound for our purposes. (One such example of what we’re working with is provided in the next section.)
In summary: we believe we can either continue to fight the software in basically every way possible, or we can prioritize building the community our documents preach. It is our shared belief that we cannot, in the long-term, do both; in any case, we’re not interested in constantly having to fight for basic priorities—ones we consider extremely beneficial to the health of the overall Lemmy network—or having to unilaterally organize and recruit for their addition to the software. We are hobbyists trying to make a cool space first and foremost, and it’s already a job enough to run the site. We cannot also be surrogates for fixing the software we use.
PenguinCoder: A brief sketch of the technical perspective
I’ve said a few words about this topic already, here and here. Other Beehaw admins have also brought some concerns to the Lemmy devs. Those issues still exist. To be clear: this is a volunteer operation and Lemmy is their software; they have a right to pick and choose what goes into it and what to put a priority on. But we have an obligation to keep users safe and secure, and their priorities increasingly stifle our own.
In the case of this happening for open source projects, the consensus is to make your own fork. But:
The problem with forking Lemmy is in starting from all the bad that is inherently there, and trying to make it better. That is way more work than starting fresh with more developers. IE, not using Rust for a web app and UI, better database queries from the start, better logging/functions from the start; not adding on bandaids. A fork of Lemmy will have all of Lemmy’s problems but now you’re responsible for them instead.
We don’t need a fork, we need a solution.
To give just one painful example of where an upstream solution is sorely needed: the federation, blocking, and/or removal of problem images.
- You post an image to Beehaw.
- Beehaw sends your content out to every other server it’s federated with
- Federated server accepts it (beehaw.org is on their allowlist), or rejects it (beehaw.org is on their denylist)
- If the server accepts it, a copy of your post or comment including the images are now on that receiving server as well as on the server you posted it to. Federation at work.
- Mod on beehaw.org sees your post doesn’t follow the rules. Removes it from beehaw.org. The other instances Beehaw pushed this content to, do not get that notice to remove it. The copy of your content on Beehaw was removed. The copy of your content on other servers was not removed.
- The receiving federated instance needs to manually remove/delete the content from their own server
- For a text post or comment that’s removed, this can be done via the admin/mod tools on that instance
- For a post or comment including a thumbnail, uploaded images, etc; that media content is not removed. It’s not tracked where in Lemmy that content was used at. Admin removal of media commences. This requires backend command line and database access, and takes about a dozen steps per image; sometimes more.
There are dozens of issues—some bigger, some smaller—like this that we have encountered and have either needed to patch ourselves or have reported up the chain without success.
Alternatives and the way forward
If possible the best solution here is to stay on Lemmy—but this is going to require the status quo changing, and we’re unsure of how realistic that is. If we stay on Lemmy, it is probable that we will have to do so by making use of a whitelist.
For the unfamiliar, we currently use a blacklist—by default, we federate with all current and newly-created nodes of the Fediverse unless we explicitly exclude them from interacting with our site. A switch to a whitelist would invert this dynamic: we would not federate with anybody unless we explicitly choose to do so. This has some benefits—maintaining federation in some form; staying on Lemmy; generally causing less entropy than other alternatives, etc. But the drawbacks are also obvious: nearly everything described in this post will continue, blacklist or whitelist, because a huge part of the problem is Lemmy.
Because of that we have discussed almost every conceivable alternative there is to Lemmy. We are interested in the thoughts of this community on platforms you have all used and what our eventual choice is going to be, but we are planning on having more surveys in the future to collect this feedback. We ask that you do not suggest anything to us at this time, and comments with suggestions in this thread will be removed.
As for alternatives we’re seriously considering right now: they’re basically all FOSS; would preserve most aspects of the current experience while giving us less to worry about on the backside of things (and/or lowering the bar for code participation); are pretty much all more mature and feature-rich than Lemmy; and generally seem to avoid the issues we’re talking about at length here. Downsides are varied but the main commonality is lack of federation; entropy in moving; questions of how sustainable they are with our current mod team; and more cosmetic things like customization and modification.
We’re currently investigating the most promising of them in greater depth—but we don’t want to list something and then have to strike it, hence the vagueness. If we make a jump, that will be an informed jump. In any case logistics mean that the timetable here is on the order of months. Don’t expect immediate changes. As things develop, we’ll engage the community on what the path forward is and how to make it as smooth as possible.
Other administrators have probably vocally pushed for these things, but we’re not aware of any public examples we can point to of this taking place. Their advocacy has not produced results that we’re aware of in any case, which is what matters. ↩︎
Perhaps best illustrated by the recent Lemmy dev AMA. We’ll also emphasize that Beehaw’s admin team is not alone in the belief that Lemmy devs do not take mod tools or federation issues particularly seriously. ↩︎
If you decide to move and leave all the cack behind, I’m in.
