Also Beehaw bills itself as a “safe and inclusive space” which is huge bait to a certain type of internet scumbag. It makes Beehaw a large target for trolling and abuse. Without tools to deal with this I can see the logic in just defederating until moderation can get better. They’ve also been in contact with the instances they’ve defederated from and are discussing ways to move forward because everyone realizes this isn’t an ideal situation.

I can sympathize with why they felt this was their only option, but on the plus side, this situation might just spur development of real moderation tools that are desperately needed for anyone running a Lemmy instance. Some people want to hate on Beehaw for their decision but honestly we might all be benefiting from it in the long run.