As this #RedditBlackout accelerates the Fediverse experiment, I feel the urge… the need… to chime in with my 2-cents.
My summary of the current lay of the land: Beehaw saw a wave of pornography spam and decided to shut Lemmy.world off and Defederate from this server. I’m too new to this community to fully understand the wants/needs of each individual server, but I’ve been around the internet long enough to recognize that porn-spam is an age-old trolling technique and will occur again in the future. Especially as small, boutique, hobbyist servers pop up and online drama/rivalries increase, online harassment campaigns (like coordinated porn spam attacks) are simply an inevitability.
Lemmy.world wants open registrations. Beehaw does not: Beehaw wants users to be verified before posting. This is normal: many old /r/subreddits would simply shadowban all 1-year old accounts and earlier… giving the illusion that everything is well for 5+ or 10+ year old accounts, but cut out on the vast majority of spam accounts with short lives. This works for Reddit where you have a huge number of long-lived accounts, but its still not a perfect technique: you can pay poor people in 3rd world countries to create accounts, post on them for a year, and the these now verified accounts can be paid for by spammers to invade various subreddits.
I digress. My main point is that many subreddits, and now Lemmy-instances/communities, want a “trusted user”. Akin to the 1±year-old account on Reddit. Its not a perfect solution by any means, but accounts that have some “weight” to them, that have passed even a crude time-based selection process, are far easier to manage for small moderation teams.
We don’t have the benefit of time however, so how do we quickly build trust on the Fediverse? It seems impossible to solve this problem on lemmy.world and Beehaw.org alone. At least, not with our current toolset.
A 3rd Server appears: ImNotAnAsshole.net
But lets add the 3rd server, which I’ll hypothetically name “ImNotAnAsshole.net”, or INAA.net for short.
INAA.net would be an instance that focuses on building a userbase that follows a large set of different instances recruiting needs. This has the following benefits.
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Decentralization – Beehaw.org is famously only run by 4 administrators on their spare time. They cannot verify hundreds of thousands of new users who appear due to #RedditBlackout. INAA.net would allow another team to focus on the verification problem.
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Access to both lemmy.world and Beehaw.org with one login – As long as INAA.net remains in the good graces of other servers (aka: assuming their user filtering model works), any user who registers on INAA.net will be able to access both lemmy.world and Beehaw.org with one login.
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Custom Moderation tools – INAA.net could add additional features independently of the core github.com/LemmyNet programming team and experiment. It is their own instance afterall.
Because of #2, users would be encouraged to join INAA.net, especially if they want access to Beehaw.org. Lemmy.world can remain how it is, low-moderation / less curated users and communities (which is a more appropriate staging grounds for #RedditBlackout refugees). Beehaw.org works with the INAA.net team on the proper rules for INAA.net to federate with Beehaw.org and everyone’s happy.
Or is it? I am new to the Fediverse and have missed out on Mastodon.social drama. Hopefully older members of this community can chime in with where my logic has gone awry.
There’s a bunch of other instances. Like mine at discuss.online. Nothing new is needed.
Seems like you’re just suggesting everyone use beehaw with federated accounts.
Oh there’s plenty that’s needed.
The vast majority of users here are from #RedditBlackout and their eyes glaze over at that discussion point. They don’t know what a “federated account” is.
What’s needed is education? Community organization? Etc. etc. People are new to Lemmy and Fediverse. People are trying to figure out what the plan is. A lot of users are already feeling “betrayed” that they “chose the wrong server” when they registered here at lemmy.world.
The platform just needs to mature a bit. It’s new and discovered in desperation. It’s free and not monetized. Everyone is working in their free time to build something wonderful.
The Mlem team went from 2 people to 20. They’re about to drop a huge update to their beta app.
The lemmy team worked on front end improvements in the upcoming 0.18 front end.
I have a beta instance setup if anyone wants to see it.
Don’t feel betrayed. Have two accountants. Move to a new instance. Or just wait for them to federate again when the dust settles.
What do you need those 2 accountants for? ;)
So one can tell you that the other is costing you too much.
