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.
They did give a reason though:
“Our overall goal is to provide a safe space to disenfranchised persons.”
That goal is fundamentally incompatible with an open medium where they don’t have full control over every participant. That’s why they have already defederated from any large instance that allowed open registrations months ago and have only continued to cut ties rather than to mend them.
BeeHaw’s definition of “nice” isn’t your or my definition of “nice”. It allows no dissent or opposing views on most subjects and more so, it doesn’t even allow for its members to be exposed to different ideas, however briefly.
They are trying to build the perfect echo chamber, free from anyone not “nice”. You simply cannot build such a chamber if you don’t have full control over every aspect of it.
BeeHaw’s entire concept would have been far more suitable for an old bulletin board style forum, the kind that is all but extinct today, but not for an open (in every sense if the word) platform.
I’m writing this as someone whose views actually align pretty well with those of BeeHaw’s - with the exception of their heavy handed approach to anything and anyone not fully aligned with them.
Their stated goal simply isn’t achievable outside of a sealed environment, so, no, Lemmy probably isn’t for them. They should look into phpBB and co.
I’m of the same opinion as you, though I hesitate to outright call it an echo chamber. Or at the very least, I doubt that’s their intention, even if it is the result.
I’m honestly rather surprised we haven’t seen more ideological pacts or groupings start to appear. Akin to having a group of folks that think similar enough that they choose to federate with each other rather than the fediverse as a whole. We have the “fedi pact”, which is generally more of a “fuck Facebook and it’s history of destruction and control” sentiment rather than ideological, but that’s the only clear organization that I have seen so far.