Why YSK: Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.World and Sh.itjust.works effectively shadowbanning anyone from those instances. You will not be able to interact with their users or posts.

Edit: A lot of people are asking why Beehaw did this. I want to keep this post informational and not color it with my personal opinion. I am adding a link to the Beehaw announcement if you are interested in reading it, you can form your own views. https://beehaw.org/post/567170

    • masterspace
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      71 year ago

      I’m already starting to get pretty tired of people in the fediverse saying shit like this:

      What this means to you is when a user within one instance (e.g. Beehaw) that’s chosen to defederate with another (e.g. lemmy.world), they can no longer interact with content on another instance, and vice versa. Other instances can still see the content of both servers as though nothing has happened.

      A user is not limited to how many instances they can join (technically at least - some instance have more stringent requirements for joining than others do)

      A user can interact with Lemmy content without being a user of any Lemmy instance - e.g. Mastodon (UI for doing so is limited, but it is still possible.)

      Considering the above, it is important to understand just how much autonomy we, as users have. For example, as the larger instances are flooded with users and their respective admins and mods try to keep up, many, smaller instances not only thrive, but emerge, regularly (and even single user instances - I have one for just myself!) The act of defederation does not serve to lock individual users out of anything as there are multiple avenues to constantly maintain access to, if you want it, the entirety of the unfiltered fediverse.

      Having “multiple avenues to maintain access to the unfiltered fediverse, if you want it” is the most nightmare user experience sentence I can possibly imagine.

      A user does not want multiple avenues to maintain access to the unfiltered fediverse with it being unclear when their comments will be shadow banned and not. They want to be able to see a post and go in and comment on it.

      Federation is not a feature, it’s an implementation detail.

      • zalack
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        1 year ago

        Federation is a feature. If you want to spin up a network of Lemmy instances between universities and ONLY federate with other universities, you could!

        Want to spin up a private instance for you and your friends and not federate with anyone? You can do that too!

        To me one of the big selling points of federated services is you don’t have to be part of the same giant bucket as every other shithead. If you want, you can pick and choose who you federate with.

        Beehaw never tried to promote itself as a default instance. It was a toy hobby project started by four friends that through a fluke of where it was listed, had an enormous, unexpected growth spurt.

        It’s still those four people’s server though, and it’s totally their prerogative in how they run it. We aren’t entitled to it’s content, and users don’t have to stick around if they don’t like the way it’s being run.

        The fedeverse gives you choice. That means there will be some servers whose choices you don’t agree with.

        • masterspace
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          1 year ago

          I’m sorry, but no. The point of the fediverse is not to spin up niche communities, since we already have forums. You want to be part of a niche small forum, go spin up your own bb instance and run a niche small forum.

          The point of the fediverse is to recreate the global social networks that are twitter / Reddit / etc, but to do so using open source servers that are decentralized and anyone can host.

          Again, federation is not a user facing feature, it’s an architecture / implementation detail. Fediverse enthusiasts are like train enthusiasts who love every detail of how they’re built and their history and how much philosophically better they are than cars, but none of that matters and train networks will fail if they don’t provide quick and convenient transportation to their users.

          • zalack
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            1 year ago

            If that were true, then the software wouldn’t have the ability to defederate built directly into it in the admin panel. You could write software in a way where defederating from a specific instance is hard to do.

            IMO the point of any open source software is the noone really has ownership over what “the point” of it is. Anyone can take that software and use it how they see fit.

            • masterspace
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              -11 year ago

              If that were true, then the software wouldn’t have the ability to defederate built directly into it in the admin panel.

              A setting in an admin panel is not a user facing feature.

              IMO the point of any open source software is the noone really has ownership over what “the point” of it is. Anyone can take that software and use it how they see fit.

              In broad strokes yes, but in more specific and relevant strokes, the point of social networking software is for users to use it to engage with each other, not concern themselves with how it’s servers are administrated.

              • zalack
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                01 year ago

                Admins are users too from a developer’s point of view.

                  • zalack
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                    01 year ago

                    I develop software for a living. If someone is using my software in any capacity, they are a user from my point of view, even if they have admin privileges.

        • @[email protected]
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          -11 year ago

          Beehaw never tried to promote itself as a default instance. It was a toy hobby project started by four friends that through a fluke of where it was listed, had an enormous, unexpected growth spurt.

          This is my read on the situation, but my view is different - if BeeHaw want to have what is functionally just a private Reddit-like forum, let them. But we should stop acting like BeeHaw is a part of the Fediverse with the same goals as Lemmy-at-large.