A lot of users are already feeling “betrayed” that they “chose the wrong server” when they registered here at lemmy.world.
Many of those same users have been calling Beehaw admins snowflake dictators since before the block. These are people who want their cake and want to eat it, too. They want to not have to abide by Beehaw’s rules, but also have unfettered access to Beehaw. That’s not a tenable position.
My much simpler stance is: they don’t want lemmy.world users on their instance, I’ll respect that, I unsubbed from their communities and found the same elsewhere.
They’re not the only Lemmy servers in the world, Lemmy is still new overall, I don’t see any problem in “rebuilding” the 2 big subs they have somewhere else, I’m already putting my effort in contributing to make it so.
edit: typo
I think one thing that hasn’t been mentioned here is the huge gap in the size of the communities. The largest beehaw communities have almost 20k subscribers while the largest I’ve seen from other instances seem to cap out at about 5k. I think the problem is that most of the users who still federate with beehaw will undoubtedly end up there. This presents serious difficulties for growing competing communities.
Beehaw’s limited registration will turn off many users and eventually instances with open registration will catch up.
This comment is a month old so you will be happy to know that you are right. That is what happened.
But what is the magical ability to achieve step 2? How do you filter and moderate users reliably at scale?
The fundamental issue is that Beehaw wants to eat their cake and have it too. They want their users to be able to read and comment on other instances, but not have to mirror their content, pay for image hosting, etc. or allow other instances’ users access to Beehaw’s content.
They want the benefits of federation without giving anything in return.
Correct me if I’m wrong but that’s not how it works. Beehaw users can’t read and comment on other instances, that Beehaw defederated with.
Indeed, but this was their request for the future. Mastodon has a similar option as instance-wide “silencing”/limiting - https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/moderation/#limit-server
Go and read their comments, they’re pretty open about it.
I listed Reddit’s “secret rule” amongst long-term moderators and subreddit communities. Just straight up ban accounts that are younger than a certain age. That’s already going to grossly clamp down on porn-spam and troll accounts, because it means that the trolls need to either buy a pre-made account, or the trolls have to wait a week with good behavior before engaging in troll activity.
EDIT: Is that enough for Beehaw.org? I don’t know. But lets say INAA.net is just a time-delay. All accounts less than 1-week are only allowed to post to lemmy.world. All accounts older than that are unlocked to talk with Beehaw.org.
But in your example, everyone would have to sign up to INAA.net rather than lemmy.world. Like I couldn’t use this account, I’d need a separate one because accounts aren’t registered across instances like that (nor transferrable atm).
Theoretically, INAA.net could use ActivityPub federation to keep a database of user accounts from various instances based on their Fediverse address (i.e.
@BaldProphet@kbin.social) that Lemmy and Kbin instances can query to check for things like age and reputation. No accounts would necessarily have to be created there.
You are just describing joining any one of the dozens on instances that aren’t defederated from Beehaw or Lemmy.world - your INAA.net already exists in the form of all those instances which Beehaw didn’t defederate from.
Isn’t the whole point of the fediverse to have different instances with different rules and cultures, and them all having the freedom to associate with (or to not associate with) whichever other instances they choose? Boohoo, an instance is using their freedoms in a way you aren’t! Don’t get so upset over what Beehaw chooses to do. People who agree with Beehaw will hang out there more and people who don’t will move elsewhere. This is the natural way of things, isn’t it?
You’re basically describing how the fediverse works I think.
How is it different than the current situation where both lemmy.world and beehaw.org are connect to lemmy.ml?
Given my perspective as part of the #RedditBlackout wave, I think its needed for me to explicitly point out this perspective this week. I recognize that you folk who have been hanging around the Fediverse longer than me already recognize this as reality. But this is a new world for a lot of the folk joining up Lemmy.world.
The issue, is that we were sold on “It doesn’t matter which server you sign up for” on https://github.com/maltfield/awesome-lemmy-instances. See this quote:
Don’t overthink this. It doesn’t matter which instance you use. You’ll still be able to interact with communities (subreddits) on all other instances, regardless of which instance your account lives 🙂
This oversold the community, got a bunch of former Redditors signed up here, and now a bunch of people are feeling kinda-sorta betrayed by the values already.
