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.
Huh, that didn’t take long. Lemmy doesn’t have legs if this is the start of things (community fragmentation).
Community fragmentation (hatred even) is a problem on reddit too, yet reddit as a whole lived pretty well regardless.
The same will happen here, when there are a lot of people some drama is bound to happen, a few communities will cut themselves out from the rest of the world, but it’s ok, the rest will thrive nonetheless.
I think fragmentation is more susceptible on Lemmy due to the instance design, i.e. there are unlimited instances on Lemmy, each with multiple communities (“subreddits”), but only one instance on Reddit. So there could be 100 c/gaming on Lemmy, but only one r/gaming on Reddit.
It could just be the subreddits I’m subscribed to, but I don’t have any fragmentation on there. The most fragmentation I have is something like r/games (discussion) and r/gaming (pictures), so they serve different purposes.
Maybe we are just seeing teething issues on Lemmy right now though, but seeing something like this is disappointing (spoken from someone who is on neither instance).
EDIT: spelling
That’s not quite true, there is r/gaming but also r/pcgaming and other similar subs created because people didn’t like mods on r/gaming or other reasons, there are many cases of reddit subs of the same thing “multiplied” because of mods “power-trips”, that’s why they made the multi-reddit feature on reddit, so each user can combine multiple of the same on a single feed.
Think of instances as subreddits and you’ll se what’s happening is not dissimilar to what happens on reddit.
Reddit as a platform thrives regardless, Lemmy will be perfectly fine as well.
Lemmy is even better, because if mods of a sub go crazy, people will simply create a new sub, while if admins go crazy (like they’re doing with the API), noone can do anything about it, here on Lemmy you have solutions to both.
That’s true, but they still serve different purposes, i.e. r/pcgaming is specific. Using that example, it’s not like we have r/gaming2 which serves the exact same purpose as r/gaming, and has a similar size user base.
I think things will settle as you say, but this isn’t a good start when the user base is exploding. I’m only just getting my head around it all and I’m a fairly tech minded person for someone who doesn’t work in the field. Something like this is just going to put a lot of people off, which is a shame.
Reddit has (or at least had, I haven’t been keeping up) r/truegaming and r/games, both of which splintered off from r/gaming because they didn’t like how the former was being run. Having communities on different instances would basically be the same, except they wouldn’t have to come up with a new name.
We do have r/gaming2 it’s just not called r/gaming2 but something else (this is an example), it doesn’t happen often but it does happen on reddit.
I understand your concerns, they’re pretty valid, all this new stuff is already confusing enough as it is, adding drama to it doesn’t help at all, there is indeed the risk of putting people off, I just hope that most won’t care about the drama and give themselves time to see what’s happening is not actually a big deal for us (it is a big problem for beehaw users tho).
Actually there is a r/gaming2, it’s called r/games
There are also general purpose gaming subreddits with a slightly different purpose like r/truegaming or r/patientgamers/ which aren’t about specific games or types of games, but want to focus on a different community of people.
instances aren’t like subreddits in this example though. if i don’t care about drama, i can subscribe to both r/tumblr and r/curatedtumblr and have them both appear in my feed. i can’t do that with instances without creating two accounts, and browsing both separately
Yea, it’s going to be a problem if a lot of large instances start defederizing from each other. People aren’t going to want to have 4 different accounts to interact with communities they were contributing to before they defederized. Sure you can have 2 gaming communities but if you are on lemmy.world and like beehaws gaming community more you are now stuck with just the one on lemmy.world unless you make a beehaw account.
The whole point of federation is that you can browse all federated instances using one account and one homeserver.
I really hope we will get some kind of “Community federation” in the future, where two or more communities can merge and the same content will be shown in all of them.
I posted about it elsewhere in the thread but there’s an active discussion about implementing something like multireddits, that could be the solution. On the whole, though, I think fragmentation is kind of the point of federation and probably a good thing, given that we have a way of browsing through all of the communities without having to go through each individually. It means no one person can really decide that “actually, fuck games, /c/gaming is a bong smoking community now” cause then we just go to the gaming community on another instance. Perhaps a multireddit you can subscribe to that will automatically subscribe you to all the communities without having to update?
Thanks for posting the link, cool that there’s already discussion around this topic!