          Of course, lemmygrad.ml is my home instance and I’m pretty sure BeeHaw has never federated with us so I’m not really missing anything.

          Most of the complaints seem to come from people who assumed BeeHaw was just like any other Lemmy instance and have sort of made it, or a community on it, their home; or tried to join and almost bounced off Lemmy because they assumed BeeHaw was just what Lemmy was like.

          I think the best move going forward would be to either de-list BeeHaw from Lemmy directories or make sure it is properly signposted what kind of server it is. I think this will all naturally become less of an issue once big, generic instances like Lemmy.world blow up and become the defaults, and traffic to BeeHaw slows down.

      • BaldProphet
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        61 year ago

        User experience is not the primary motivator for the development of the Fediverse. The features you dislike are the core features of the Fediverse and are the main reasons it exists.

        • masterspace
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          1 year ago

          Software exist to solve a user’s problem. All software’s primary motivator should be user experience.

          It’s quite frankly asinine to spend your time building a social network that user’s don’t want to use (see: Reddit’s official app / new site).

          Ignoring psychology, network effects, and how social networks work while instead trying to build one based on naiive dogma is doomed to failure.

        • @BURN
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          01 year ago

          It may be the point, but it makes the UX terrible. Lemmy is really struggling from a UX perspective, enough to make me question if it’s worth sticking with.

          The new user experience is pretty terrible because 90%+ have no interest in trying to figure of “federation”, they just want shit that works.

      • masterspace
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        31 year ago

        It’s working for me, but quoted below:

        Regarding Beehaw defederating from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, this post goes into detail on the why and the philosophy behind that decision. Additionally, there is an update specific to sh.itjust.works here.

        For now, let’s talk about what federation is and what defederation means for members of Beehaw or the above two communities interacting with each other, as well as the broader fediverse.

        Federation is not something new on the internet. Most users use federated services every day (for instance, the url used to access instances uses a federated service known as DNS, and email is another system that functions through federation.) Just like those services, you elect to use a service provider that allows you to communicate with the rest of the world. That service provider is your window to work with others.

        When you federate, you mutually agree to share your content. This means that posting something to a site can be seen by another and all comments are shared. Even users from other sites can post to your site.

        Now when you defederate, this results in content to be no longer shared. It didn’t reverse any previous sharing or posts, it just stops the information from flowing with the selected instance. This only impacts the site’s that are called out.

        What this means to you is when a user within one instance (e.g. Beehaw) that’s chosen to defederate with another (e.g. lemmy.world), they can no longer interact with content on another instance, and vice versa. Other instances can still see the content of both servers as though nothing has happened.

        A user is not limited to how many instances they can join (technically at least - some instance have more stringent requirements for joining than others do)
        A user can interact with Lemmy content without being a user of any Lemmy instance - e.g. Mastodon (UI for doing so is limited, but it is still possible.)
        Considering the above, it is important to understand just how much autonomy we, as users have. For example, as the larger instances are flooded with users and their respective admins and mods try to keep up, many, smaller instances not only thrive, but emerge, regularly (and even single user instances - I have one for just myself!) The act of defederation does not serve to lock individual users out of anything as there are multiple avenues to constantly maintain access to, if you want it, the entirety of the unfiltered fediverse.

        On that last point, another consideration at the individual level is - what do you want out of Lemmy? Do you want to find and connect with like-minded people, share information, and connect at a social and community level? Do you want to casually browse content and not really interact with anyone? These questions and the questions that they lead to are critical. There is no direct benefit to being on the biggest instance. In fact, as we all deal with this mass influx, figure out what that means for our own instances and interactions with others, I would argue that a smaller instance is actually much better suited for those who just want to casually browse everything.

        Lastly, and tangential, another concern I have seen related to this conversation is people feeling afraid of being locked out of the content and conversation from the “main” communities around big topics starting to form across the Lemmiverse (think memes, gaming, tech, politics, news, etc.) Over time, certain communities will certainly become a default for some people just given the community size (there will always be a biggest or most active - it’s just a numbers game.) This, again though, all comes down to personal preference and what each individual is looking to get from their Lemmy experience. While there may, eventually, be a “main” sub for <topic xyz> (again, by the numbers), there will also always be quite a few other options for targeted discussions on <topic xyz>, within different communities, on different instances, each with their own culture and vibe. This can certainly feel overwhelming and daunting (and at the moment, honestly it is.) Reddit and other non-federated platforms provided the illusion of choice, but this is what actual choice looks and feels like.

        [edit: grammar and spelling]