I read that they “defederated”… What does this mean? And why did they do this? And what are the consequences?

  • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    They defederated specifically with my instance (sh.itjust.works), and lemmy.world. What that means is that we can’t access content on Beehaw, they can’t access content on our instances.

    If they see this post, my comment will be invisible to them. I can see their comments though, we haven’t defederated with them.

    They did this, as far as I understand it, out of a concern about our open user signups, where users don’t need to be approved, they just need to not get banned. I have heard third-hand that there were some instances of hate-speech from users on our instances who quickly got banned (our instances don’t allow that either, but it isn’t pre-emptive), but they don’t want the overhead and extra work for moderators.

      • Barbarian@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Don’t bans on your instance also carry over to beehaw? Like if a user can no longer sign into your instance how can they even post on beehaw? It does seem very pre-emptive of them.

        Yes, that is exactly correct. A user banned from their home instance cannot log in, and therefore cannot post/comment anywhere.

    • ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      Wouldn’t it be practical for you and lemmy.world to defederate from beehaw for as long as they keep this up, to prevent poor UX for your users stemming from asymmetric federation?