I am one of the admins of Beehaw and I’m trying to get some feedback on our potential move.
Let’s start out with a little Beehaw history before judgements are passed, please.
A handful of us were beta testing Tildes when we decided to have discussions on a Discord server.
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.
We talked for a little over a year and some of our members became impatient. Then someone stepped in to suggest a couple of platforms that we could consider getting started with.
One of those platforms was Lemmy. None of us knew, at that time, anything about ActivityPub.
During the Reddit exodus (surrounding the API outcry and blackout), our instance exploded. We were, initially, crippled by the mass amounts of users seeking refuge.
Thankfully, someone stepped in and volunteered hundreds of hours of work to stabilize our instance and refine it further.
After many hours of talks, it became clear to us that our overall goal could be achieved outside of Lemmy/ActivityPub.
Right now, we feel that Lemmy and ActivityPub have downsides that are limiting us from achieving that goal.
People say that the point of activity pub is federation but to me that also means voluntary federation. The possibility of federation. What I dream for it is an option to opt-in instead of opt-out. You should be able to pick “opt-out” if you want a big, connected place. You can have your cake and eat it too by also keeping an account in a big instance of your choice. Most apps let you switch accounts with a tap or two.
We don’t all want to be thrown into the world all the time; complete federation just makes it a safe space for majority populations and marginalizes minorities by default. No, I’m not saying you’re all evil and exclude people on purpose, it just happens. It happens to me too.
Some of you seem to think that marginalized people are too soft and want a safe space, but you fail to notice that largely, you also have a safe space for yourself, it’s just that you probably belong to the default in many areas (I am sighted and most of the internet is made for sighted people).
I grew up in a small forum; people should be able to choose to keep things small, and open in a controlled way. Because that’s the beauty of activity pub, you can still federate with others!
I understand the very practical problem of lack of moderation tools and to me that’s pretty much the only reason to leave, for now. Maybe come back if it gets better?