ou might have seen that we’ve been defederated from beehaw.org. I think there’s some necessary context to understand what this means to the users on this instance.
How federation works
The way federation works is that the community on beehaw.org is an organization of posts, and you’re subscribed to it despite your account being on lemmy.world. Now someone posts on that community (created on beehaw.org), on which server is that post hosted?
It’s hosted on both! It’s hosted on any instance that has a subscriber. It’s also hosted on lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, etc. Every instance that has a subscriber is going to have a copy of this post. That’s why if you host your own instance, you’ll often get a ton of text data just in your own server.
And the copies all stay in sync with each other using ActivityPub. So you’re reading the post that’s host on lemmy.world, and someone with an account on beehaw.org is reading the same post on beehaw.org, and the posts are kept in sync via ActivityPub. Whenever someone posts to that community or comments on a post, that data is shared to all the versions across the fediverse, and these versions are kept in sync. So up until 5 hours ago, they were the same post!
“True”-ness
A key concept that will matter in the next section is the idea of a “true” version. Effectively, one version of these posts is the “true” version, that every other community reflects. The “true” version is the one hosted on the instance that hosts the community. So the “true” version of a beehaw.org community post is the one actually hosted on beehaw.org. We have a copy, but ours is only a copy. If you post to our copy, it updates the “true” version on beehaw.org, and then all the other instances look to the “true” version on beehaw to update themselves.
The same goes for communities hosted on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml. Defederation affects how information is shared between instances. If you keep track of where the “true” version is hosted, it becomes a lot easier to understand what is going on.
How defederation works
Now take that example post from earlier, the one on beehaw.org. The “true” version of the post is on beehaw.org but the post is still hosted on both instances (again, it has a copy hosted on all instances). Let’s say someone with an account on beehaw.org comments on that post. That comment is going to be sent to every version of that post via ActivityPub, as the “true” version has been updated. That is, every version EXCEPT lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. So users on lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works won’t get that comment, because we’ve been defederated from beehaw.org. If we write a comment, it will only be visible from accounts on lemmy.world, because we posted to a copy, but our copy is now out of sync with the “true” version. So we can appear to interact with the post, but those interactions are ONLY visible by other lemmy.world accounts, since our comments aren’t send to other versions. As the “true” version is hosted on beehaw, and we no longer get beehaw updates due to defederation, we will not see comments from ANY other community on those posts (including from other defederated instances like sh.itjust.works).
The same goes for posting to beehaw communities. We can still do that. However, the “true” version of those communities are the ones on beehaw, so our posts will not be shared to other instances via ActivityPub. And all of this is true for Beehaw users with our communities. Beehaw users can continue to see and interact with Lemmy.world communities, but those interactions are only visible to other Beehaw users, since the “true” versions of the Lemmy.world communities (the ones sent to/synced with every other instance) is the Lemmy.world one.
Communities on other instances, for example lemmy.ml, are unaffected by this. Lemmy.world and beehaw.org users will still be able to interact with those communities, but posts/comments from lemmy.world users won’t be visible to beehaw.org users, as defederation prevents our posts/comments from being sent to the version of these posts hosted on beehaw.org. However, as the “true” version is the one on the third instance, we can still see everything from beehaw.org users. So we see a more filled in version than the beehaw users.
Why can I still see posts/comments from beehaw users?
Until they defederated us, posts/comments were being sent to lemmy.world, so we can see everything from before defederation. After defederation, we are no longer receiving or sending updates. So there are now multiple versions of those posts.
Why can I still interact with beehaw communities?
This won’t ever stop. You’ll notice that all posts after defederation are only from lemmy.world users. You won’t see posts/comments from ANY other instance (including instances that ) on beehaw.org communities.
Those communities will quickly suck for us, as we’re only talking to other lemmy.world users. Your posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. I highly recommend just unsubscribing from those communities, since they’re pretty pointless for us to be in right now.
Why do I still see comments from beehaw users on lemmy.world communities?
Again, comments from before defederation were still sent to us. After defederation, it will no longer be possible for beehaw users to interact with the “true” version of lemmy.world communities. Their posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. They also aren’t getting updates from any other lemmy, as the “true” version of those communities is on our instance.
Why do I see posts/comments from beehaw users on communities outside lemmy.world and beehaw.org?
