Like many, when the recent defederation went down, I decided to create a couple other logins and see what the wider fediverse has had to say about it.
I’ve been, honestly, a bit surprised by the response. A huge portion of people seem to be misidentifying communities as belonging to “lemmy” as opposed to the instances that host them. I think a big portion of this seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what this software is, and how it works.
For example, lemmy.world users are pissed at being de-federated because it excludes them from Beehaw communities. This outrage seems wholly placed in the concept that Beehaw’s communities are “owned” by the wider fediverse. This is blatantly not how lemmy works. Each instance hosts a copy of federated instances’ content for their users to peruse. The host (Beehaw in this example) remains being the source of truth for these communities. As the source of truth, Beehaw “owns” the affected communities, and it seems people have not realized that.
This also has wider implications for why one might want to de-federate with a wider array of instances. Lets say I have a server in a location that legally prohibits a certain type of pornography. If my users subscribe to other instances/communities that allow that illegal pornography, I (the server admin) may find myself in legal jeopardy because my instance now holds a copy of that content for my users.
Please keep this in mind as you enjoy your time using Lemmy. The decisions that you make affect the wider instance. As you travel the fediverse, please do so with the understanding that your interactions reflect this instance. More than anything, how can we spread this knowledge to a wider audience? How can we make the fediverse and how it works less confusing to people who aren’t going to read technical documentation?
Defederating lemmy.world is a temporary measure as better mod tools are made. It isn’t worth handwringing over. Defederation should not be the norm for dealing with a few trolls, or objectionable communities.
This isn’t handwringing, though I can understand why it might come off that way. This is simply mulling over how things “actually work” in the fediverse as opposed to how people believe it works. I believe that many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what this software is and how it works. This is an educational issue that we have an opportunity to begin sorting out
In addition, my scenario of instance users subscribing to illegal content will still be valid even with moderation tools. The only way to stop that currently is defederation with instances hosting illegal content.
Federation/Fediverse should mean a user of any instance should be able to use any community. Gated communities shouldn’t be the expected norm. So, I would agree with the lemmy.world people who are upset at being broadly blocked from a Fediverse community. But it doesn’t matter because beehaw says it is temporary.
This is true, except for one element:
Fediverse should mean a user of any instance should be able to use any community the instance elects to federate with. Lemmy is open by design, but instances can just as easily switch that feature off and go to a allowlist method.
A commonly missed element with federation is that you federate with who you trust since you essentially mirror their content. It’s less apparent with the lemmy migration, but mastodon used to caution its users to “join an instance that aligns with your preferences” for this reason.
Federation is really a philosophy about mutual trust, just like how email providers can block messages by user, instance, or domain.
Trust me, there’s likely more gating present than you’re aware of. Maybe not at lemmy.world (which as of this post is only blocking one site for reasons I won’t mention), but this can get dark pretty quick if you leave things completely open.
A major instance (in terms of comunities) like Beehaw changing from denylist to Allowlist would be devastating for users on small and single-user instances, so I hope it never comes to that. Unless there’s some process to get hundreds of tiny unknow instances in the Allowlist
I think some people see Lemmy as a way to host their own self-supported community on their own server, with users identifying strongly with the values of the instance, and with cohesion among the users of the instance.
While other people (me included) see instances more as something to just host the account, so we can participate in Commities across “the network”, where “the network” is basically all the Lemmy instances except the de-federated extremists, or other walled gardens. User-cohesion is more on the Community-level and less on the Instance-level.
Do we want a small network of instances that have proven themselves trustworthy? Or do we want a large network of instances that have yet to prove themselves untrustworthy? Different people will have different answers
You do bring up a good point about needing to trust your federated instances because you’re essentially mirroring their content
Thank you for phrasing my point so eloquently.
By that line of reasoning all alt-right, homophobe, harassing, doxxing, trolling etc. instances should be allowed to access every other instance to spread their hate. Is that really what you want? I don’t.
Why do you think entire instances will be devoted to that? You will have to block every instance that has open registration, since any open instance cannot guarantee one of the people you mentioned will not come in. I guess the issue I have is that I see moderation as something between users and communities. Not that the overall instance should be doing the moderation.