But this is (to most people and those exiling Reddit) the beginning of the fediverse and something new. To start fragmenting so early isn’t a great look. Can mods ban people on these instances? Still learning how all this works.
There was a thread yesterday in kbin meta where there was overwhelming support for banning magazines (communities) which users didn’t like. One user gave an example of kbin.social/m/antiwoke. It had two milquetoast submissions and nothing even remotely against any rules. I suggested they simply block the magazine and move on with their lives. I was heavily downvoted.
I fear that a large portion of the Lemmy community actually desires censorship. Now we see these same communities which desire censorship censoring each other. It’s like a safe space arms war. I just want an instance where users welcome discussion - even when they don’t agree with the person on the other side. I really don’t think that is too much to ask for, even in 2023.
Let’s not waste our breath pretending a place called “antiwoke” is anything but a racist right wing cesspool. There’s literally no other purpose it could serve.
And of course you have censorship on the internet. You need to censor, literally every platform out there that has existed for a reasonable amount of time on the internet has to censor even if it’s just to comply with local laws.
In other words, if you don’t censor you open up your doors to hosting child porn, it’s that simple. So I hope people can see that censorship is a necessary evil and not some binary choice you can make.
So the question is what you censor, not if you censor. And of course there will be things that people straight up don’t want. You don’t have to be accepting of everything. In fact it’s actively detrimental to be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I’m not gonna blame anyone if they want to kick out communities like “antiwoke” because it’s quite clear what’s gonna come out of them.
Perhaps we should wait until they actually do something unforgivably evil before we ban them. Pre-emptively banning anyone who disagrees with us is, IMHO, not what I want. As above, it does appear to be popular though.
I’m sorry, but there is no need or benefit to be found in tolerance for the intolerant. Nobody has to give them a platform. Nobody should. And if you seriously believe a community called “antiwoke” has anything positive or useful to bring to the table, I have a very nice bridge looking to get rid of.
Yeah, believe it or not, I don’t support banning people just because I disagree with them. You might be surprised how many of us there are.
Believe it or not, ne neither!
But this is also not something I have said. This is a strawman argument you created, consciously or not.
What I actually said was that we shouldn’t provide a platform to the intolerant. Because they will seek to undermine and destroy our tolerance. There’s a bit more nuance in my argument than “ban people just because they disagree with me”. You kinda missed that.
That’s literally what you wrote. It’s your entire premise:
You don’t like the name of the magazine and you want it banned, even though it hasn’t broken any rules. You just don’t like what the name implies.
No, what I actually wrote was
I already called you out for being dishonest in your argument, why continue? Address what I actually said instead of the shitty strawman you try and fail to create.
I’m not in the business in being naive about it, terribly sorry. Show me a community that labels itself as “antiwoke” that isn’t a racist cesspool and I’ll entertain the argument.
There’s nothing wrong with an instance curating which communities they allow. If people want those communities they can create them on another instance. The thing about the Fediverse is that there’s no one person/organization that decides what kinds of content are allowed, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be a free-for-all.
Well that’s just it: there is. Whoever owns the instance can decide for everyone subscribed to that instance what they may and may not interact with. This is why I think transparency is so important; so users can subscribe to instances which align with their moderation preferences.
For one instance. Do I need to explain to you the difference between a single instance and an entire platform?
And nice piece of goalpost-moving with your claim that this is all about “transparency.” Nothing in your original post even alludes to that.
I think you need to re-read my comment. I made the distinction clear:
I’m also not sure how I’ve moved goalposts. Do I need a 300 page disclaimer attached to all my posts describing things that I like and dislike? I think it’s pretty reasonable to support transparency. Why would you push back on that?
I also support users blocking the communities/magazines they wish to, as long as the community isn’t doing anything specifically illegal.
I came to lemmy to have some personal autonomy over my social media, I strongly dislike the types of toxic rhetoric that the above mention community push and my response would be to personally block them and move on.
There is merit to lawful freedom of speech, despite the abuse that we will naturally see in it’s use. At some point our internet use will have to be understood as the same as the physical public.
The great thing that the fediverse can bring is that we can both have that freedom and personally block out the aggressors in a way that we couldn’t in the physical public world.