this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023

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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] 69 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

People don't dislike defederation because they misunderstand it. They dislike it because it's a bad user experience. It sucks to effectively get banned from a bunch of major communities through no fault of your own. It's a flawed system. I don't know what a good solution would be, but it's definitely an issue.

I guess one solution is to encourage users to join servers that are as small as possible, to reduce the chance of getting blocked. But that approach comes with its own set of downsides too.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I'm torn on defederation. In theory I like it; a user can join an instance that moderates to the level that they agree with. Beehaw is a pretty good example of this because a lot of users like having a slightly more restrictive community in order to maintain a certain vibe.

But there is a more pragmatic side of me that thinks that the average user isn't super informed about this stuff, and are naturally going to gravitate to the larger instances. No doubt there were more trolls coming from lemmy.world, but there are far more regular users that have no idea what's going on.

I think Beehaw's decision is understandable though, especially given the lack of moderation tools. They've already mentioned that they are willing to (re?)federate in the future when trolls/bots are easier to deal with.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

I think that this can easily be mitigated by the addition of transferable user profiles. Because the easier it is to hop off of a server and move to another, the better. You lose those communities in the event of a split, but then you desire new ones on your new instance and go join them. It would heal the UX much faster.

Like other users, I expect this will largely become a rarer and rarer occurrence as moderation levels out. We're very early in the game still.

One thing I haven't seen talked about is the benefit of this defederation. When beehaw defederated, what happened immediately? A lot of noise was made. The mods got in contact and opened dialog. Communities desired federation. While that's interpreted as entitlement, I think it's possible beneficial to keep the number of defederation events low and only done when necessary.

[–] [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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

Yep. I have accounts on three instances, but I had been using my Lemmy.World one the most, and then suddenly my beehaw communities are gone. It’s not a huge deal given that these accounts are so young, but it was still annoying. These sorts of things will prevent Lemmy from growing as an overall community.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Yeah, and the user experience matters a lot right now. The reddit blackout is the best chance for rapid Lemmy/fediverse growth, so giving the best user experience right now is critical. Users who are new to the fediverse are already confused by the multiple instances, adding in extra conditions like "don't join these communities because you can't interact with this community" adds an extra level of complexity and makes the fediverse seem fractured and flawed as a first impression.

Beehaw's decision to defiderate may have been the best short-term decision for them, but I feel like it's a terrible decision for the rest of the fediverse and will hurt growth.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Defederating lemmy.world is a temporary measure as better mod tools are made. It isn’t worth handwringing over. Defederation should not be the norm for dealing with a few trolls, or objectionable communities.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (9 children)

This isn't handwringing, though I can understand why it might come off that way. This is simply mulling over how things "actually work" in the fediverse as opposed to how people believe it works. I believe that many people have a fundamental misunderstanding of what this software is and how it works. This is an educational issue that we have an opportunity to begin sorting out

In addition, my scenario of instance users subscribing to illegal content will still be valid even with moderation tools. The only way to stop that currently is defederation with instances hosting illegal content.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (12 children)

Federation/Fediverse should mean a user of any instance should be able to use any community. Gated communities shouldn’t be the expected norm. So, I would agree with the lemmy.world people who are upset at being broadly blocked from a Fediverse community. But it doesn’t matter because beehaw says it is temporary.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 years ago (2 children)

This is true, except for one element:

Fediverse should mean a user of any instance should be able to use any community the instance elects to federate with. Lemmy is open by design, but instances can just as easily switch that feature off and go to a allowlist method.

A commonly missed element with federation is that you federate with who you trust since you essentially mirror their content. It's less apparent with the lemmy migration, but mastodon used to caution its users to "join an instance that aligns with your preferences" for this reason.

Federation is really a philosophy about mutual trust, just like how email providers can block messages by user, instance, or domain.

Trust me, there's likely more gating present than you're aware of. Maybe not at lemmy.world (which as of this post is only blocking one site for reasons I won't mention), but this can get dark pretty quick if you leave things completely open.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A major instance (in terms of comunities) like Beehaw changing from denylist to Allowlist would be devastating for users on small and single-user instances, so I hope it never comes to that. Unless there's some process to get hundreds of tiny unknow instances in the Allowlist

I think some people see Lemmy as a way to host their own self-supported community on their own server, with users identifying strongly with the values of the instance, and with cohesion among the users of the instance.

