Lemmy

They didn't close signups. They, as a top-five instance, defederated with two other top-5 instances, which will now lead to massive ongoing confusion related to asymmetrical federation. Did you read the second link from my comment?

The defederation will:

• Increase the workload of admins on other major instances, who now have to moderate these high emotion threads and figure out how to respond to the defederation at a time when they are equally overloaded.
• Increase the workload of volunteers who answer new user questions, as there will now be an ongoing flood of confusion around asymmetrical federation.
• Sunder established communities that people outside Beehaw have invested in, many of which will now once again struggle to find the "critical mass" re-establish themselves.
• Reduce confidence in the lemmyverse in general, as one of the formative experiences of new users will be this confusing mess of trying to re-establish their subs after having just gotten settled.

The external costs of flip-flopping the federation status between major instances is huge, and will be primarily born outside of Beehaw. If Beehaw admins want to have a very strict moderation policy, that's entirely their option. If the costs of those moderation policies spiral out of control, that's also entirely their problem. If they try to solve that problem by swinging a giant banhammer around at 30 thousand lemmings representing more than 30% of the active lemmyverse... that's using your power as a major instance admin to make your own life easier and the lives of everyone else in the lemmyverse worse.