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How come there’s no big gaming community?
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this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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The biggest c/gaming was on beehaw, but that's defederated. Maybe nobody else wanted to do it again and just stuck to smalller communities based on particular systems.
Only Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml got defederated as far as I know. I see you’re not on one of those, so you can still see and participate with them.
I'm on lemmy.ml and I can still see new posts from there
afaik, they defederated from us. So we can still see posts and comments from there, but cant add any posts or comment.
Actually we still can add posts and comments, but just users from our instances and the ones we federate with can see it.
I’m a little confused myself as a Lemmy.world user. I was able to leave a comment on a behaw technology forum and got upvotes on it.
Do you know why they deferated in the first place?
afaik, because of the current lack of good moderation tools it would be hard to keep the community to their standard with the huge amount of new lemmiers
At least that means they plan to federate again at some point
shitjustworks too.
Federation can be a one way street. The problem with that is your comments and votes will only be visible from the instance you did it from. Lemmy.world will show other Lemmy.world users your comment but Beehaw will not ever see it, which means your comment will not proliferate to other instances either.
You can still browse content from an instance that has defederated yours but your actions will only be visible on your own instance.
This is a big roadblock for lemmy. There needs to be a clear indication that an instance is defederated from the community you're posting to and that doesn't currently exist.
A instance can make a decision thst it's users aren't aware of without some kind of marker.
unfortunately it's not as easy as that. defederation isn't meant to be fun. but a last resort. for example if people do illegal stuff on one instance, you want to defederate them WITHOUT having their link and instance name kept around everywhere. But you're right. We still need a good technical solution for that.
You can't stop a user from cross instance subscribing, so if a lemmy.ml user subscribes to ! Antisemitic@bob's-racist-emporium.lemmy.wtf before it's defederated, it should be immediately clear if posting across instances will have no effect to the posting user.
A real world for instance is that I have a subscribe pending to !steamdeck@soupli.xyz thst is either stuck or not being accepted. I've made posts before realizing that lemmy.ml is not federating with that instance and had no idea so I've been contributing to the ether.
Sure. Didn't know this happens. I'd consider this an UI issue and i hope someone files a bug report. If you're explicitly trying to subscribe, or you're already subscribed, you need to get an error message if the software does anything unexpected (ie silently dropping messages).
The instances that are federated with one another I believe are publicly listed, somewhere. From there it would be fairly straightforward to create a tool that tells you whether your instance is "compatible" with the one you're interacting with.
Anyone good at coding? Sounds like a project. Make one and add it to the list that I'm sure is also out there somewhere. If there are such useful things, they should be added to all the sidebars and made common knowledge.
Does this mean that only beehaw will not be able to see your interactions but every other instance would still be able to?
Think of instances a bit like mail centers.
When you are federated with an instance, they will deliver their mail to you. You are also able write to any of their communities, who will deliver that mail to other instances that they're in business with.
But when an instance defederates from yours, they're no longer delivering mail to and from you. When you look at one of their communities, you effectively have a mailbox, still with the carrier's logo, but nothing is coming or going anymore. What you're left with is all of the old mail that was there before they canceled your route, along with new letters being written by people on your side that will never be delivered.
From the perspective of the other instance, however, they've torn out your mailbox entirely. It effectively doesn't exist.
The more complicated part is what happens when users from these two instances visit a third who they are both federated with. That third instance will accept my mail, and share it to everyone else. But the instance that defederated from me will not accept any of my mail, even when it's routed through the other instance.
But defederation is a one-sided block (unless both instances defederates from each other), so the third instance will still send me comments/posts from people on the instance that defederated from mine. But if I try to reply to them on that third instance, they'll never see it because they aren't taking any of my mail.
No, the host instance will not proliferate your input to other instances. Only your instance will have that and will only share it with other users from your instance.
e.g. I'm on Lemmy.world. I post on the Beehaw gaming community. Only other users from Lemmy.world will see my posts.
Everything you post in a beehaw community won’t be seen by anyone else. Everything you post in a community of any other instance will be seen by everyone who isn’t on an instance that defederated yours
That's a very interesting setup. Seems kinda weird that it wouldn't just block anything coming from the defederated instance.
But it does.
Example: You're on lemmy.world. Let's say lemmy.world defederates lemmy.ml today.
Now you won't be able to see any new posts made by users of lemmy.ml, be it on lemmy.ml itself or on any other instance. You will still see everything that was posted up until the defederation though because defederation just means that your instance won't request new copies of the content of lemmy.ml .
