The post can be found here.

I find this news disconcerting coming from such a large instance so early on. Many of the criticisms of Lemmy I’ve been fighting against on Reddit have had to do with defederation and the possibility of getting cut off from your favorite communities on your main account. I handwaved that away as being extremely unlikely save for the exception of NSFW or extreme political content. But this news has taken me quite by surprise. Perhaps I should have seen it coming given the community Beehaw is trying to foster.

This really makes me wonder what will happen to instances that make this decision. Will their communities diminish in favor of the more accessible ones? Will this decision hurt Beehaw in the long run? What does this mean for the Fediverse in the near future when fighting against its detractors has been such an uphill battle?

Thoughts?

  • HutchEnglish
    11·
    2 years ago

    Does this mean that I need to run my own Lemmy to federate from all the sources I’m interested in, if I want content from beehaw and lemmy.world and a.n.other.example.org if they are not federated together?

    If I do create my own, do I have to persuade those servers to accept my federation?

    So much I don’t understand. Wait… I think I get it: if lemmy.ca federates with all these places, I see it all and can interact with it? Are the federated/defederated lists openly available somewhere?

    • GrayOPEnglish
      10·
      2 years ago

      Yes! If you look at the bottom of any instance, there’s an “Instances” button that will show you which instances are allowed/blocked. You shouldn’t need to create your own server if you can find an instance federated to all the ones you’d like. Defederation seems to be the exception to the rule, though beehaw.org has a larger blocked list than I’ve seen on other instances. In their defense, some of the sites they’ve blocked look pretty horrible…

      As for making your own instance, I’m afraid I don’t know what the process is to federate with other instances…

      • HutchEnglish
        4·
        2 years ago

        That is so cool, thank you! I would never have thought to click on any of those links

        • GrayOPEnglish
          9·
          2 years ago

          Yes! Modlog is also a really useful link. It has opened my eyes to the moderating habits of different instances. I learned to keep away from lemmy.ml (all the allegations of tankies seem to be true there), but lemmy.ca (which I see you’re also a member of) seems really solid. I trust /u/smorks.

          • HutchEnglish
            3·
            2 years ago

            Wow. Just Wow. So much information. These two tools tell me more about an instance than the ‘blurb’.

      • courts@kbin.social
        3·
        2 years ago

        Any idea if kbin has something similar? There is a link to the Modlog, but I can’t seem to find a link to an overview of the instances it federates with.

        • GrayOP
          3·
          2 years ago

          I tried digging around for you, but I didn’t have too much luck. I see their moderation log, but the most promising thing I could find for an instance list is:

          Statistics -> General -> Below the statistic listing the total number of posts, there’s a triangle Fediverse symbol on the left side of the screen. Clicking on that drops down an empty menu titled “Instances”. I suspect that that’s where you’d find the list if it were there. Perhaps Kbin hasn’t implemented it yet.