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Dispelling the myth of a universal "Lemmy" community, and discussion of what the fediverse really is (beehaw.org)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Brand new to lemmy, but this is my take as well. The first account I created was on lemmy.world and then I had to create another to come here. Imagine if Verizon 'defederated' from T-Mobile because of a few bad actors.

The problems are real, but the solutions Lemmy currently seems to offer are going to stifle it's growth before it can truly go big. I can deal with it, but as it currently stands I could never get my friends to join and even if they did, a defederation event happening would kill the concept dead for my more casual friends.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago

Imagine if Verizon ‘defederated’ from T-Mobile because of a few bad actors.

People have been conditioned to never answer their phones when an unknown number calls because of a few bad actors that severely abuse the system and none of the network operators want to take responsibility for the actions of their users (and they are profiting from this lack of moderation).

Imagine if ISPs and services like Cloudflare didn't counter DDoS attacks.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

Imagine if Verizon ‘defederated’ from T-Mobile because of a few bad actors.

happens with email servers all the time

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

That's basically how federated software has to work. Without defederation, running federated software becomes unusable. Either you get overrun by spammers or you become legally liable for illegal content from other servers if you don't do anything about it (the beehaw admins mentioned someone posting child porn as being one reason for defederation). Lemmy is clearly in its early days but this kind of thing will become way more common, as it is on more mature fediverse platforms.

Email providers are a good example of federated software. They have to make sure nobody is sending spam or malware or they will get federated, and they can be very aggressive about that.

Ultimately if you don't want defederation to ever happen, you want a centralized system run by a single organization. Those are your options.

Or you can have the government step in and have a very highly regulated system like for telephony, where almost nobody gets to run an instance, which seems unlikely in this case.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

It's just like when email blew up. Email is a federated system as well. These are basically the same arguments I was hearing in the late 80s, early 90s about email. It's too confusing, nobody will ever use it.

Most servers did zero authentication for incoming emails. When spammers suddenly struck huge ip blocks were banned including innocent bystanders. Any "home" machine was often port blocked from running a mail server.

They developed tools and techniques to mitigate problems and now nobody cares where your email is.

The tools for this area known and the devs are working on it. Early adopters experience some friction.