• @MysticSmear
    link
    English
    51 year ago

    as someone who just joined, and is still trying to understand “federated” can someone give me an ELI5 rundown of what this means? I thought it didn’t matter which instance you joined because they were all connected, does this mean that other instances can just… block an entire instance?

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      31 year ago

      It’s essentially like email. If you have a gmail, you can communicate with anyone on any other email service. If gmail determines that spamsite.xyz, you won’t send or recieve any emails from that domain. Same thing here. You’re using lemmy.world. If lemmy.world defederates with my server sh.itjust.works, you won’t see my messages. We will just never cross paths.

      • @MysticSmear
        link
        English
        51 year ago

        hmm…that seems super counterintuitive to what I thought the fediverse was all about. That would be like Gmail just deciding all Yahoo emails are spam. doesn’t this mean that Lemmy will just be a bunch of islands of content that will require users to have multiple accounts for each instance?

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          31 year ago

          Apparently the main issue is that the “ALL” feed starts showing posts of other instances when one user subscribes to anything there. So if e.g. you don’t block a NSFW instance, you will have popular porn posts showing up on your instance as well.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          31 year ago

          If everyone plays nice, you get to have really big islands. But that’s only if your overlords (the mods) allow it. If they don’t like an instance, see ya! I don’t think this happens often other than blocking spam and illegal activity, but you can clearly see how this will make all the mini islands.

          • @MysticSmear
            link
            English
            11 year ago

            I think people tend to be tribal by nature. It would likely be folly to think everyone will not use petty squabbles and minor disagreements to cut off other people they disagree with for the first time in history. This could really hurt lemmy in the long run if everyone only lives on their island.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        What if someone from lemmy.world makes a comment, and someone from lemmy.ca replies to the comment?

        Would someone from sh.itjust.works see the reply to the original comment but not the original comment? Or is the whole thread after that point non-existent after that point?