Like many of you, I woke up this morning to discover that our instance, along with lemmy.world, had been unexpectedly added to the beehaw block list. Although this development initially caught me off guard, the administrators at beehaw made an announcement shedding light on their decision.
The primary concern raised was our instance's policy of open registration. Given my belief that the fediverse is still navigating its early stages, I believe that for it to mature, gain traction, and encourage adoption, it is crucial for instances to offer an uncomplicated and direct route for newcomers to join and participate. This was one of the reason I decided to launch this instance. However, I do acknowledge that this inclusive approach brings its unique challenges, including the potential for toxicity and trolls. Despite these hurdles, I maintain the conviction that our collective strength as a community can overcome these issues.
After this happened, the beehaw admins and I had a good chat about their decision. While our stances on registration policies might diverge, we realized that our ultimate goals are aligned: we both strive to foster communities that thrive in an atmosphere of safety and respect, where users can passionately engage in discussions and feel a sense of belonging.
Although the probability of an immediate reversal are slim given the current circumstances, I believe we have managed to identify common ground. It's evident that, even in separation, we can unite to contribute positively to the broader fediverse community.
In the coming weeks or months, we plan to collaborate with other lemmy instance administrators to suggest enhancements and modifications to the lemmy project. Primarily, our proposals will concentrate on devising tools and features that empower us, as instance administrators, to moderate our platforms effectively.
In the meantime, while I understand may not be ideal for everyone, users who choose to participate on the beehaw instance will be required to register a separate account on their instance.
Thank you all for continuing to make this community great!
Just a quick idea I had, and this may have been suggested before and maybe be untenable. But... Could communities be made invite/approval only as well as instances?
For example, on beehaw they want to ensure that everyone posting to their communities have been vetted in some way. So could have all the communities not allow posts by who haven't agreed to beehaw's "content policy"? Either by naturally having an account on beehaw, or by submitting a request to a moderator of the community.
Would allow people on other instances to see and follow those posts (but not post themselves, unless they go through beehaw's approval process), and beehaw people to go and interact with other communities on other instances.
I like where you're coming from, but this in particular seems uneccessary. You can view Beehaw stuff without an account. Does suck that it won't show up on your feed from sh.itjust.works, but there's nothing stopping you from adding communities over there to an RSS feed if you are interested in it for pure reading purposes. Vetting for participation is just your instance being federated or your account living on their instance.
(Actually, there's an app feature I'd be interested in, combo lemmy client and rss reader to add defederated communities to the mix in one program. If only I hadn't stopped learning programming as a kid because arrays confused me.)
Edit: My reading comprehension is shit, but leaving these comments here. I don't think community-level pre-vetting outside of the larger instance is something admins of more restrictive instances would entertain, but I could be pleasantly surprised.