World was already the biggest by far when I first started lurking back in July, and it’s just getting more dominant. Before, there was quite some diversity in the distribution of generic communities, but nowadays the vast majority of posts that reach the top are from over there.

I really can’t see any specific virtue that it has; uptime is not the best (or so I’ve heard), the moderation is quite lacking (which is demonstrated by the fact that Beehaw defederated them), they make some unpopular moderation choices (like blocking !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com), and overall the atmosphere is a lot less… nice than those of smaller instances.

I also feel like it goes against the idea of the Fediverse that one instance has control over most of the platform. Especially on Lemmy, where communities mean that building community within an instance makes so much more sense than elsewhere, and upvotes are federated near perfectly regardless the size of your instance, decentralisation makes a lot of sense. It really just doesn’t make sense to me that Lemmy World is where people are going.

    • @Masimatutu@mander.xyzOP
      17•2 years ago

      From https://beehaw.org/post/567170 (regarding reasons for defederation from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works)

      the disproportionate number of moderator actions we take against users of these two instances, and the general amount of time we have to dedicate to bad actors on those two instances;

      • @Z4rK@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41•2 years ago

        I wouldn’t use Beehaw as the standard, they are way too strict on their moderation in many’s opinion.

        • @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
          3•2 years ago

          Too strict and their users provoke outside users on purpose.

          Please disregard, was mixing up Beehaw and Hexbear

      • @Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
        14•2 years ago

        Then again you’re talking about Beehaw, their users react so badly to anyone telling them they might be wrong that it’s not surprising their mods need to spend a disproportionate amount of time taking action against other users.

        They defederated from my instance (after refederating) after their users raided the two management communities and were told to fuck off and then played victims in the defederation post, I would take whatever they say with a huge grain of salt.

        Forget that, was thinking about Hexbear!

        • Lvxferre
          3•2 years ago

          Then again you’re talking about Beehaw, their users react so badly to anyone telling them they might be wrong that it’s not surprising their mods need to spend a disproportionate amount of time taking action against other users.

          I think that you’re partially right.

          The sort of online fight that Beehaw seeks to avoid depends on having at least one dumb fuck¹. Two cause it faster, but one is enough - because smart people have an easier time reaching agreement or realising that no agreement is possible.

          Both sides (LW+SJW and Beehaw) have their shares of smart posters and dumb fucks². The later are there for different reasons:

          • LW+SJW absorbed the bulk of the Reddit diaspora, and Reddit culture revolves around being a dumb fuck;
          • Beehaw doesn’t prevent you from being a dumb fuck, as long as you are not the one apparently starting the fight. Effectively sheltering dumb fucks who are really good at passive aggression, and who’ll have a meltdown once you say “what you said is incorrect, here’s why”, as they’ll interpret this as a personal attack.

          If you’re a smart user, you eventually learn how to handle the dumb fucks in your instance, in a way that is allowed there: chewing them out (within limits) or avoiding them like a plague. But those approaches break once you’re handling someone from the other side:

          • smart Beehaw user interacting with LW+SJW dumb fuck: “I feel like I’m always swallowing frogs with those users, as they say stupid shit and I don’t want to be rude.”
          • smart LW+SJW interacting with Beehaw dumb fuck: insert here your first paragraph. It’s why I think that you’re partially right.
          notes
          1. For the sake of this comment, I’m defining “dumb fuck” as someone who assumes too much, oversimplifies, disregards context, focuses too much on who says it instead of what is being said, lacks basic understanding of what other users say, or a mix of those.
          2. Note that, while it’s useful to pretend that “dumb fuck” and “smart user” are different categories of people, they are not - those are different categories of user behaviour, i.e. the same person could be theoretically a dumb fuck in some situations and a smart user in another.
        • @Masimatutu@mander.xyzOP
          3•2 years ago

          I dunno though. Most trolls and bad actors that I have seen around here have indeed been from sh.itjust.works and Lemmy World.

          Edit: Ah, that explains it. Beehaw is such a chill place, I could never imagine them doing such things.

            • @Masimatutu@mander.xyzOP
              -1•2 years ago

              Together, they make up a bit more less than 50% of active users, yet basically all far-right trolls are from there. You could say it is more difficult to moderate big instances, but if you have more users to moderate, you should also increase moderating capacity or close registrations.

              • Antik 👾
                3•2 years ago

                We do not make up for 50% of the active users. Also we have plenty of moderators and admins, reports get handled pretty fast. It’s up to the community moderators first but if it takes too long one of the admins will step in.

                And we will never close registrations.

                • @Masimatutu@mander.xyzOP
                  0•2 years ago

                  We do not make up for 50% of the active users.

                  I remember it used to be higher, now it is approx. 41%. Only strengthens my point, though.

                  Alsof we have plenty of moderators and admins, reports get handled pretty fast.

                  I see different things. There are quite some trolls and abusive accounts that don’t seem to get removed.

                  And we will never close registrations.

                  I’m just saying the moderation has to improve in some way.

              • Lvxferre
                2•2 years ago

                Together, they make up a bit more than 50% of active users, yet basically all far-right trolls are from there.

                That doesn’t say much about LW besides being the biggest instance - because trolls beeline towards larger audiences.

                but if you have more users to moderate, you should also increase moderating capacity or close registrations.

                Closing registrations might be the sensible approach here. Because the necessary moderation grows exponentially, and eventually too large of a mod/admin team becomes a problem on its own.

                • @MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
                  2•2 years ago

                  The barrier of an application is enough to scare off most non-serious users. I used to favor open registration, but after making an account and participating on an instance with open registration vs closed, I found the closed registration shuts down a lot of bad actors and makes the instance a more pleasant community.

                  I’m not even advocating for rejecting any of the applications, just having questions to answer before joining seems to significantly cut down on the trolls.

              • @OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
                0•2 years ago

                I dont know why you’re getting down voted, as a moderator basically all the “death to brown people” comments I have to delete are from that shithole and lemm.ee.

            • @MeowZedong@lemmygrad.ml
              1•2 years ago

              If you don’t want to be called Nazis, then stop putting up with all the fascists in your instance. Pretending the problem doesn’t exist is definitely the mature stance to take when someone points out that your instance is harboring fascists.

      • @Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
        0•2 years ago

        Of course the other instance is sh.itfullof.nazis, I have yet to see a single comment from there that wasn’t cryptofash garbage

    • @Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
      11•2 years ago

      And because Beehaw is the NIMBYest of NIMBY instances, defederating at the drop of a hat. Come to think of it, didn’t they end up defederating from federation itself?