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?
Walled gardens don’t have a long shelf-life on the internet. They’re fading away.
Tell that to metafilter, or hackernews? Or a multitude of other smaller niche communities that chug along perfectly happy (Yes there are less now than there used to be but that is mainly because of the insanely aggressive way Discord is being pushed on communities all over the internet and destroying their foundations). Sometimes a nice little garden with a wall to help transport you away from the hustle and bustle of life is exactly what you need.
We shouldn’t aim to build the Fediverse into a walled garden but there is nothing wrong with small walled gardens interspersed along the periphery of the Fediverse. It is a good thing. Let them be their own place!
I think this is a really good point. It’s a shame that they don’t want to Federate with some of the larger instances, but that’s the whole point of the fediverse. If you Federate with who you want to Federate with, and you have control over your own moderation and red lines. It’s virtually impossible to have meaningful conversation among a broad group without someone getting offended. So you might choose to let people occasionally be offended, or you might choose to create a safe space for a limited group.
It’s a philosophical question with no single right answer. The fediverse doesn’t have to be all things to all people, which is exactly why it can be all things to all people. Corporate social media has to have one set of rules for everyone, and the system for deciding and enforcing the rules is generally just about money