I’ll probably be more involved and would even be willing to chip in with a small subscription. That or registered users may also keep a lot of the trolls away.
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If Beehaw was to move to a centralized platform I wouldn’t be following, but I would if the platform was federated.
What if we started out not federated with anyone, but clearly actively working towards it? Would you still follow?
By federated, do you mean decentralized and interoperability with other platforms (TBD), or specifically federated with Lemmy, Kbin, etc? Do you desire ActivityPub (aka mastadon) federation or others acceptable, as long as it’s not just Beehaw here?
A federation is a group of computing or network providers agreeing upon standards of operation in a collective fashion.
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Thanks for your input.
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I’d honestly love it if Beehaw went somewhere else. Lemmy is reminding me more and more of reddit. I’m starting to feel like this whole place is bad for my mental health.
The only thing I will say is Beehaw users are generally not the problem.
I can donate again, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the problem here.
I think former Reddit users behaving like Reddit users is the expected result. It will take a long time for them to re-socialize, but it will happen as long as the new platform doesn’t keep track of fake internet points at least. (admittedly sometimes I also behave like that, well it’s a work in progress.)
In my opinion wherever Beehaw goes, as long as it’s a usable reddit-like platform it will be the same for a while.
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I’ve never found this take very convincing since people are even worse on de-anonymized sites like Facebook
I’ve thought about this phenomenon before and have a theory. To preface my self, I remember wondering (many years ago) why people tended to behave differently online than in real life. I remember thinking something like: “Would so-and-so speak this way if we were sitting at a table together?”. Then the theory dawned on me. Maybe it’s the physical distance that takes down the social norms when engaging someone online. I believe it’s something that happens unconsciously as well.
Not sure about this either. As a stereotypically redneck-looking dude in a very red state, people have not hesitated to disclose to me their most abhorrent thoughts and opinions. In fact, I often have to wear woke t-shirts and bling as fascist repellent
I often have to wear woke t-shirts and bling as fascist repellent
LMFAO!
It works! You should try it
I got my dad a BLM pin from the last meeting I was at, and he claims it helps him, too
Can’t say I disagree. Lemmy has become many of the things I disliked about Reddit and thus I have basically stopped using it almost entirely. I poke around Beehaw maybe once a week or so and I haven’t touched my other accounts at all. I loved the migration away from Reddit. I did not love that people thought the solution was to basically clone Reddit, warts and all.
I’ve actually been so frustrated by certain things recently that I’ve rejoined Raddle. It’s a much smaller group of people, but I’m not really interested in being part of a community where things like the validity of transgender people are seen as topics that are up for discussion. Again, not so much Beehaw members doing so, but users from other instances.
I’m confused by the issue concerning the fact when you delete a rule-breaking post from your instance, it persists on another. Is it still visible on your instance or something?
It gives the wrong impression about what’s okay, and it means that your space appears unmoderated on federated instances
Anywhere very far away from tankies, please. I’m tired of being harassed by them anywhere I post a comment. They’re nazis/fascists in disguise.
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They are marxists and/or leninists because they are marxist-leninists. Fascism and Nazism are very different things to Marxism-Leninism, and I think people just see something that isn’t a western democracy and call it fascist as a knee-jerk reaction.
IK 😄
I was trying to be funny 😅
Oops my bad, sometimes I miss it lol.
You’re good 😊 👍
It was a “coded/cryptic message” 😛 … I didn’t put “/s” cause I didn’t wanna seem “toxic” or what not… 🤣
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Hugs, y’all. Do what you feel is best. <3
I’ve been on Discuit more than Lemmy, but honestly? If Beehaw defederates or switches to a different platform, I’m more likely to visit Beehaw on a daily basis than I have been. I just prefer well-tended walled gardens. I grew up with forums being the way. Smaller communities feel the best. Even when the software base is good, the community management part is … complicated with the fediverse.
Wow, there really are serious moderation issues. I can see what that’s a huge amount of work to deal with.
I was on the fence when this post was made.
Now, not as much.
I think it might be a good idea. No. I think it is surely a good idea if the community wants to maintain the “nice place to be” feeling.
I have noticed multiple instances of unnecessary mudslinging that brought back feelings of Reddit over the past fortnight. Entire threads of users just telling eachother to fuck off and throwing insults out left and right. None of those users were local users.
I am not interested in having communities for everything. I don’t want to ever need to report someone. If defederation is what it takes to avoid bots and trolls and crypto scammers and, most importantly, make things sane, safe, and healthy for moderators taking time out of their days to keep this service going…then so be it.
At first I thought this might be an overreaction to be perfectly honest. But I just read through some of the Dev responses in the AMA… what the fuck is the issue with removing exploding heads from join-lemmy??
