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.
As it should be.
A open forum should have conflicting ideas. That’s how change happens.
“Be Nice” is vague. An example: A incel running their mouth their thoughts of women, and somebody correcting them. The vagueness of “Be Nice” means that the incel has equal weight as the person correcting them - which in a open forum, they don’t. They get heavily down voted.
The system works.
It doesn’t always have to make the Nazis better people at the cost of the mental load of minorities.
Is that how Beehaw is going? What is the Nazi/minority ratio there? Should rhetorical room be allowed for people who just don’t agree with you?