If your instance is defederated from another instance, would it be sockpuppeting to create another account to view posts from that instance?

hulemy@ani.social to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 43 points –
23

No, that's the way the fediverse is supposed to work. It would be sockpuppeting for both of your accounts, say A@A.social and B@b.social, to have a conversation with each other on a third instance, say !politics@c.social, with which both a & b are federated.

Or to both downvote the same things, or to comment twice on the same post in a way that makes it seem like it's 2 people. Basically if both show up in the same space and you pretend that each is its own person, that's probably sock puppeting.

Oh the other hand, it's not sock puppeting if the two identities are active in different spaces. If you use one account to comment on PornHub and a different one to post on LinkedIn, nobody's going to say that's sock puppeting.

I would think it's fine since the new account would be subject to the rules and moderation of the new instance. Sockpuppeting is only if you are doing so for the purpose of misrepresenting your identity or to appear as multiple people (or otherwise using multiple accounts to manipulate or game the platform).

Not an expert, just weighing in.

Technically maybe. But sockpuppeting isn't bad per se. Lots of people (me included) do it. And it's accepted in the Fediverse and other parts of the internet. Just don't do brigading, other silly stuff and don't upvote all your own comments and you're fine.

But sockpuppeting isn’t bad per se. Lots of people (me included) do it

Do... what?

Sock puppeting is when you have an account that you pretend is an independent user unaffiliated with you, and you interact with your own posts or get around restrictions with that account. It's called sock puppeting because you're in control of the puppet, but you make it seem independent.

If you personally are banned from a service and use another account to get on, that might be considered a sock puppet, but only if you're interacting with the same people / communities you were banned from talking to.

If you just have multiple accounts that you use for different things, that's not sock puppeting, that's just having multiple accounts for different uses.

It used to be normal and accepted to have different account for different things on the internet.

Let's take a very mundane example you're taking singing class, great but at the moment you're quite bad. However, you want to exchange with other beginners and student from your music school. Do you want your sport club buddies to know about it ? An we just talk about trying to sing a scale on pitch.

There is tons of more "private topic" that you don't want evenyone to know about even though you want to talk about on the internet.

Despite what meta or tik tok think, separating account is great as it let you share stuff with a sub group of person.(also no doubt that big influencers, public figure and more have a hidden account)

It's still not that uncommon, especially on the fedi or reddit to split accounts or use throw away account for more private questions.

It's how the social web is supposed to work, so not a big deal if you do it un good faith

As long as you do not use multiple accounts to gain an advantage in an argument I think it's fine

I’m too stubborn for that and would prefer an explanation from whoever did the defederating. Like sopuli.xyz is defederated from mine and the admin doesn’t even reply on matrix about it.

tbh this is a general issue with the fediverse. Some instances aren't transparent about who is being blocked and why. It made it a whole lot more difficult for me to figure out what instance I should go for.

PSA: you can use https://defed.xyz to check which instances have blocked an instance (only works with Lemmy ones).

Yeah there's a similar tool for the wider microblogging part of fediverse (Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, etc.) but because it was made by an edgelord it gets dismissed. I get the vibe some instances just don't want to share that information, which is important when you're basically dealing with web infrastructure, and get mad when you seek that information out.

I get the vibe some instances just don’t want to share that information

Oh yeah, big time.
When I posted it to the lemmy admin chatroom, some admins who shall remain nameless commented saying it "gave bad vibes" and that wanting to know such information felt "toxic and gross". Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, of course, but considering the data is already available under the /instances page... well it's just weird that anyone would have a problem with wanting to make it more accessible.

That doesn’t work at all for me. Search button does nothing.

Sometimes it happens, yeah. Takes a while or multiple clicks to load. I built that site as a one afternoon project, it's far from perfect.

Another thing you can do is going straight from the URL. For your instance that would be https://defed.xyz/check/lemmy.ca

Aren't all blocked instances listed in the "Instances" button at the bottom of every Lemmy page? You won't get a detailed explanation, but you can see what you can't see at least.

Yeah the detailed explanation would be very helpful. It's nice that Lemmy has the page at least (and I learned something new today), though that is just Lemmy and the fediverse is much bigger than that. I believe Misskey and Pleroma share it similarly to Lemmy, while Mastodon allows admins to hide it from the public (which, as I said, will act as a barrier to those wanting to sign up)

It doesn't help with the reasoning, but defed.xyz has been a lot easier to use than scrolling through the /instances endpoints

If they're defederated and your posting from that instance they can't see your posts then.

They said they are messaging them on Matrix, a separate app.

If you - rather than the instance as a whole, and for other reasons - are the target of defederation circumventing that would be sockpuppeting.

If your instance was defederated for reasons unrelated to your behavior and content, then no - you're simply creating an account on their instance.