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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Cipher@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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?

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[-] AnonymousLlama@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

People also need to be mindful that the concept of the fediverse isn't a simple one, not to the majority of people who use Reddit / other sites. We want to try and streamline the process of searching for, signing up to and contributing to content, at least if we want these platforms to continue to grow.

We don't need the 400+ million that Reddit has but having more interested users will help generate more content / engagement

[-] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 3 points 1 year ago

I think if every instance was a one person instance then the mods would not have the hammer sollution to defederate thousends of people at once. Back in the days they would ban a IP range, it's simmilar.

But to not need to do that, there need to be better tools available for them, we're waiting for those now.

[-] trachemys@iusearchlinux.fyi 3 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] Cipher@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] trachemys@iusearchlinux.fyi 2 points 1 year ago

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.

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[-] AnonymousLlama@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Hudsonius@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

This is so cool, these discussions remind me of events in the Bobiverse books where the spirit of these topics are similar. Also the start trek instance is totally getting this right from my perspective of things (startrek.website). Of course there are many ways to approach this as « right » is one’s opinion.

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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
86 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

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