Now im sitting here wondering if I offended anyone over there lol. It's hard to imagine, but since I've seen no bad actors myself, I'm starting to think that it's possible I did, unknowingly, with zero intent to do so, and they just have a really strict thing going on. I doubt it's the case, or I hope not at least.

I don't either.

They circled their wagons due a perceived threat to a small population of their user base, of which they feel is their responsibility to protect.

I constantly shit on Beehaw, however I can't blame them for this. There is a huge influx of random people joining all these federated sites and high potential for pieces of shit coming in to troll sensitive individuals.

One of the benefits of federation is the ability to choose your sources. If one doesn’t fit your moderation style you remove it. It’s a feature, not a minus. Expect more of this until the mod tools mature and trolls make homes among the open servers.

I've seen people make analogies between Lemmy instances and email servers, but I don't think it's a great comparison. I think a better one would be ports on a trade route in the old sailing ship days. People are from different port cities, but they get on a ship and go to other ports and trade/interact with the people there.

So with that analogy, the port city of Beehaw is one with more restrictive laws about behavior: if you aren't generally respectful of others, they toss you out. There was a sudden influx at Beehaw of crowded ships from the ports of Lemmy.World and sh.itjust.works, both ports with less restrictive, more wild west attitudes. They found that their sheriffs were spending all their time tossing people who came from ships with one of those two flags, so they decided not to let those ships dock at their port anymore, or let their ships dock at those ports, for now.

Because echo chamber is awesome. When you say something, no one will disagree with you.