I find this news disconcerting coming from such a large instance so early on. Many of the criticisms of Lemmy I’ve been fighting against on Reddit have had to do with defederation and the possibility of getting cut off from your favorite communities on your main account. I handwaved that away as being extremely unlikely save for the exception of NSFW or extreme political content. But this news has taken me quite by surprise. Perhaps I should have seen it coming given the community Beehaw is trying to foster.
This really makes me wonder what will happen to instances that make this decision. Will their communities diminish in favor of the more accessible ones? Will this decision hurt Beehaw in the long run? What does this mean for the Fediverse in the near future when fighting against its detractors has been such an uphill battle?
Thoughts?
This is going to happen a lot, I think, while things shake out. If Beehaw don’t trust Lemmy.world to ban toxic users, then defederating makes some sense. I think it’s probably self-harming, though, because it’ll lead to communities like Technology being replicated on other instances, and those are the big Beehaw draw.
You can always have multiple accounts on multiple instances. A pr0n alt was common on Reddit, and is the only way to get at adult material here. Maybe in the fediverse it’ll become common to have a safety alt, and a spicy alt too.