Defederating in this situation means (to my very limited understanding). Users on lemmy.world can see posts from beehaw.org, they also can interact with the posts/comments. Those interactions just don't show up on beehaw.org, so that they don't have to moderate as much.

Reddit charging a metric ton of cash for their api is more or less if you would have to pay (the creator of lemmy) for each user if you decide to create your own instance (lemmy.world, beehaw.org and whatnot).

Yes, I am miffed. With such a focus on community I’d have expected a discussion thread or poll for Beehaw members before making a nuclear action, not a thread posted after it was done. It was a very sudden action. I’m not thrilled that anybody against the idea over there is being painted as some kind of problematic person. It is giving me a bad vibe.

Also, nothing in the pinned post I saw mentioned talking with the Lemmy.world mods. It seems to me that attempting communication to come to a mutually agreed standard of behavior is something to be tried as an early measure. Just because there aren’t a lot of built in technical mode tools doesn’t take away talking.

The fact that Beehaw mods unilaterally decided this, without prior input from other communities or their own members really bugs me.

I was very optimistic for Beehaw but this is a worrying use of petty mod power.