A post on kbinMeta states that “Lemmy.ml is blocking all inbound ActivityPub requests from /kbin instances.” More details here, but the theory is that – rather than defederating – lemmy.ml returns a 403 ‘access denied’ message in response to any inbound requests from a user agent with “kbinBot” in the string. Upvotes, comments, and boosts don’t seem to be going through. However, it appears that lemmy.ml still federates information outbound to kbin instances.
I’m wondering if anyone here knows what is going on and why it might be happening? Federation between Lemmy instances and Kbin instances seems to be a selling point for both, so I’m sure others using both services are curious as to what’s going on.
What motive would they have? Is there any actual evidence of them making any kind of statements in this direction?
Until there’s some evidence, I’m more likely to believe this is a technical issue of some sort, possibly stemming from the last update.
I would avoid latching onto this. It reeks of a misunderstanding turning into a manufactured drama.