If I recall correctly, the main reason we defederated from those instances at the time was the sheer volume of spam we were getting from users of those instances. While we do sometimes have a need to moderate users from larger instances like Lemm.ee, it’s not currently at a volume that we can’t handle, from what I’ve seen.

As always, as a moderator of several Beehaw communities, I would encourage you to report any comment or post you see that isn’t up to the standards of Beehaw.org. Don’t assume someone else is going to do it, and don’t assume that moderators are always watching every interactions closely - we’re all doing this in our free time and have other responsibilities. We may not take action on every report - sometimes things are borderline or the community has already pushed back and we feel like things are in hand - but I guarantee someone is looking at and considering every one.

For further info, check it here:

Lack of moderation tools link // The choice to defederate from an instance can also be based on our inability to effectively moderate that instance’s users. As of now, only two of our defederations are on this basis (lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works), and we hope to eventually refederate with both of them.

It was less about LW and SJW being “poorly moderated”, and more about being large enough that they were bringing a lot of mod work for Beehaw.

IIRC when that happened lemm.ee was still small. (Note that the page was last updated 8m ago.)