While other people (me included) see instances more as something to just host the account, so we can participate in Commities across "the network", where "the network" is basically all the Lemmy instances except the de-federated extremists, or other walled gardens. User-cohesion is more on the Community-level and less on the Instance-level.

Do we want a small network of instances that have proven themselves trustworthy? Or do we want a large network of instances that have yet to prove themselves untrustworthy? Different people will have different answers

You do bring up a good point about needing to trust your federated instances because you're essentially mirroring their content

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I don't think that assertion is based in reality. A server has to be hosted somewhere, and admins will generally choose to uphold those local regulations for the sake of their instance's own longevity. Federation has never meant that you communicate with literally every other instance. This isn't Tor where nodes pass along communications that don't directly involve themselves.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (24 children)

By that line of reasoning all alt-right, homophobe, harassing, doxxing, trolling etc. instances should be allowed to access every other instance to spread their hate. Is that really what you want? I don't.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It’s unfortunate that a handful of replies here are demonstrating exactly why the Beehaw community leaders felt they had to make this choice. 😞

If Lemmy instances are like web forums, federation basically gives us a “Sign in with your [home instance] account” option. (That’s not technically accurate at all, I’m only talking about the user experience.) It reduces user friction and helps people participate more widely. They just stopped allowing that from certain instances because they think adding a bit of friction back in will be healthier for the Beehaw communities. If you’re on one of the defederated instances, you aren’t banned. Yeah, it’s inconvenient for you, but you just need a different sign-in (at least for the time being).

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (1 children)

From an end user perspective, I want a singular UI to browse all my various Lemmy identities in a cohesive manner. Not logged in on multiple tabs, trying to keep my subscription lists synced or otherwise organized. This is where a good app front end could smooth a lot of user friction out of the process.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago

People also need to be mindful that the concept of the fediverse isn't a simple one, not to the majority of people who use Reddit / other sites. We want to try and streamline the process of searching for, signing up to and contributing to content, at least if we want these platforms to continue to grow.

We don't need the 400+ million that Reddit has but having more interested users will help generate more content / engagement

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

This is a bad take because you used the most extreme example of why defederation is a practical necessity to justify a significantly less serious issue. I personally would want the bar to be much higher for this kind of thing.

I also don't "misunderstand" anything here. I just strongly disagree with the decision. What's next, beehaw gets upset that other instances allow downvoting?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Hi, Beehaw user here. You can downvote me all you want and they'll never appear on my instance so that won't be an issue. I could be sitting at -50 on your instance and it'll always appear as 1 on mine.

Honestly though, I'm a big fan of the defederation decision (at least for now). It's only a temporary measure until Lemmy gets more powerful mod tools and then they'll refederate when they can more easily moderate the trolls and bad actors. This is one of the features of the fediverse, got an instance that's producing a large amount of trolls? Not anymore! Insta-community clean. The only people I've ran across that don't like it are normally the people that end up getting banned tbh.

Edit: For reference to the vote scores, on Beehaw this is currently sitting at 25 upvotes for me. If anybody is viewing from an instance with downvotes, that's how it appears for Beehaw users.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Personally, I think there is way too much overreaction to the defederations. I agree with admins’ reasons, and it is clear that the minute there are sufficient moderation tools available, that the impacted servers will be re-federated.

The pressure is now on the developers to start pushing more iterative moderation tools - something that wasn’t a priority before Reddit decided to implode, and now looks like it needs to be reprioritized. This is a project/project management issue.

The problem isn’t the decision to defederate, it’s that the only solution to handle bad actors is binary. It’s like shaving your head because you have over-dried out hair, when you’d rather just cut the split ends.

I am willing to be patient because I see Lemmy as a long-term engagement. I’ve been off Reddit since the AMA and haven’t had any desire to go back. I’d rather invest the time here and show the devs that prioritizing more iterative mod tools is a good ROI for them.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Completely agree, I don't like that defederation is the only tool but glad that it's there at least. Looking forward to when those more powerful tools can be developed for the mods but this works as a bandaid for now.

