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.
Wouldn't it then make more sense to implement such a space where you simply don't have the possibility of other instances interacting with your space? I mean it sounds like what they want to have could be much better achieved by a traditional forum instead of the fediverse
No, because they're looking for community and connection and content just like everyone else. It's just that their threshold for exposure to bigotry is lower than yours.
Well in my understanding you just can't have both. Either you want a safe space where the users are proactively shielded from anything remotely offensive even getting to them (which is how I understand beehaws explanations of what beehaw is supposed to be) or you are open to other communities where you then have to remove offensive posts reactively
They can have both. They're literally doing it. It's just that their thresholds are different to yours
They've just blocked two of the largest instances from interacting with them and their users from interacting with those instances. Only one dude from another big instance that isn't blocked yet that posts something inappropriate would be enough to have them block that instance too. So in the end, people who are registered at beehaw will mostly only be able to interact with other beehaw users and need to have an account on a different instance to interact with the other ones.
Which makes beehaw just like a traditional forum, where I would need to have a separate account on beehaw to make sure I'm always able to view their content in case they choose to block my instance because of something someone else from my instance posted.
As you said before, there are no other proactive tools available aside from defederation, that's why I said Lemmy in its current state doesn't look like the right place for such a community to begin with, maybe in the future when other tools get available, who knows.
Beehaw has been using Lemmy almost as long as there has been a Lemmy, for a good 18 months before the Reddit migration. I don't think you or anyone else can tell them they don't know the platform well.
Arguably yes, but they decided upon Lemmy and grew their community to a point where it became too late/too inconvenient to switch. I don't know if they ever posted their rationale behind choosing Lemmy, but I may try looking around at some point as I'm genuinely curious.
I think right now, many of their own users already face inconvenience by not having access to lemmy.world and many other communities anymore without creating a second account there so they could just as well create such a second account on a traditional forum^^
The problem is carrying over all the other posts & the like made there to a more traditional forum though, plus all the backend changing about involved. They understandably don't want to basically start their community over from scratch.
Those bothered enough by the decision will simply make second accounts on more flexible instances instead (as some already have), while those that understood the kind of space they were signing up for probably don't mind too much and are happy with the decision.
I think there's still value in using Lemmy, even if you have no interest in federation.