That’s because the “true” version of those posts is outside beehaw. So we get updates from those posts. And lemmy.world didn’t defederate beehaw, so posts/comments from beehaw users can still come to versions hosted on lemmy.world.
The reverse is not true. Because beehaw defederate lemmy.world, any post/comment from a lemmy.world users will NOT be sent to the beehaw version of the post.
This seems like it’s worse for beehaw users than for us?
Yes. In my opinion, this is an extraordinarily dumb act by the beehaw instance owners. It’s worse for beehaw users than for us, and will likely result in many beehaw users leaving that instance. They said in their post that this is a nuke, but I don’t think they fully assessed the blast area. Based on their post, I don’t think they fully understand what defederation does.
It just Voat all over again. No wonder spez couldnt care less
I think this is the opposite of Voat. Voat didn’t moderate much at all. Beehaw is moderating everything. The outcomes will be polar opposite.
You have to get it right. Too much and too little moderation are both problems.
That’s a real bitch move, basically shadowbanning huge portions of the reddit migration. Unsubscribed from everything they host and lost a ton of content. Hopefully we can grow our own technology, gaming and whatever other large discussion hubs.
This isn’t much better than what reddit is doing, fucking safe spaces. I miss the hell out of the internet at the turn of the millennium. When the users started touching things it all went to shit.
This is an incredibly selfish, dipshit move. They’re trying to prioritise the growth of their own instance at the expense of Lemmy and the Fediverse as a whole, at a time when we should all be banded together to accept the massive influx of departing Redditors.
What would you do to stop a wave of trolls that kept creating new accounts on a remote instance with open sign-ups to harass users on your instance?
This is just going to serve to put people that were on the fence off of Lemmy and they’ll go back to reddit.
To be honest, as time went by and a few of my subreddits I frequented started to get brigaded by transphobes and fascist bawbags (Scotland and unitedkingdom subs are a great example of this) I stopped participating altogether in them.
I found the casualuk sub and that became pretty much the only place I’d comment/post. It felt like a much closer-knit community and I’d much rather have that than a massive community that may not feel as “homely” if that makes sense.
EDIT - I replied to the wrong post, I’ve not had a coffee yet.
This is a well-known phenomenon known as the paradox of tolerance.
If you allow intolerant people to inhabit your community, it’s going to make kind people feel less welcome there, so they’ll leave. That means only intelorant people will remain. The only way to maintain a friendly welcoming community is to immediately clamp down on any hate-filled behaviour.
There’s a great story about it here. You have to scroll down a bit to get to the actual story (it’s a series of Tweets), but unfortunately the original Tweets have been taken down so these spammy types of articles are the only way I can see to share it.
Yes but the best way to go about it is acting on individual basis, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Just so you know it may not be your fault. There’s a bug that sometimes causes you to see one post when in reality you are interacting with another. Pretty sure there’s already a fix in an upcoming version though.
@AgentGoldfish Hrm … the actual dumb thing is not getting defederated but owerwhelming other instances moderation team because of the lack of moderation on _your_ site.
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There are other, less heavy handed ways of accomplishing the same thing
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This action doesn’t actually do what they want it to do, since anyone can create a new instance and post,
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This action does more to make the experience of their users worse
So yes, admins choosing to defederate another instance despite not understanding what that actually does and what the consequences of that action are is, as I said, dumb.
@AgentGoldfish Did you read what _they_ wrote about the decision to defederate?
He either didn’t or is intentionally ignoring the points they made and his aggressive responses here are just riling people up even more instead of focusing us on the actual problem or solutions. People are literally calling beehaw admins “vile” and “despicable” just because they are trying to handle this unexpected and possibly undesired huge influx of people, when their community existed before any of these newcomers arrived (myself included) and their primary concern should be preserving their community and ethos.
This is specifically the type of behavior that beehaw’s rules aim to prevent, which is why they are more heavily moderated and why they had to defederate lemmyworld in the first place. The fact that OP is unable to understand this and is instead trying to start a lynch mob just makes me think that a temporary defederation was absolutely the right call to make for them.
Yeah I did. That’s why I think they don’t fully understand what defederation entails. It doesn’t accomplish the goals they set out in their decision post, and does have a whole bunch of knock on effects (for their own users) that they don’t address at all.
