I discovered programming.dev after I registered at Lemmy.world, and wanted to see how well federation works.

I looked through your list of communities, I think [email protected] is the best place for this test post, but I apologize if there’s a better place for this that I didn’t see.

That being said, I might as well ask a question as part of this test-post / cross instance test discussion!

With different communities having different signup policies(ex: Beehaw.org vs Lemmy.world) and the threat of defederation existing… how does programming.dev plan to deal with problematic servers?

I’m a pessimist. I feel like inevitably, some kind of flamewar or drama will cause cross-board invasions between subreddits (and now, different [email protected] on Lemmy).

I don’t think anyone knows the answer, but I guess I wanted to muse upon something to make this post more substantial than just a test post. Thanks for having me!

  • snoweMEnglish
    6•1 year ago

    We’ve already dealt with one problematic server by defederating. But, it was kind of an easy decision, because it was a private instance and it had a bot that was just posting every link from hacker news.

    I’m a pessimist. I feel like inevitably, some kind of flamewar or drama will cause cross-board invasions between subreddits (and now, different [email protected] on Lemmy).

    In all likelihood you are correct. I think we will have to come up with rules for the server and then if other instances cause flamewars here that go against those rules then we can talk about defederation.

    • @dragontamerOPEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      But, it was kind of an easy decision, because it was a private instance and it had a bot that was just posting every link from hacker news.

      Hmm. I’d caution against banning that bot. Was it [email protected]?

      Over in Reddit, there was a popular subreddit called /r/hackernews, which just copy/pasted every link from Hacker News. Automatically came over with a bot and everything. For better or worse, that “behavior” is expected to be supported by many Reddit users.

      While I see your perspective of “wtf why does this even exist??”, there’s something to be said about Redditors trying to replicate the look/feel of Reddit in their own terms (including the creation of HackerNews bots and whatnot).

      See: https://kbin.social/m/programming/t/45643/Request-Can-someone-make-a-mirror-of-hackernews-here

      Or: https://lemmy.world/post/240422 (for the same post but in Lemmy.world), just to show off Federation lol.

      • snoweMEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        It was reported by several people and we discussed what to do about it in the discord. We plan on undoing the defederation when the instance gets more users, but it was overwhelming the community at the time.