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.
Why can I still see posts/comments from beehaw users?
Until they defederated us, posts/comments were being sent to lemmy.world, so we can see everything from before defederation. After defederation, we are no longer receiving or sending updates. So there are now multiple versions of those posts.
Why can I still interact with beehaw communities?
This won’t ever stop. You’ll notice that all posts after defederation are only from lemmy.world users. You won’t see posts/comments from ANY other instance (including instances that ) on beehaw.org communities.
Those communities will quickly suck for us, as we’re only talking to other lemmy.world users. Your posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. I highly recommend just unsubscribing from those communities, since they’re pretty pointless for us to be in right now.
Why do I still see comments from beehaw users on lemmy.world communities?
Again, comments from before defederation were still sent to us. After defederation, it will no longer be possible for beehaw users to interact with the “true” version of lemmy.world communities. Their posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. They also aren’t getting updates from any other lemmy, as the “true” version of those communities is on our instance.
Why do I see posts/comments from beehaw users on communities outside lemmy.world and beehaw.org?
That’s because the “true” version of those posts is outside beehaw. So we get updates from those posts. And lemmy.world didn’t defederate beehaw, so posts/comments from beehaw users can still come to versions hosted on lemmy.world.
The reverse is not true. Because beehaw defederate lemmy.world, any post/comment from a lemmy.world users will NOT be sent to the beehaw version of the post.
This seems like it’s worse for beehaw users than for us?
Yes. In my opinion, this is an extraordinarily dumb act by the beehaw instance owners. It’s worse for beehaw users than for us, and will likely result in many beehaw users leaving that instance. They said in their post that this is a nuke, but I don’t think they fully assessed the blast area. Based on their post, I don’t think they fully understand what defederation does.
I appreciate the thorough explanation. But why did they defederate from us?
They chose to defederate from large instances with open registration. They believe it’s allowing users to troll them.
IMO, this is kinda dumb. As any instance with open registration would be able to do what they want to prevent. Also, anyone can create their own instance and do this, they don’t even need a server. It’s just a bad idea.
To play devil’s advocate for a minute, they’re main points was that moderation actions right now are disproportionately focused on users coming from here and sh.itjust.works, and that the suite of available mod tools is not robust enough for them to handle such a high volume.
I don’t think defederation was the right idea, personally but I don’t think it was the wrong one from their point of view either. They’re trying to intentionally cultivate a culture over there rather than to moderate over an evolving one, and at the moment its too much work for them with the high volume of users. They don’t appear to have any ill-will against this instance as a whole or you. We can disagree with the decision but still respect it as their choice to make.
In the future if their internal culture solidifies I imagine they can refederate with us here; by that time we might have established our own communities to rival the high quality ones over there (gaming and technology) I can see already that lemmyworld is growing pretty well and has a load of communities that are start to thrive!
Sure, but the way they went about doing it was the wrong way to do it.
They’ve effectively locked their users into ONLY accessing their walled garden.
I think what they wanted to do was block lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works users from posting in their communities, which would be possible with a pretty simple bot. Instead, they’re largely preventing their own users from accessing other communities, which based on their post was not their intention. And because of those effects, it’s likely going to result in their users leaving for instances with more access.
But they don’t have that bot. It doesn’t exist. Why do you assume that they can make this bot?
There’s actually discussion about how a multireddit-like system would work so those on federated instances can choose to have beehaw or not or other tech/gaming communities all in one place.
So now we’ve gone from mods making bad decisions from a single subreddit, to mods doing it to entire instances.
You’d think federating with larger communities would be a good thing, so there’s more content and communication and Lemmy doesn’t die and everyone goes back to Reddit.
There’s a positive here:
Everyone can just leave beehaw. I already saw a few comments from users that left beehaw after the admins there made poor decisions. Unlike reddit where if the admins make horrible decisions you can’t really leave, here the admins are bound similarly to how moderators were on reddit.
If the mods fuck up too much, people just create their own sub. Seattle had like 4 different subs due to moderator bullshit. Beehaw will probably not survive, and that’s ok. But lemmy as a whole will be perfectly fine!
I totally left beehaw once I saw the post. I didn’t want to be stuck only seeing what I was told I could.
You also get much more freedom too. You can create communities.
I just did this. Beehaw acting stupid? Ok now I’m on lemmy.world. Just had to subscribe to the communities I like (a task that will later become trivial I’m sure). Only took a few minutes and I can move on with my day. Back reddit when the admins act stupid everything’s fucked. I like it here
Barely a week in and we all get an awesome example of why decentralisation is a good thing
Some instance owners indeed do not understand the difference between running an instance and and running a community inside one. And those bad decisions are amplified by the inability to port your account to another instance easily.
We might end up with very few gargantuan instances, especially as soon as financial thresholds hit. Still an improvement over reddit overall, but I expect some things like that happening regularly.
Somebody claimed 4 moderator’s for the entirety of beehaw which is hilariously low. They should have chosen a defederated instance from the get go then. But perhaps they will open up in the future.
I hope they’ll implement such a feature ASAP, if I’m not mistaken, devs are already having a discussion about that.
What’s stopping trolls from creating new instances just to troll them?
Doesn’t their decision actually “invite” trolls to do so?
Yep. It’s almost like they didn’t fully understand what they were doing…
They probably panicked under the “load”, decisions taken while you’re panicking are never well-thought out, even if intentions are good.
Nothing, and I think their only tool is to ban the new instances as the come online unless they switch their federation method from blacklisting to whitelisting other instances. Their whole ethos invites trolls, which is probably a factor in why users from open registration instances had been causing problems with hate speech and sketchy porn on their instance. I don’t think this specific action is going to change that dynamic, people who don’t like what they are trying to do are inevitably going to poke at them and try to cause trouble regardless.
Trolling them is despicable, not matter their decisions.
I like to think a few bad apples are doing that, and the majority of people here are mature enough not to.
I’m pretty sure it’s a really small group of miserable assholes and everyone else is awesome. I think until Lemmy has better tools to deal with them this kind of shitty situation is an inevitable consequence; a few bad apples spoils the whole bunch.
It takes a lot more work to spin up an instance than it does an account.
You’d be surprised by the length some trolls are willing to go just to troll.
Never heard back in regards to my registration approval, which was nothing but polite. Kinda shows for me where they’re at if they pull something like this. Current beehaw users should think long and hard about whether they really want to support this.
unfortunately lemmy doesn’t allow you to send a message to users you decline. Also maybe they approved you but it landed in your spam folder?
I just want to add that I have another anecdote of this (not getting a response) happening to my partner. Don’t know if it’s a technical issue or they’re overburdened.
Pretty pointless, then.
Another question: how can I tell which communities I joined are from that instance? I tried to unjoin but I can’t see anything that tells me which instance they are.
If you look in your subscribed communities, any community that is followed by “@beehaw.org” is from beehaw. If it has no “@” sign it’s here on lemmy.world. Otherwise, you can see exactly which instance hosts it.
My subscribed communities don’t have the @whatever, just the name of the community. Maybe it’s because of the app? Idk.
Which app are you using? On Jerboa, communities from outside instances have the @ but communities from your home instance don’t.
beehaw mod post here
tldr: not enough mod/admin power to handle all the activity
Because they want only 4 people to have absolute power managing every single community and registration.
Surprise Sherlock, it isn’t doable!
And then they have the audacity to demand the ability to comment and view other instances’ posts without giving those instances the same right to their content.
4 people is such a ridiculous number for strongly policed communities. Heck, it would not be viable for a 4chan style one probably.