From the article:
"Beehaw is relatively new and relatively small at the moment, but it’s one of the closest approximations of what Reddit is that you’re going to find, and well worth investigating as a Reddit replacement. The interface even looks a lot like Reddit, albeit without a lot of the on-screen features and furniture that build up over almost two decades of operation.
Have a read of the Beehaw mission statement and you’ll see the platform is committed to avoiding the “hate speech” and “disinformation” that’s prevalent elsewhere. The communities available right now cover everything from neurodivergence and people of color to literature and gardening, so you’re sure to find something of interest here."
Interesting that they mentioned Beehaw, but not Lemmy or Kbin as a whole.
probably just a bit of safety there, it is a more carefully controlled and moderated experience.
You drop the average internet user into the wrong random lemmy instance without teaching them how to tune it to their liking and they are going to be turned off by the amount of bizzare shit they see and just assume it’s all like that.
I think Beehaw is a great instance who shows what the Fediverse can be and is about.
I love that they actually shout out 1 of the instances instead of Lemmy or Kbin as a whole.
but can you actually register to beehaw? Because I tried days ago, and I still can’t log in.
to put it mildly, the email situation behind the scenes is a fiasco right now that we’re trying to resolve asap. if you registered a few days ago you’re almost certainly in queue and if we had our way you might have a judgement by now, but our email providers kind of threw us a curveball yesterday that means we literally can’t send out the emails that’d notify you if we approved or denied you. it’s very dumb. we’re very tired of it, lol
I read somewhere that there have been many cases of bots trying to register, is this true?
almost certainly, if not here than elsewhere on Lemmy
I registered and got through yes.
I registered just before the influx of users from reddit I assume and I am gonna be honest I didn’t put in a full essae.
Nobody needs to write an essay; I wrote two (maybe three?) sentences in mine. You just need to actually be interested in beehaw for what makes it different from other instances and express that. My application wasn’t really any longer than this paragraph
Registration happens to be behind right now, mainly for technical reasons as alyaza mentioned, but the admin team is working diligently on it (♥)
You haven’t written an essay good enough.
I wrote two phrases. Nobody needs to write an essay, they’re just backlogged.
Also don’t write anything offensive. I’ve heard they’ve gotten some pretty crazy submissions. If you drop any slurs in your application you probably won’t make the cut.
ah, shit - should’ve used chatgpt.
Not a fan of the defederation. I’m actually displeased they would shout out an instance that will give new users a BAD experience of what the fediverse is.
Beehaw is the better experience though. I barely use my lemmy.world account.
Can you explain what you mean by bad experience? I can see how the experience on beehaw would be different from other instances, but what is explicitly bad about it?
Yeah ae beehaw has so far been one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with social media, it’s definitely not everybody’s cup of tea though I guess!
I guess he means “bad” as in “less active”. I think what Beehaw is doing is great, but I also understand why some people would rather refer users to sites that federate with all the largest instances.
Defederation isn’t preferable but it’s a great feature of the fediverse to keep communities safe. It should only be used as a last resort when all other modding tools have failed. However, Lemmy is so new that those powerful moderation tools don’t exist yet. That’s the only reason those instances were defederated, they’ll be federated again when the mod team can better control the influx of users as better tools are developed.
That being said I’ve hardly noticed a change in engagement on beehaw tbh. My posts and comments get just as many replies and upvotes as before defederation.
Trying to get an account on here is pretty difficult though. I applied on the first day of the blackout to give lemmy a shot, but never even got an email back. Ive heard similar from other people.
That would make it pretty tough for new users trying to join the community if they dont know they can also make accounts elsewhere thats federated with beehaw.
I think they are still working through some issues and a large backlog. I got emails from my applications. Two - one rejected when I did a low effort answer to the question and then an acceptance. Still some growing pains I think.
Yeah, manually accepting applications seems kinda ridiculous, but I dont know. Its their server.
It’s certainly possible they’ll have to reassess their strategy in the face of new applications rising so much, but I think up to this point they’ve just felt that community quality is more important than growth. I just recently joined this server and I didn’t find the application to be that onerous. I just spent perhaps 15 minutes or so thinking about why I would want to be a part of a community like this and crafting a response that showed that I do care.
Same with me. I already had an account from the main instance, but decided to switch when asked users not to make new accounts on there.
They dug the Beehaw vibe 🐝
I wonder if it might be due to the work needed to figure out which Lemmy instances are/aren’t moderated and the allowed content. Beehaw is very upfront about wanting to promote an inclusive online environment and what kind of content they’re willing to host, making it a safe choice.
That said, generally mentioning Lemmy/Kbin doesn’t seem that risky of a bet if you used Beehaw as an example instance.
It’s a listicle so you can bet that it was written solely as a low effort way to pump out an article.
The Fediverse is still a strange concept to a lot of people. They assume only email is federated and the rest of the web is sites with only internally facing channels of communication.
90% of people don’t even know what federated is
Shit, I still don’t know what a federated is
Gotta pump those numbers up, I’d honestly guess 99%
Five nines.
Any real journalist will know about federation; it’s how journalism works too.
Honestly, a lot of us are our own worst enemy when it comes to trying to bring users to this platform. We over-explain it, we want them to be excited about the de-centralized aspect of it. We extol all the virtues of the Fediverse that could bring social media into a new era of humanity.
And that completely shuts down the other person’s brain. Their eyes glaze over. They don’t have any concept of this whole thing, and the data dump is just too much. Even explaining it “like email” will get them confused.
The best thing we can do is, and I know people will hate this, but just GET THEM SOMEWHERE on the Fediverse and slowly introduce them to the idea of subscribing to communities. I’ve been introducing my wife to the Fediverse, and she’s been super excited about it, but even she is far more receptive to macro-concepts than your average person. Even still, I pointed her to Beehaw and slowly she’s understood that communities exist here but more specific communities exist elsewhere, once she found out how to search for them, it makes the concept much easier.
I know people will hate the idea of a “starter instance” but it might honestly be the way to go for your average person. Just get them SOMEWHERE and using it. I know for a fact the first time I saw Reddit (as a heavy forum user), I felt overwhelmed at just so many CHOICES of subreddits. That was a loooong time ago, but no doubt that feeling is even worse with communities existing in a Federated way.
Honestly, it keeps it simpler. The idea of federation and etc can go above the heads of people so it’s probably simpler to just focus on one instance and let the users discover the wider world of federation at their own pace.
Personally though, I would have mentioned Lemmy/Kbin in some capacity.