YSK: If you're on Lemmy.World or Sh.itjust.works you should not subscribe to any Beehaw communities

SteelBeard@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 787 points –

Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.

Edit: A lot of people are asking why Beehaw did this. I want to keep this post informational and not color it with my personal opinion. I am adding a link to the Beehaw announcement if you are interested in reading it, you can form your own views. https://beehaw.org/post/567170

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Aren't you only "shadow banned" from users of that instance? Wouldn't folks federated with your instance still see your comments?

Pretty sure that's right.

That's confusing. Let's say that there is antance A, B and C. (Instance A is Beehaw) Now let's say A bans C, but not B. And B hasn't banned anyone. That would mean instance A would still see the comments of C, when replying to B, right? If so, people from Instance A would feel like they are being gaslit more then people blocked from instance C.

Doesn't 'gaslit' mean convincing someone they're making things up? Or is that all in my head?

Gaslighting doesn't exist, you made it up

Oh it definitely exists. Ask anyone who has experienced living/working/dealing with a narcissist.

Gaslighting is convincing someone that they perceived or remembered things incorrectly. That's a very specific kind of manipulation.

Why do people use it to mean bullshitting in general?

Like most buzzwords, gaslight has lost its meaning.

Gone the way of 'reboot' huh? I blame the media trying to cram the trendy terms in wherever they can.

My understanding is that Lemmy isn’t peer-to-peer, it’s more like hub-and-spoke, relative to the instance that the community is on.

So if users on B and C are interacting with a post on A, then it’s the responsibility of A to be the postman and handle the syncing between A<>B and A<>C; B and C don’t directly talk in this case.

Thus, nobody outside of Lemmyworld sees posts from Lemmyworld made on Beehaw communities, because Beehaw doesn’t accept them, and therefore doesn’t pass them along to the other instances, either.

So let's say A is Beehaw and C is Lemmy.world and B is a hypothetical instance that Beehaw and Lemmy.world approve. How does that work?

Does it just clip off viewability of the comments for A if a post from C is made?

Trying to understand your comment it sounds like your saying if A bans C, then no on other than C can view their comments?

Not quite. So imagine each Lemmy instance is a post office, responsible for receiving mail from other instances on your behalf, and also responsible for sending your mail to other instances.

The post office (instance) that matters is the one where the thread is taking place. When you write a message on a thread - if the thread is on your home instance, great! No outbound mail. If it's not, your post office (instance) will send your mail across the fediverse to the instance where the thread actually lives, and the receiving instance adds it to the thread.

Likewise, when users reply to you, their instances mail their replies to the instance where the thread lives; the thread's instance is then responsible for re-forwarding their mail to you.

In this case, Beehaw has unilaterally decided not to accept mail from, or deliver mail to, Lemmyworld. So your experience varies based on which is your home instance, and which instance you're interacting with.

So exploring it by example, let's consider we have three instances: Beehaw, Lemmy.world, and (shameless plug) my adorable little home instance of federate.cc, which is federated with both of the above (and is accepting membership applications by the way!)

If the thread lives on Beehaw, and you are a member of...

  • Beehaw, then you can interact with the post (it's your home instance), but you won't see any replies from Lemmyworld users (your post office is refusing to accept letters from them)
  • Lemmyworld, you probably won't be able to see the thread at all (Beehaw refused to deliver it to their post office) - but if by some chance you can, you won't see any comments by Beehaw users (Beehaw refuses to deliver them to the Lemmyworld post office)
  • federate.cc, then you will be able to interact with the post (Beehaw delivers mail to our post office), but you won't see any replies from Lemmyworld users (Beehaw refuses to accept mail from Lemmyworld users, and by extension refuses to deliver their mail to our post office)

If the thread lives on Lemmyworld, and you are a member of...

  • Beehaw, you probably won't be able to see the thread at all (Beehaw refused to accept the mail from Lemmyworld, returning it to sender) - but if by some chance you can, you won't see any comments by Lemmyworld users (Beehaw refuses to accept mail from Lemmyworld, returning it to sender)
  • Lemmyworld, then you can interact with the post (it's your home instance), but you won't see any replies from Beehaw users (their post office refuses to deliver letters to yours)
  • federate.cc, then you will be able to interact with the post, but you probably won't see any replies from Beehaw users (Beehaw's post office refuses to deliver mail addressed to Lemmyworld)

If the thread lives on federate.cc, and you are a member of...

  • Beehaw, you will be able to see and interact with the thread, since Beehaw's post office both sends and receives mail from federate.cc; but you won't see any messages from Lemmyworld users, because Beehaw's post office will refuse mail that originated at Lemmyworld; when we try to forward that mail to Beehaw's post office, it will be refused and returned to sender.
  • Lemmyworld, you will be able to see and interact with the thread, since Lemmyworld's post office both sends and receives mail from federate.cc; you will see messages from Beehaw users, because Beehaw's post office will deliver mail to ours; but if you interact with them at all, they will never see it, because Beehaw will reject mail that originated at Lemmyworld (see above).
  • federate.cc, then you will be able to interact with the post as normal, you will see replies from people at all three instances, and they will see yours

Phew! How confusing. A far better solution would be... don't defederate, splitting the community!

But can C see A through B?

My understanding is that Lemmy isn’t peer-to-peer, it’s more like hub-and-spoke, relative to the instance that the community is on.

So if users on B and C are interacting with a post on A, then it’s the responsibility of A to be the postman and handle the syncing between A<>B and A<>C; B and C don’t directly talk in this case.

Thus, nobody outside of Lemmyworld sees posts from Lemmyworld made on Beehaw communities, because Beehaw doesn’t accept them, and therefore doesn’t pass them along to the other instances, either.

My understanding is that Lemmy isn’t peer-to-peer, it’s more like hub-and-spoke, relative to the instance that the community is on.

So if users on B and C are interacting with a post on A, then it’s the responsibility of A to be the postman and handle the syncing between A<>B and A<>C; B and C don’t directly talk in this case.

Thus, nobody outside of Lemmyworld sees posts from Lemmyworld, because Beehaw doesn’t accept them, and therefore doesn’t pass them along to the other instances, either.