How the beehaw defederation affects us
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.
Should lemmy.world defederate from beehaw.org so we don't even see their posts/comments? It seems a bad user experience to have posts/comments appear that we can't properly interact with.
No, this is a bad idea. If an instance defederates, they no longer get the "true" version of posts in other instances.
This idea of defederation is an extreme step. It really is like a nuke, and it really is supposed to be used in extreme circumstances (for example, a nazi instance should be defederated asap). The issue is that this extreme action is being used incorrectly.
They're using extreme actions when a bot could just as easily accomplish the same task without needing to nearly break lemmy. It shows that the admins of that instance really don't understand what defederation is or what it actually does.
Yeah, but the problem is at the moment you might reply to their posts/comments in other instances without realising they aren't going to see your response?
It just seems a really complex UX for little gain.
Think of it this way, defederation makes the user experience worse for users of the instance that did the defederation.
If your instance defederates others, you're the one having to contend with broken comments, missing posts, etc. Basically everything outside our own instance becomes worse when your instances is the one doing the defederation. This is not a bug, it's a feature. Defederation is extreme, it's not meant to be used this way.
The best thing to do is to just ignore this action by beehaw. Their users will likely leave due to this happening. Unsub from their communities, because they're useless to you now.
I would tend to disagree to an extent.
Because at the moment, posters on lemmy.world are posting to c/politics, c/gaming, c/news on beehaw completely unaware that not only can those comments not be seen on beehaw, but they also arent sharing comments with sh.itjust.works, lemmy.ml etc
its confusing for new users.
I very much think that for the time being Beehaw is defederated in return, just to stop people posting to those communities not realising that they are operating in a wee sandbox, completely invisible to the rest of the feds.
I think this is an eminently reasonable take, but I'd like to present what I hope is also a reasonable counterpoint:
A major instance misusing defederation at a time when the broader community is under stress IS an extreme action. In order to reduce their own moderation load, beehaw has:
In short, because defederation is such a heavy hammer with many external costs... it's a really big deal when a "load-bearing" instance misuses it.
I agree that retaliatory defederation shouldn't be the norm, especially for small instances. But when a top 5 instance uses defederation carelessly against other top-5 instances, the repercussions reverberate throughout the lemmyverse. It's probably anti-helpful for
lemmy.worldto act unilaterally in this regard, and it's probably too much to hope for consensus among other major instances that this is a misuse of defederation... but if 4 of the top 5 largest/most active instances could agree... I would love to see a 2d or 5d period for beehaw to restore federation and if they don't for the majority of the network to coordinate a permanent defederation with them.I'd then love to see a sort of united nations of major instances established to articulate some minimal cross-instance governance aimed at ensuring individual major instances respond to stresses in ways that accommodate the overall health of the federated network... And sanctions if they don't. I sort of despair that such a cross-instance body could be established or agree to anything given the differing values of the individuals involved... but when instances hosting a double-digit percentage of active users and communities decide to pop on and off the network willy nilly... that's bad behavior that imposes costs for every other member of the network and shouldn't be shrugged aside.
Reasonable take, but made me realize how insanely political this is all gonna turn into.
The confusion and poor UX generated by asymmetrical federation is itself sufficient reason for the 2 instances affected to drop beehaw, IMO.
They claim that they're waiting for the moderation tools and bots that would accomplish this task. This kind of limit is available on Mastodon but not on Lemmy. Presumably they would have granular control where now they only have a nuke.
They want unilateral silencing though, so they can comment (and brigade) on our instances' posts, but we can never comment on theirs.
That's not reciprocity.
Where are you getting this idea? The comments I've read from the beehaw admins say they want to refederate when Lemmy gets better mod tools. As far as I can tell they aren't happy about defederating and are only doing it as a temporary measure because of problem users coming in from the two instances they blocked. They haven't said anything I've seen like what you are claiming.
like they point out why they're doing it in their comments, and they point out that it's not necessarily permanent too
I think people are blowing things a bit out of proportion
they have blocked considerably more than 2 instances.
I know they also block Lennygrad but haven't heard of any other big Lemmy instances they block. I think they block a bunch of mastodon servers too? I'm pretty sure I read a comment saying they have a bunch of sketchy mastodon servers blocked, is that what you're referring to?
looking at the list it looks like they manually defederated from about 100 instances
And then they added a further few hundred alphabetically so i presume by importing a block script on mastadon instances
Trouble is, they have defedded from 2 of the 4 biggest ones.
It just makes things look very fragile to a newcomer or someone wanting to point out federations downside
Very well said, and I agree 100%. It's like burning down a house to smoke out a rat. Or using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Or shooting flies with a canon... you get the point.
In my opinion we shouldn't, it would look like retaliation and that's never a good thing.
Let's stay open and welcoming regardless of what other people do.
Yeah, 100%
It'd help spur on the development and lemmy.world and provide a better user experience.
Let the 4 beehaw admins be the dictators of their diminishing, isolated exclave.
You won't see their posts and comments moving forward.
You will see them on other instances though? Like I can reply to a beehaw post/comment on lemmy.ml, but they won't see my response.
But other people will, so it's only the beehaw users that won't see it.