The other questions on the development itself weren’t awesome but wow that comment chain about join-lemmy is something else.
I could overlook the CCP support if they keep it on their instances but funneling people into an instance like that… I’m not sure how to feel about Lemmy either TBH.
I’m still a fairly new member, and for the most part, Beehaw has required the least amount of pruning to create a timeline of content I actually want to see. Being on the sidelines and hearing how the Lemmy devs have reacted to various issues, it sounds like they are very emotionally immature and most likely will drive the platform to be “open” in their own interpretation.
I appreciate the hard work that the mods and admin team here do and it seems like the goals of Beehaw and Lemmy have become antagonistic towards each other. I still haven’t seen any really good implementations of the fediverse in general, so I have no loyalty to that ecosystem.
I think you guys know what you are doing and are smart enough to pick the best platform if that will ultimately make your lives easier. I don’t think Beehaw should feel like a job (and especially should not require the hours of a job), so I’d support moves that would actually make it a fun project. On Lemmy, it seems like there are a lot of barriers keeping the project from being enjoyable.
I would charitably put it that the Lemmy devs built something small that could provide a minimum viable product for a small Reddit like system without really putting any thought into how a large system would actually work. I also don’t think they understand how to scale up such a system.
The devs seem perfectly happy with small communities that don’t need much moderation, but that won’t cut it if Lemmy goes through another growth spurt.
I’m in favor of either option, honestly. A whitelist or complete migration to something else.
When I joined, I wasn’t looking for a drop-in reddit replacement. I’d actually deleted my reddit account a few weeks before all the craziness went down because reddit and social news in general has a very bad habit of becoming toxic as shit.
Now, I get that I’m in a minority here. People left reddit and wanted something to replace it, but I don’t know if Beehaw was ever the right instance for that specifically.
While I don’t particularly care one way or the other about federation or the “Fediverse”, what does worry me is whether or not the platform Beehaw migrates to is better maintained than Lemmy.
If moving to something new and relatively untested, there’s a big risk that other, equally as important, development issues might crop up, especially if the dev team is relatively small.
I’m also curious to find out whether UX will be similar (eg. content aggregation with voting and whatnot) or if it’ll be something closer to older forums, though I’m aware you don’t want to really say anything until you’re decided, so I guess answers to that can wait.
Anyway, I’ll be interested to see what happens. Take your time, figure it out, and we’ll see what happens over the next few weeks.
…what does worry me is whether or not the platform Beehaw migrates to is better maintained than Lemmy.
We will not move from the US civil war (i.e. Lemmy) to world war 3 (i.e. apocalypse).
Lol, that’s good know. Thanks for the reassurance!
Computer Science student here.
Forking Lemmy does fork its bad habits but doing so would at least give us the option of making direct improvements to the mod tools.
From what I’ve read, causing deleted content to get deleted quickly is a smaller change. Advertising that shortened deletion delay and giving the admins a “these keep our shit, yeet their federation privileges but check again every day and notify me when that changes” script wouldn’t be too hard to create.
We might even be better off ignoring the Lemmy codebase for mod tools altogether. If we outright ignore cross-platform compatibility, we can make a mod tools API independent of Lemmy-proper that does what’s needed and a JavaScript-controlled interface to sit on top or a separate toolset altogether.
I’m pretty busy right now but I rely on Beehaw for decent social media. I’d be willing to put a bit of time into it.
I wonder if this says something about federation in general. Is there a point? Do community instances really want to interact with that many other community instances?
I genuinely do not care about federation at all, and from my experience here and on mastodon, it causes far, far more harm than good.
Internet communities must be moderated. There needs to be tools for having control over what happens in those communities. And the way the fediverse seems to operate is antithetical to that, which is a serious problem.
I do not have any solutions but want to thank and show support of the admins for the continued thoughtfulness and transparency about the issues the site faces.
I am surprised by the ELI5 on how Lemmy federation works. I guess I assumed it was somehow P2P, not a mass entanglement of duplicated content, which as mentioned is a nightmare for problematic and/or illegal content.
I don’t know how the creators expected Lemmy to grow with each instance’s storage and hosting costs also growing exponentially as the fediverse expands.
I don’t know how the creators expected Lemmy to grow with each instance’s storage and hosting costs also growing exponentially as the fediverse expands.
i’m unsure if this is a “failing” of Lemmy specifically or just a general design choice of ActivityPub federation but yeah it’s not ideal, i would say. beyond the huge issues if anyone posts anything that needs to be mandatorily reported it means we have like 100GB of images (mostly from federation–and mind you, while still not federating with lemmy.world which is huge) and growing. for smaller nodes of the Lemmyverse i honestly have no idea how sustainable that is.