this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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The biggest c/gaming was on beehaw, but that's defederated. Maybe nobody else wanted to do it again and just stuck to smalller communities based on particular systems.
Wait what? I can still view the gaming beehaw just fine
Federation can be a one way street. The problem with that is your comments and votes will only be visible from the instance you did it from. Lemmy.world will show other Lemmy.world users your comment but Beehaw will not ever see it, which means your comment will not proliferate to other instances either.
You can still browse content from an instance that has defederated yours but your actions will only be visible on your own instance.
Does this mean that only beehaw will not be able to see your interactions but every other instance would still be able to?
Think of instances a bit like mail centers.
When you are federated with an instance, they will deliver their mail to you. You are also able write to any of their communities, who will deliver that mail to other instances that they're in business with.
But when an instance defederates from yours, they're no longer delivering mail to and from you. When you look at one of their communities, you effectively have a mailbox, still with the carrier's logo, but nothing is coming or going anymore. What you're left with is all of the old mail that was there before they canceled your route, along with new letters being written by people on your side that will never be delivered.
From the perspective of the other instance, however, they've torn out your mailbox entirely. It effectively doesn't exist.
The more complicated part is what happens when users from these two instances visit a third who they are both federated with. That third instance will accept my mail, and share it to everyone else. But the instance that defederated from me will not accept any of my mail, even when it's routed through the other instance.
But defederation is a one-sided block (unless both instances defederates from each other), so the third instance will still send me comments/posts from people on the instance that defederated from mine. But if I try to reply to them on that third instance, they'll never see it because they aren't taking any of my mail.
No, the host instance will not proliferate your input to other instances. Only your instance will have that and will only share it with other users from your instance.
e.g. I'm on Lemmy.world. I post on the Beehaw gaming community. Only other users from Lemmy.world will see my posts.
Everything you post in a beehaw community won’t be seen by anyone else. Everything you post in a community of any other instance will be seen by everyone who isn’t on an instance that defederated yours
That's a very interesting setup. Seems kinda weird that it wouldn't just block anything coming from the defederated instance.
But it does.
Example: You're on lemmy.world. Let's say lemmy.world defederates lemmy.ml today.
Now you won't be able to see any new posts made by users of lemmy.ml, be it on lemmy.ml itself or on any other instance. You will still see everything that was posted up until the defederation though because defederation just means that your instance won't request new copies of the content of lemmy.ml .
And they also can't post stuff on comunities of lemmy.world(I believe they technically could do that, just that nobody could see it, but it may be that by now it's entirely blocked to even make a post there).
Now as long as lemmy.ml doesn't defederate lemmy.world too, their users will still be able to see your comments and may also reply to your comments on other instances, but you won't see that.
So defederation mainly serves two purposes for the users of the instance that defederates another instance: