Apologies for the clickbaity title or for the messy wording to follow. I’m not great at articulating myself.
I’ve been finding myself posting less and less on Beehaw lately and that my enthusiasm for it is fading, and I have been trying to figure out why I personally have felt this way. Beehaw is, in theory, a great community with a solid foundation built on a good code of conduct and mission statement. This is the place that many of us wanted to find, especially those of us who long for the days of webforums and wanted that sense of community that Reddit never really provided.
I think I have figured out why now. Simply put: The vast majority of content posted to Beehaw is news. Much of that news ranges from mostly negative to downright doomscrolling doomerism. There is very little community engagement or discussion going on, just page after page of news. I don’t follow most news-heavy communities, so if I change my sorting then it will filter out some of it but then the posts I see are days to even weeks old. If I sort by Local - New then it is just page after page of news, most of it with very few or zero comments. And this is with several news-centric communities (like US news) already blocked.
Maybe this is just me or maybe some of you feel the same way, I’m not sure. Or maybe it’s just that this Reddit-styled UI doesn’t lend itself well to other types of engagement; I don’t know. But I was hoping to find more here than just another news aggregator. I was hoping Beehaw would be a more positive, uplifting, inclusive place.
While this account is an alt, I still interact with beehaw daily, including posting etc.
That said I, too, have tempered my activity. To put it bluntly, largely because of the news and politics posts. I have seen where even mods are calling anything right of european left "far right" and extremists.
I am not particularly left leaning, but it entirely depends on the topic. On many social topics I lean left, on other things, im quite moderate. On fiscal stuff Im either moderate or right. But calling sources like thehill.com far right extremist trash (See the post about young men leaning right), or anything remotely libertarian (which in its own is a spectrum of people) far right doesnt jive with me. I find it antithetical to the principles here. Its done in a perjorative way and one thats clearly not meant to encourage conversation or discussion.
So in a way, Beehaw is not as inclusive as they really want to profess or open to discussion or others opinions (if they are the wrong ones). And rather than getting cajoled or even have mods ban me I have simply pulled back.
Finally I have also seen some communities (and here again Ill point out news@beehaw or politics@beehaw) suddenly having moderation tactics that are HYPER focused (ie: US politics only, but not something that is used as a political football, or US News only) And frankly theres not the scale or participation ot have UK NEws, Canada News, US News Europe News etc.
Couple that with point 1 and again, I have just kind of pulled back a bit
Heres the rub though. If thats what Beehaw wants, Im all for it. Its their call. I am one that doesnt mind having my views challenged if its done in good faith and in a respectful way. That is waht I came to beehaw hoping to get. But it does seem that the mob mentality is taking root and the "us vs them" stuff hasnt been shaken.