in summer 2023, when I moved here from reddit, the lemmy instance beehaw.org was extremely divisive. they wanted to create a website according to certain rules rather than a free for all. some people were saying it would be the end of the threadiverse before it even began.
since that time, there have been various other intrinsic and extrinsic threats. I do not see much panicking about beehaw. did the threadiverse survive beehaw? or is this only a shell of what we might have had otherwise?
Fediverse Observer and FediDB show a drop in active users, but the pattern of peak in July 2023 and then a slow regression isn’t unique to Beehaw, and is a pattern seen across the Threadiverse.
You left, but Beehaw being willing to give teeth to the concept of defederation is the reason I joined. I don’t think the decision hurt their user-count. It definitely helped distinguish their culture from the rest of the Fediverse.