I did read them, and I agreed with them just fine, but I still got rejected. It just doesn't feel necessary to affirm a philosophy when my aim is to just participate in a nice place.
I don't want a 1-1 reddit replacement. I want something better, which is why I'm trying to replace reddit in the first place.
I came to Beehaw from Reddit as well during the most recent wave, and I didn't come here really expecting Beehaw to replace Reddit for anything more than the content format.
Same for me, but my application was still rejected. I wanted something better, but that doesn't change the fact that it would replace reddit for me.
they're welcome to interact with our instance obviously as long as they abide by the rules
What about the people abiding by the rules who thought lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works would be fine enough instances to sign up with? Feels like throwing out plenty of babies with the bathwater, even if the bathwater was particularly dirty.
I suppose that that confusion was why my application wasn't accepted. I wanted something better, but that doesn't change the fact that it would replace reddit for me. I think I would fit in just fine, agree with the philosophy, and help foster the community you're trying to build, but trying to be a true believer in any philosophy wouldn't be my primary motivator. I adapt to where I am.
Lemmy is harder to start than reddit because the federated nature of it makes it not just one place. Just because you want to escape the man doesn't mean you want to have to jump through hoops and read a textbook of documentation to understand things.
How does that square with beehaw gaining significant numbers of users as part of reddit's recent migration? They wouldn't be looking for somewhere to join if they felt like reddit would continue to work for them, and I'd say that automatically makes replacing reddit their primary goal.
It's not about getting told what to do or having your data sold, it's about a friction-free social media experience. It depends on what the aims of the platform are and what the desires of potential users are. Personally, I'd imagine most users want something simple and easy, where they don't have to think about what and where and how to post. But if the intent of the platform is to make that harder, then that's fine, it'll just result in fewer users and less content/activity.
I'm not really sure how you can distinguish between one open-registration instance and another, since spammers and trolls can just sign up to any open-registration site and interact with beehaw like I'm doing now.