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The Beehaw project is entering some significant challenges - Beehaw
beehaw.orgThere is a lot of discussion happening in the background of our project here. We
could not anticipate all of the challenges that we were going to face a few
years ago. One of the reasons for this was because we had no idea what our
choice of a platform would bring. Specifically, we chose Lemmy as the software
that we would use to launch our endeavor to attempt a safe space for
marginalized persons online. In the first year or so, this choice was completely
successful for a very small number of users. And then we all experienced an
enormous influx of users when Reddit announced/implemented their shutting down
of third party apps. Since then there has been a huge number of people that have
joined the Beehaw project. This tsunami of users initiated technical problems,
and otherwise, that we could not foresee. Thankfully and fortunately, we have
had a couple of incredibly knowledgeable persons that have swooped in to ’save
the day’ and keep this site running. Unfortunately, these persons will NOT be
able to continue to support the Beehaw project much further. They have life
commitments and other factors, including careers and family life, that will
prevent them from contributing to our project in an ongoing fashion. All that
being said, Lemmy (the software that Beehaw runs on) development is incredibly
slow and is riddled with problems that makes administration/moderation very
painful. Therefore, we are left with some options that may feel uncomfortable to
us. For example, we may want to consider leaving the Fediverse for another
software platform that does NOT include ActivityPub. To explain,
Fediverse/ActivityPub are very positive concepts on the foundational level.
However, the Beehaw project is struggling to include this because most of our
moderation/content/ethos is being jeopardized from OTHER federated instances
(i.e. it, mostly, is NOT coming from within our own Beehaw registered user
base). The aforementioned persons, that have ’swooped in to save the day’, have
been discussing/working with us to come up with the best solutions that would
enable the Beehaw project to continue while NOT needing incredibly
experienced/technically adept persons around. Right now, we are testing
alternative software platforms and evaluating them based on everything that we
want Beehaw to become in the future. Thank you all for your continued support of
the Beehaw project and entrusting us to make this happen.
Beehaw is trying to be a “safe place” social network. They want to be a social network, welcoming to people, but also protect their community. They want people to be nice, and won’t tolerate people being intolerant (racism, homophonic, sexist, transphobic, or bigoted).
I’d argue that In a lot of these things their can be some nuance in all those terms but in Beehaw expect a more absolutionist interpretation of those terms.
I understand what they’re trying to do. But to give you an idea of what the result is (in my opinion) - when I mentioned free speech there I was lectured that the term is a right wing dog whistle term. I would describe them as a intolerantly tolerant place - either you ascribe to their absolutionist views or you don’t. That is just my experience though.
Beehaws influence has been disproportionate as they were one of the bigger communities during the recent Reddit influxes. They don’t want to be the biggest, they want to protect and nurture their own community. I get it but I think it was inevitable that would not work with federating.
intolerantly tolerantThat’s because it’s required to not tolerate intolerance in order to be tolerant.
Free speech is a right wing dog whistle at this point as it’s used to justify being able to say whatever people want to say no matter the impact on others. What people who invoke free speech need to realose is that it’s protected in public spaces, not in private spaces and it’s a purely American thing, even in Canada the freedom of expression doesn’t allow people to propagate hate. I don’t know where Beehaw is hosted but if it’s not in the USA it’s even more ridiculous to talk about free speech on it.
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The thing about free speech is that it matters most when you don’t agree with the other person.
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I disagree with what you say, but I’m glad you’re free to say it.
That those kinds of situations are exactly why free speech exists: People want to articulate thoughts in front of an audience that is opposed to them. What they are saying may be bad (depending on your PoV), but the fact that they can invoke free speech to say it is important (excl. harmful stuff like hate speech ofc).
Claiming to support free speech when nothing controversial is being said is just cheap talk.