And they also can't post stuff on comunities of lemmy.world(I believe they technically could do that, just that nobody could see it, but it may be that by now it's entirely blocked to even make a post there).
Now as long as lemmy.ml doesn't defederate lemmy.world too, their users will still be able to see your comments and may also reply to your comments on other instances , but you won't see that.
So defederation mainly serves two purposes for the users of the instance that defederates another instance:
!patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
!pcgaming@lemmy.fmhy.ml
This is honestly very confusing.
When I originally decided to join a lemmy community I signed up with beehaw.org and was accepted. During the reddit apocalypse I also registered for lemmy.world
From my understanding, and someone please treat me like I'm a 5 year old, when I view gaming@beehaw.org via my lemmy.world account I only see old beehaw user posts (from before de-federation) and every lemmy.world user post but only lemmy.world users can see my posts? However, if I view from my beehaw account I can see all posts from lemmy.world and beehaw users but only beehaw users can see my posts?
Does this extend to comments? If I comment on a lemmy.world user's post through my beehaw account... that OP just won't ever see it?
Yes. Beehaw blocks lemmy.world (lw), but not vice versa.
Therefore, a lw user can see all new beehaw content, but any interaction - commenting or voting, will not get back to beehaw, and so it can't federate them to other instances either. So anything a lw user does on beehaw is only visible to other lw users.
Beehaw users can only see lw content from before when beehaw defederated from lw, but should be able to interact with it normally, except for other lw users like in the last paragraph.
I think you're mistaken.
A LW user does NOT see new beehaw content. If I visit gaming@beehaw.org on my LW account and sort by new... the newest post is 2d old from an infosec.pub user and the next newest is 4d from a LW user. However, if I visit gaming@beehaw.org from my beehaw account there's at least a dozen+ NEW posts from the last 24 hours, mostly from beehaw users.
But that kind of shows my point, it's confusing. I think the simplest way to think of it (again, very layman understanding that could be wrong). LW users on gaming@beehaw.org can only see posts and comments from non-beehaw users but the vast majority of the users/posts on that channel are from beehaw.
Wait did I get it exactly backwards? I need more sleep and less heat.
So non-local communities from (one-way) de-federated instances are basically mod-less spaces where users from federated instances can interact with eachother?
E.g. LW users and infosec users can create posts and comments on lemmy.world/c/gaming@beehaw.org, but the mods from beehaw.org/c/gaming have no power and don't even see it, since they are disconnected.
My understanding is that each instance essentially clones posts and comments of other instances that they are federated with. In the case of Beehaw, you'll see the old versions of posts and comments that were cloned to lemmy.world before Beehaw federated, but nothing since. So the users of each defederated instance will only see the respective version cloned on their instance, but not the new comments or posts that have happened since.
Why did they defederate?
Beehaw had concerns about lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works because they had open registrations, rather than requiring an application process like they and some other instances do.
The idea is that users being able to join these instances freely meant they couldn't be properly "vetted" to weed out the trolls/racists/harassers/etc., and they didn't believe they had the infrastructure/moderation capability to properly monitor the scale of this new audience themselves.
Part of me gets it, but in hindsight it does seem like the concerns were a bit overblown (at least compared to actual bad instances like exploding heads) and I'm surprised they haven't refederated by now. Beehaw staying defederated from two other major instances is proof that it actually does matter which Lemmy instance you register for, making it harder for new users to figure out which one they should join.
Not sure now, but at the time they had 4 moderators for the whole instance, this while the big Reddit migration was happening so it was a bomb waiting to blowup, also they've stated before that they want/plan to make it a safespace so they are not exactly made for federation since they'll have to end up blocking a lot of instances to achieve that.
It's just a shame that they are overly selective about who they allow to join. When I was looking for a new home after Rexxit, the first place I applied to was Beehaw after seeing it spoken so highly of. My values seem to align with theirs and I thought I wrote a pretty good application stating as much, but they never let me in.
Try again?
Eh, I'm already here on Lemmy.world, it's really not that bad, and I kinda like having the ability to downvote assholes/racists/spambots when I see them.
I see what you mean. I have an account there too for access to everything. Apps are making it pretty seemless.
Oh that's valid
Makes sense. Kinda sucks though because the gaming sub being terrible on the other place made the circlejerk and "games" discussion communities more fun. Talking shit about the hive mind in your own personal echo chamber can be fun if you're self aware!