Some are run or overrun by those kind of people. Have a look at how many instances are already defederated: https://beehaw.org/instances
Gods, the names on the list of blocked instances. JFC
We sure, I can understand Defederation from “skinheads.social”. I’m more concerned with large instances like lemmy.world who just are rather wide-open. I wonder if large open instances are just bad.
There totally are fascist instances though, and I think defederating from those is cool and good. I’m not thrilled about the beehaw defederation either, but I respect the mods’ decision, especially since it’s targeted only at the two instances with users who were actually causing problems and I can still access beehaw communities from my non lemmy.world accounts
I don’t think that assertion is based in reality. A server has to be hosted somewhere, and admins will generally choose to uphold those local regulations for the sake of their instance’s own longevity. Federation has never meant that you communicate with literally every other instance. This isn’t Tor where nodes pass along communications that don’t directly involve themselves.
Two separate issues are prompting “defederation”. Blocking users from posting to your local community and blocking remote communities from being mirrored on your server. Those should be handled differently. Beehaw didn’t want trolls posting mean things and blocked every user on a server. Your concern about illegal content would be more a complaint about specific communities that feature that content.
Either way you shouldn’t blame an entire server for a few users or communities you don’t want. Expecting everyone on a instance to be like minded isn’t going to work.
The only way to not address things on a per-server basis is for moderation tools to be expanded in scope. Maybe that will be how things work one day, but it is not how things can work right now.
Completely understandable. I am not opposed to moderation or keeping people safe from harassment.
It’s a stopgap measure until better moderating tools are developed. I can’t blame them for it.
My understanding is that people from Lenny.world can still “use” behaw by subscribing to communities and commenting on posts, but people on Behaw just can’t see them. Is that not how it works?
I have to say I chose behaw because I wanted a more heavily modded experience here. I really don’t mind them shadow banning whole communities if a disproportionate number of trolls are coming over from them. People have got the right to speak, not the right to be heard. The internet’s full of kids just wanting to be obnoxious, and I’ve got to say I’m more then happy that other humans are helping me to filter that junk out
When a Lemmy.World user posts to a Beehaw community right now, it updates the cached community that Lemmy.World stores. Beehaw has defederated with them, so the “source of truth” never updates. The source of truth is what updates other federated instances. As a result, someone on startrek.website, for example, will not see posts made by lemmy.world users to beehaw communities. The only people who can see what lemmy.world users post to beehaw right now are other lemmy.world users.
Won’t that cause a major problem if/when Beehaw would want to refederate, and all that pent up stuff just pours on Beehaw all at once?
When/if refederation happens, the comments lost to the abyss will stay lost to the abyss. The source of truth will not update based on the past updates of a formerly defederated instance to my understanding
Unfortunately, defederating means the cord has been cut. This means we still have what was previously been posted, but all future content is bidirectionally blocked.
Just because this software can be used that way, doesn’t mean you’re required to use it that way.
If I want to start a lemmy server and not let lemmy.world in, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Lemmy.world isn’t owed anything, they’re not owed to view content in my community, they’re not owed that I show their content to my users. And if my users are unhappy with that, that’s fine, it’s their choice to stay in my enclosed community or not.
Just because we’re running the same software and the same communication protocols doesn’t change that.
Nah. I don’t think it’s an education issue. E.g. I do understand how it works, but see defederation as the nuclear option. As a user in a federated system I don’t care where the communities are hosted that I frequent. As long as it works. That’s the entire point of federation. Otherwise we could just remove federation all together and have everyone create a separate account per instance.
I get where the beehaw admins are coming from and it’s understandable. But it’s not good and chips away at what Lemmy is and could be.
This is one instance now where this happened and I’m not on either of these instances, so I’m unaffected. But if I see more of these defederations (no matter where), the Signal it sends me is that for my needs I likely still have to bet on Reddit and at max this will become an occasional visit.
We are still far away from this point. Just saying. And a normal user can’t be expected to understand it or relate to it. It’s bad UX if they have to. Arguing for them to be educated about it is nice in theory, but misses in reality of how things just are.
Exactly, at the start of the growth phase for new sites, people want things to look stable. Seeing drama from Z site because Y site disconnected from them can look pretty unappealing
That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?