The link also refers to
BB: The number of instances that this instances is completely Blocked By. If this number is high, then users on this instance will be limited in what they can see on the lemmyverse.and lists how many other instances every server on that list are blocked by.When it comes to the overselling of Lemmy and the interconnectivity, what can I say? I’d word it very differently.
Anyways, from a technical point of view I’d say it’s close to what you describe - With third party instances working as an intermediary in some way. The issue is that there’s no “sync” for communities and historically we end up with three different versions of i.e. !gaming, one on each instance. What Lemmy need is some sort of multi-reddit/funneling/taggins system so you can just post to a !gaming community - And then it’d be rejected by those who’ve blocked you. But everybody else would get it.
The issue is that there’s no “sync” for communities and historically we end up with three different versions of i.e. !gaming, one on each instance.
I don’t expect this to be a problem.
Over on /r/Reddit, there was /r/AskElectronics, /r/Electronics, /r/embedded, /r/microcontrollers, and /r/DIYElectronics. Because the moderator at the big /r/Electronics instance needlessly clamped down on discussion. Forcing community members to start up other subreddits (with a less popular name / get less traffic).
As the various instances settle down, the community will organize and recognize which discussion forums to centralize upon. We always had multiple subreddits for the same subject on Reddit. And now its a bit more fair that everyone can get a good name (ie: !gaming), albeit on different servers.
Well, we will end up with 160+ !gaming communities and no way of finding them other than word of mouth or actively checking every single instance and subscribe to !gaming - If they even have one.
It’s been a big issue for the two years I’ve been on Lemmy and I don’t believe the most used argument, “It will sort it self out, the community will balance it out”.
I’m not too bothered, I have mitigating procedures. I would be very interested in having this discussion again in a year, I feel this is one of the matters that only time will tell if one or none of us is right.
No?
The “Search for community” button shows !gaming and sorts them by size within the instances you can access. Here at lemmy.world, I can see that Gaming@lemmy.ml is the next largest after we’ve been cut off from gaming@beehaw.org.
we will end up with 160+ !gaming communities and no way of finding them other than word of mouth or actively checking every single instance
This lacks a good solution yet, that’s right. It’s less of a problem for people on big instances. People on small instances will often have to discover communities first before they can be found by search.
The next best solution I know is https://lemmy.directory/search (which seems to be down currently). lemmy.directory has the mission to subscribe to all communities in all instances to replicate something like /r/all. So they did the discovery for you, and you can search from their point of view to see what exists. Once found, you can discover it from your home instance in order to subscribe.
The next best solution
Interesting, I’ll check it out once it’s back up.
If it’s automatically connect to “friends-of-friends” instances and subscribe to all communities, that’s a great idea! It would basically crawl the known network as long as there was a single link between instances. It would particularly be a boon to smaller instances that would be much easier to connect to.
If it’s a regular instance ran as a community server with the aim of manually subscribing to everything as an emergency solution to this problem then eh… I literally did that a year ago with like 20 instances. I think that’s not feasible, or even worse - exclusionary without intending. If it’s all manual and everybody goes there because we think it’s all-encompassing… If one is not on the list they don’t exist to the world.
Consider it the equivalent of how subreddits used to ban members that used to participate in subreddits they don’t agree with. Instances will by default federate with each other when their users interact, unless one of them opts out of it. Another analogy how email servers block those servers that have been the origin of too much spam etc This is a feature, and not a bug, and is the same way problematic servers are kept out (not saying that Lemmy.world is problematic).
But the good thing is that you can change your profile easily to any instance that has not been defeferated and interact with beehaw again, if you really want to. I am not sure if Lemmy has a back up and restore option yet like Mastodon, but if it does, you could move all your data along with your profile to the new instance.
Consider it the equivalent of how subreddits used to ban members that used to participate in subreddits they don’t agree with.
