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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
@Cipher I think of it more of an instructional issue specifically rather than learning issue. People explain “it’s like email” but fail to deliver the fact that it should be more like “It’s how the internet should work”. Where people think Lemmy is THE SITE and can communicate with kbin THE SITE.
It should be mentioned that if anyone has built a website, that Lemmy is the software. You install Google Chrome on your computer, you install lemmy on your computer. You are now able to ACCESS all the other websites like you would in Chrome.
People think “oh it’s like email, well I know Gmail is pretty good so I’ll make an account there. Whatever decisions Google makes is by extension my decision.” The average user doesn’t know what email actually is. They don’t know that you can make your own email service. They don’t know you can even just buy a domain and have your own email address.
The only thing that bugs me about the fediverse as a whole is that these threadiverse concepts shouldn’t have communities. If it was implemented as intended, you’d have to make a community by making a new instance. The community should be federated, and then duplicate communities would get individually federated or defederated.
I think the ambiguity of the fediverse is muddied by how each software is trying to implement it. And it’s almost hard to incentivize making your own instance.
People think "oh it’s like email, well I know Gmail is pretty good so I’ll make an account there. Whatever decisions Google makes is by extension my decision
This is why I think email analogy is very useful to get the basics of how Lemmy/kbin work on a technical level but falls flat on a practical and social level
You have what I would call federation idealists that feel that is should be just like email you should be able to contact anyone. This ignores the fact that email is private communication tool vs a public facing forum.
The argument that instances should be utilities with no “politics” or “culture” just ignores the reality.
The problem with the idea that each community should be its own instance basically comes down to cost, both financial and time. If I want to make a community about something I’m passionate about I’d have to shell out money I don’t have on hosting, buy a domain, learn how to actually host and administrate a Lemmy instance, and then spend like half of my time and energy maintaining it.
Not everyone is a programmer with programmer knowledge making programmer money.
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.
Beehaw admins have no responsibility to “Lemmy as a whole” and to believe so is fundamentally misunderstanding what Lemmy instances are. They have a responsibility to their users to curate the space that they promised.