The only interaction I've had with Reddit is going through my saved posts and bringing over to Lemmy what I think is worth it. Next up is deleting the account and editing all the comments.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I do not think that anyone "likes" de-federation. In the end though people coming in from other nodes are guests in our forums. We do not have to put up with bad behavior. Moreover instances that allow their users to engage in this bad behavior take some responsibility too. They are your users after all. So if your instance gets banned look to your instances users, and also the admins and their policies that allow those users on that node. Do not under estimate the troll problem. Moderation is required and if it cannot be done effectively then other actions have to be taken like de-federation.

Then again, your coming from lemmy.ml and are not de-federated so why do you care. It is also a bit rich when lemmy.ml has not accepting subscriptions from behaw since I joined. Maybe you should complain about that too.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

For example, lemmy.world are pissed at being de-federated because it excludes them from Beehaw communities.

Are they, though? I’ve read a lot about it, and everyone over there seems to more or less understand it, kind of just shrug about it now, and have moved on. Lemmy world sees it’s bigger than beehaw now, has tons of its own content, still has access everywhere else and will be fine.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To me the whole situation is a "they bit off more than they could chew" kind of thing so you pull the nuclear option.. Honestly I'm avoiding subscribing to any beehaw communities because I won't be able to see any posts made from one of the most populous instances, hence diminishing their value. As a general user I would avoid signing up for beehaw as well for the same reasons.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

bit off more than they could chew

By starting a Lemmy instance a year and a half before Rexxit? I never saw them claim to want to be the next Reddit. The Fediverse had an influx of users and Lemmy doesn’t currently have the mod or admin tools to deal with that situation gracefully. My understanding is that most of the bad actors were external to Beehaw.

They didn’t bite off anything, shit was being shoved into their mouth so they closed it.

Personally, I’m using my very own Lemmy instance so that I can choose who I federate with (including Beehaw). I totally understand why some folks might want to have their home instance elsewhere, and it’s cool that federation gives us that ability.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If communities belonged to "lemmy" you would have Reddit. If anything would be forcefully federated it would be a mess. IMHO it's the right balance. I get your concerns about being confusing but given the state of development of the platform most of it will be solved by a better UI and better instance data synchronization policies, etc...

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

know very little about the programming but it feels like there would be some sort of SSO multi-instance user account syncing solution.

Make an account on one instance, say Lemmy.World, and from that account request access to the other instances that you would like to join. Your account would get cloned and synced to the other instances that you get accepted to and posts/comments in that instance would be stored on that instance account as a secondary instance.

Posts could be cloned to all federated clone accounts or you could designate a secondary backup acount in case the primary server goes down. Maybe there could be a limit of instances you join like 3-5 cloned accounts to reduce duplication of data and maybe only clone messages, not media or something unless specifically requested. It would also allow for folks to continue posting and browsing even if their primary instance is overloaded or down which would improve the end user experience.

Again I only have an approximate idea how this works so this may all be dumb...

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

As we are seeing the same issues with Lemmy and Mastodon I'm starting to think there is something fundamentally wrong with ActivityPub.

Because instances pull content from others they have a responsibility in the content, so instances with different rules can't really work together.

If on the other hand we had a lighter integration between instances, like for example RSS to consume from multiple instances and only having federation for identity management (like OpenID or OAuth) I feel like we could avoid a lot of drama.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

This is so cool, these discussions remind me of events in the Bobiverse books where the spirit of these topics are similar. Also the start trek instance is totally getting this right from my perspective of things (startrek.website). Of course there are many ways to approach this as « right » is one’s opinion.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Signing up for social networking so you can start yanking tech support and reading man pages right away? Is this some elaborate masochistic exploration that we don't know about? What the vuck are you all talking about...

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago (7 children)

People need to understand what lemmy is. This is not monolithic social media like facebook or reddit. People need to understand that, or the mismatch between how they think it works and how it actually works is going to cause a lot of mental anguish that could be avoided.

As they say in software development, 8 hours of debugging can save you from one hour of reading the manual.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago (10 children)

A huge portion of people seem to be misidentifying communities as belonging to “lemmy” as opposed to the instances that host them.

The thing that I think didn't sit right with a lot of people is that Beehaw's admins apparently said (I haven't seen it first hand) that they see a future in refederating with Beehaw's communities being kept private, only accessible to Beehaw users, while Beehaw users would get access to the wider Fediverse.

To be honest, I feel that it's Beehaw's prerogative to grant or revoke access to anyone on other instances, but also I wouldn't be surprised that in turn other instances would not federate with an instance that would not give access to other instances' users for its communities.

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