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Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

beehaw.org

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Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#31

Post by sp332 »

fariszr wrote: post #2

As if being a federated network wasn't enough of a hurdle for new users, now we have instances blocking each other already. Lemmy has a great chance achieving what mastodon couldn't, because its the community that matters, not specific users, but with instance blocking each other, any hope of creating a community to rival reddit is going to be thrown out the window.

When you say "community", do you mean you want everyone to be in there? Or do you mean certain people who make up an actual community? Because moderation is an important part of growing a community.

Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#32

Post by kibwen »

starkparker wrote: post #12

Was this unexpected? Having instance-level control over federation is part of the point of federation.

Yes, I can't help but feel like this is just people learning how federated systems work. If you own the instance, you always have the power to block connections from any other instances. The whole point is that instances have control, and if you want control, you have the option to run your own instance. It's a distributed system of reputation.

Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#33

Post by wpietri »

> the disproportionate number of moderator actions we take against users of these two instances

This is a key dynamic. People are used to social media sites being kept livable thanks to a team of paid professionals and fancy ML tooling, often supported by volunteer labor. But here the volunteers are in charge and many of them have other things to do than deal with people's bullshit just to keep the user growth graph going up and to the right.

Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#34

Post by burnished »

This title seems intended to position this as some sort of infighting and I think is heavily editorialized - the thread title is

ANNOUNCEMENT: defederating effective immediately from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works

The actual reason is that the defederated servers have open enrollment and have grown large enough that the small fraction of their traffic that is abusive and requires moderator attention is dominating beehaw moderators attention.

This isnt a moral judgement - they just don't have the plungers or the juice required to deal with the sewage, so are defederating to protect their own time and attention until those instances get a chance to settle down.

Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#36

Post by zhte415 »

fariszr wrote: post #15
Pet_Ant wrote: post #10

Honestly, isn't that fine ? It means that the community has control and not a singular company. Just important to never let any single instance get as big as a company.

The issue is this instance seems to be the largest, with many established subreddit on it. Now people will have to split between multiple clones on other instances. At least wait for people to settle in first!

I see it as healthy.

Just as there is no simultaneous conversation about, say, walnuts in offline life, so there are multiple communities that discuss walnuts on boards with all the predicates and social constructs those communities have, from focuses towards, say, farming to environment to cooking, objective focuses, or social focuses in belief, location, language, of community. And no one's prevented from starting their own walnut focused board or even community.

That Lemmys are choosing to not try to be super catch-alls from the start I see as healthy for communities.

For search/discoverability, multiple boards each dedicated to walnuts may not aid discovery, especially in tails where signal is strong, perhaps oldskool directories/newskool directory of search/filtering could start to come in useful.

Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#37

Post by wpietri »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #29

Well, this kills the idea of Lemmy before it even got the chance to be born. Beehaw is the second largest instance by number of users - and LemmyWorld is the third. Them defederating from each other effectively shards the network into two halves, making the whole thing useless. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

> making the whole thing useless

Why's that? The typical user problem isn't "see all the content", it's "see some good content". As long as the two halves have critical mass, it could well be fine. For example, the fact that Reddit and Twitter were separate networks didn't prevent both of them from growing pretty well.

Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#38

Post by fariszr »

starkparker wrote: post #27
fariszr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? As long as people stick on topic, they should be able to post from other servers, that's the whole point of federation.

It isn't, though. The point of federation is to have the technical ability to post and follow across compatible servers. The point is not to require every instance to accept posts and followers from every compatible server. If anything, that's the opposite of the point .

Sure, what I'm saying is, its too early to do this. People have barely started migrating, and there is already infighting.

Thats a problem because beehaw seems to be the largest with many established subreddit communities, which limits the usability of smaller servers.

Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#39

Post by egypturnash »

starkparker wrote: post #12

Was this unexpected? Having instance-level control over federation is part of the point of federation.

yeah, really - working as designed. If a remote site starts letting a bunch of people behave badly, then you can block them all at one go. If the remote mods clean up their act then maybe you'll talk to them again. Any user on your site who disagrees with this is perfectly free to move to another site with a policy of "100% free speech except for what the government makes us block".

It feels a little surprising for it to happen this quickly, that's all.

Re: Lemmy Instances are already blocking each other

#40

Post by lkt »

This is fine, that's the point of federation. Beehaw's stated goal is "Aspiring to be(e) a safe, friendly and diverse place." so it's understandable they would want to be more selective with who they federate with to create a "safe space" for those that want that kind of environment.
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