What subreddits did that?? I don’t think I so much as got commented on subreddits I visited, let alone got banned for being in one.
I don’t remember specific subreddits but it was mainly left leaning subreddits banning anyone who had ever commented on e.g. r/theDonald, even if they’d gone there to debate in good faith (lol)
You’d likely never know you had been banned from a chunk of subreddits since it was shadowbans
It’s a great idea, but how do you propose verification on the INAA.net site? Using their current instance account details and seeing how many upvotes their comments and posts have received or something? Essentially developing a Karma tracking system that’s seperate to Lemmy.
Like you say a staging post, but then account elevation which allows it on more sensitive instances? I don’t know how we could guide new users to these staging instances though, unless every popular instance, where most content is created, draws up the bridges together and makes them read-only to the staging instances.
If beehaw didn’t want to get involved, it’s up to them, but I can see other instances who would want to use the service. Tbh the beehaw admins do sound like they a tad powermad so screw them anyway.
Lemmy needs a governing body, based on a democratic election system, to handle all this in all in sync between all instance admins. That body would also be in control of the master blocklists.
I don’t know how we could guide new users to these staging instances though
Read-only access to Beehaw.org, but with a message “Beehaw.org has a user-treaty with INAA.net. Only users older than 1-week can post to Beehaw.org instances”
I admit that these features don’t exist yet. But why not? Lets first come up with the idea and try to figure out what is easiest to code.
So we got defederated? I guess that explains the massive decline of activity here. It’s really not selling the fediverse for me if you can suddenly be cut off from the rest of the world just like that.
I don’t see how one out of 160+ servers not connecting to sh.itjust.works would cut you out from the rest of the world.
I think of it more like being cut off from 1/160th of the fediverse. Unfortunate, but in the end a type of community I don’t think I’ll miss since our values don’t align.
Only from beehaw.org, right? I’m still seeing this from sdf.org.
Am I misunderstanding or does this not just mean you’ll have to choose your registered instance to match your needs, and if some instances you like are too widely considered problematic to access from a broadly useful instance you may have to have another identity there.
Somewhere like beehaw.org appears to be an instance that’s likely to exclude fairly aggressively, so that’s a consideration for whether you want that to be your home.
You’ve got it the other way around - Beehaw is defederating themselves from all the major instances, because they can’t enforce a safe space like they want to at any kind of scale on this Fediverse model. Lemmy.world is about twice the size of Beehaw in number of users.
That user is from sh.itjust.works, which is a 2nd server that Beehaw also Defederated from.
Yeah, just saw that. Either way, I completely understand Beehaw’s goal but don’t understand how they think it’s going to work in the long run.
In the long run they are hoping for more flexibility. I think it is incorrect that they are separating from “all the major instances” but they are separating from (two) servers with open account creation. I personally think an instance admin should be informed when their users are being banned from other instances, so they have the option to review behavior and consider if they would like to do the same. Sh.itjust.works at least has instance rules that should be compatible with most of what beehaw doesn’t like.
Unlikely to occur. Beehaw’s admins hate dissent and anyone questioning them. Well before the blackout, they literally had a “no sources” rule because users kept questioning the mods. Likewise their current “rule set” states what they say, goes, and that everything is up to them, not the rules. They say that with all cases (except obvious trolls), that they will always warn first. I have yet to ever see any kind of warning from any of their admins.
They were being questioned on sh.it and on lemmy.world, so they blocked both. You can check their modlog to see just how little spam they had to deal with.
You can also pop in to look at their discord to see how much they dislike the criticism.
I read the “essays” the beehive have to “join” and take part. In my view they wanted to make a space for their own community and choose a fediverse where they should have picked a closed off forum/discord/redditcopy.
I personally got banned because I got into an argument with the admin there. They wrongly assumed that I was American and made a claim to counter my argument, I then pointed out their mistake that their claim doesn’t apply to my country, and then – Boom, banned.
Glad you stood your ground
I stand, for standing. Stanground.
But yea me too. Stand up to tiny kings.
