I am still playing around with Lemmy like I am sure a lot of people are. I have accounts on multiple instances to see how things are and what not.
I understand why beehaw decided to defederate with .world, I just didn’t think much about the consequence of it after it happened. Today I was browsing the !anime@lemmy.ml from my beehaw account and looked at the same from my this .ml account and realized I am missing so posts… Any user from .world posting a discussion thread for an anime I watch from, I can’t participate in…
I could create my own discussion post about the anime, but now there are two posts going about the same thing. beehaw users would be able to see and participate in this now, but every other instance will see two posts. Duplicating the same thing and splitting the discussion unnecessarily.
I love the power, control, and principles behind Lemmy and the wider fediverse, its just something that is annoying me at the moment. Its amazing for taking care of spam instances (70k users with no posts? yea right), but when one large/popular instance spanks another, it can be problematic. Thinking of maybe self hosting (which I am no stranger to) as a way to avoid an issue like this in future.
Still like Lemmy and wanting to push through these “quirks”, but just wanted to vent a little.
If you can self host, do it. Definitely worth having the freedom over your own server and not having to worry about what someone else decides you can or can’t see
That is also another concern of mine for self hosting. I know the fediverse is facing a massive bot problem right now and some suggestions of doing whitelists or blacklists to help combat this, so having my own private instance could even be a worse move in the near future.
Yeah, hosting your own Lemmy instance will quickly turn into the equivalent of running your own mail server. It’s just not something you want to deal with because you’ll spend hours dealing with blacklists, spam, government requests and other BS.
I’m sure things will stabilise and servers will emerge that get the balance between moderation, federation and uptime right, and then you can migrate to their instance and set up a recurring donation to pay for what it would cost you to run your own server.
If they would go as far as to defederate with your specific instance, you should seriously reconsider whether their instance or their community actually have any value to you
I’m more concerned about whitelists where I need to apply for federation with the big players or some sort of automated bot solution that may inadvertently blacklist small, legitimate servers.
Even in the most safe space-y parts of Mastodon (which has way more experience with trolls & assholes than Lemmy just by existing for longer), single user instances don’t get defederated without reason. So I’d be more in favor of reflecting inwards and wondering if there is a specific reason why they defed’d me.
Yea was considering it. Already have a server where I self host a lot of things for my own use. Just concerned about security, as my server isn’t reachable via the internet (so security has been a bit “loose” so far since it doesn’t really matter) and I would have to open a port for this.
Also opens a few privacy issues. Either I use my existing domain which would expose my dns records and SSL cert history to anyone who wants to know or just buy a new domain just for Lemmy. Even still through, my IP would be permanently attached to the server which would be public for anyone wanting to follow up my instance. I could try and host it behind a VPN that allows port forwarding, but just adding more complexity and cost the setup…
Could also just buy a cheap VPS and just use that for just the Lemmy instance so I wouldn’t need a VPN. Just feels like it would go a little bit against the self hosting spirit since I actually have my own hardware to do so…
You can still be defederated by another instance, but most likely they won’t care unless you go out of your way to harass their users or create a bot farm.
Identities should be federated and not local to instances.
Defederation is simultaneously very useful and very dangerous.
Large instances have the power to kill smaller ones by defederating them, since they control an overwhelming share of Fediverse content. That is a lot of power in the hands of a small group of people, each potentially with their own views and agendas.
I think defederation should be reserved for openly malicious servers and used as an absolute last resort. Think of the Internet and how horrible it would be if countries decided to just disconnect from other countries based on conflicting ideologies.
The vast majority of users on legitimate instances just want to explore interesting things, share some thoughts and have a good time. Defederating hurts legitimate users the most, trolls can easily hop instances and find another way to troll.
This script allows you to choose an instance with few blocked users so you can see most content without feeling like you are missing out. Communities only share their content after a user subscribes, so a self-hosted instance is only useful if you manually subscribe to everything you want. It’s better to choose an existing instance with some users who have probably already subscribed to those communities.
These are all cosequences of a federated approach.
Also we absolutely need moderation tools in the internet. There are way too many jerks out there. Fortunately people like to stick together with like-minded people and form groups. Especially after they’ve been shouted at, banned, etc. the jerks will find their own instance and we can cut contact to all jerks at once.
I like defederation for that. However, it is the deliberate act of destroying the one thing you’ve invented the fediverse to do: to ‘federate’ with other instances. If you do that too often, you kill the idea and the spirit of the fediverse. Probably followed by killing your platform, community and the mood of everyone involved.
We need nice people. Good people pushing the buttons in the backend. Diversity. And a healty way to communicate and moderate.
One thing is: If i run an instance of something like lemmy: It’s my decision what to do with it. I bought the server. I pay the electricity and internet bill. I face the consequences and get nasty mail by the police if someone does something illegal with it. And maybe i invited my friends to join. It’s the same like inviting them to my barbecue party. I don’t want them to be shouted at by some right-wing nuts, there.
There is one simple consequence that is important to know for the user: Chose the right instance for you! Diversity is a great thing. And we all know it’s too difficult for a new user to also know which instance to join. But it’s absolutely necessary to put some effort in. You need an instance that federates with like-minded people and which owners are aligned to your own morale and ethics. You can’t join something else and the complain. That way, you’ll probably be lost for the fediverse, after too many negative impressions.
