ou might have seen that we’ve been defederated from beehaw.org. I think there’s some necessary context to understand what this means to the users on this instance.
How federation works
The way federation works is that the community on beehaw.org is an organization of posts, and you’re subscribed to it despite your account being on lemmy.world. Now someone posts on that community (created on beehaw.org), on which server is that post hosted?
It’s hosted on both! It’s hosted on any instance that has a subscriber. It’s also hosted on lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, etc. Every instance that has a subscriber is going to have a copy of this post. That’s why if you host your own instance, you’ll often get a ton of text data just in your own server.
And the copies all stay in sync with each other using ActivityPub. So you’re reading the post that’s host on lemmy.world, and someone with an account on beehaw.org is reading the same post on beehaw.org, and the posts are kept in sync via ActivityPub. Whenever someone posts to that community or comments on a post, that data is shared to all the versions across the fediverse, and these versions are kept in sync. So up until 5 hours ago, they were the same post!
“True”-ness
A key concept that will matter in the next section is the idea of a “true” version. Effectively, one version of these posts is the “true” version, that every other community reflects. The “true” version is the one hosted on the instance that hosts the community. So the “true” version of a beehaw.org community post is the one actually hosted on beehaw.org. We have a copy, but ours is only a copy. If you post to our copy, it updates the “true” version on beehaw.org, and then all the other instances look to the “true” version on beehaw to update themselves.
The same goes for communities hosted on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml. Defederation affects how information is shared between instances. If you keep track of where the “true” version is hosted, it becomes a lot easier to understand what is going on.
How defederation works
Now take that example post from earlier, the one on beehaw.org. The “true” version of the post is on beehaw.org but the post is still hosted on both instances (again, it has a copy hosted on all instances). Let’s say someone with an account on beehaw.org comments on that post. That comment is going to be sent to every version of that post via ActivityPub, as the “true” version has been updated. That is, every version EXCEPT lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works. So users on lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works won’t get that comment, because we’ve been defederated from beehaw.org. If we write a comment, it will only be visible from accounts on lemmy.world, because we posted to a copy, but our copy is now out of sync with the “true” version. So we can appear to interact with the post, but those interactions are ONLY visible by other lemmy.world accounts, since our comments aren’t send to other versions. As the “true” version is hosted on beehaw, and we no longer get beehaw updates due to defederation, we will not see comments from ANY other community on those posts (including from other defederated instances like sh.itjust.works).
The same goes for posting to beehaw communities. We can still do that. However, the “true” version of those communities are the ones on beehaw, so our posts will not be shared to other instances via ActivityPub. And all of this is true for Beehaw users with our communities. Beehaw users can continue to see and interact with Lemmy.world communities, but those interactions are only visible to other Beehaw users, since the “true” versions of the Lemmy.world communities (the ones sent to/synced with every other instance) is the Lemmy.world one.
Communities on other instances, for example lemmy.ml, are unaffected by this. Lemmy.world and beehaw.org users will still be able to interact with those communities, but posts/comments from lemmy.world users won’t be visible to beehaw.org users, as defederation prevents our posts/comments from being sent to the version of these posts hosted on beehaw.org. However, as the “true” version is the one on the third instance, we can still see everything from beehaw.org users. So we see a more filled in version than the beehaw users.
Why can I still see posts/comments from beehaw users?
Until they defederated us, posts/comments were being sent to lemmy.world, so we can see everything from before defederation. After defederation, we are no longer receiving or sending updates. So there are now multiple versions of those posts.
Why can I still interact with beehaw communities?
This won’t ever stop. You’ll notice that all posts after defederation are only from lemmy.world users. You won’t see posts/comments from ANY other instance (including instances that ) on beehaw.org communities.
Those communities will quickly suck for us, as we’re only talking to other lemmy.world users. Your posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. I highly recommend just unsubscribing from those communities, since they’re pretty pointless for us to be in right now.
Why do I still see comments from beehaw users on lemmy.world communities?
Again, comments from before defederation were still sent to us. After defederation, it will no longer be possible for beehaw users to interact with the “true” version of lemmy.world communities. Their posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. They also aren’t getting updates from any other lemmy, as the “true” version of those communities is on our instance.
Why do I see posts/comments from beehaw users on communities outside lemmy.world and beehaw.org?
That’s because the “true” version of those posts is outside beehaw. So we get updates from those posts. And lemmy.world didn’t defederate beehaw, so posts/comments from beehaw users can still come to versions hosted on lemmy.world.
The reverse is not true. Because beehaw defederate lemmy.world, any post/comment from a lemmy.world users will NOT be sent to the beehaw version of the post.
This seems like it’s worse for beehaw users than for us?
Yes. In my opinion, this is an extraordinarily dumb act by the beehaw instance owners. It’s worse for beehaw users than for us, and will likely result in many beehaw users leaving that instance. They said in their post that this is a nuke, but I don’t think they fully assessed the blast area. Based on their post, I don’t think they fully understand what defederation does.
I’m not sure how to respond to all three of you kind of asking the same question about feeling “unsafe”, so I guess I’ll just try to tag the other two. @[email protected] @[email protected]
I myself would not put me in a category of people that would have the feeling of being unsafe. I am a white guy in a western country, doesn’t really get any easier than that. Also keep in mind that this is kind of a guess from my side so you should not take this as fact or anything.
My thought when people generally use “safe space” is not that they mean that they are scared when browsing the web. I think they mean it more in a way that every day they might get to hear comments about their looks or preferences when it really is uncalled for, so having a safe space is more about just getting to have an interaction with other people and not having to worry about those kind of comments. So your comment about infantry school and Ramadi is a different kind of “unsafe” thing. Maybe I would categorize that as a dangerous job. I guess that you are from the United States so Ramadi would even be something that you don’t have a connection to, you go there and then come back home where you don’t have the same threat levels when just going outside. For other people that unsafe feeling could come from just going outside even in their home community/city/country.
The way I try to think about it just to take something about your look, like let’s say your hair. You like it a certain way and it does not really affect how you are as a person or your skill set when it comes to work or life in general. Then just imagine that you go to get groceries and people start commenting your hair, in a bad way. Maybe even going as far as saying something about your worth when they in fact do not know anything about you. They just made the assumption based on your hairstyle. Then this continues as time goes on, some might even get a bit too in your face about it and you don’t really know what they’re capable of! Then these are also your countrymen! People you went to the same school with, people from the same state, people that in general might like the same things as you. They cheer for the same sports team, they like the same kind of pizza as you. But just because of that hairstyle you have they start thinking less of you!
Those are just my two cents! I know I have it pretty easy so I try to see things from other peoples perspective or however you say that, because I know other people have far more challenges than me in everyday life.
I think I understand the point you’re making. My immediate reaction is… get a haircut? I suppose it’s not that easy for a lot of people though, and I get wanting a place you don’t have to deal with the stress.
Why try to create a closed off environment on an open forum though? If that’s the goal, why not build the community on a closed forum? There are also tools at an individual level like down voting, blocking users, and blocking communities.
Cutting off a huge segment of the fediverse seems like a bad move this early in it’s growth.
Just to be clear on my perspective. Anyone going to any community just to fuck with them is a low being who should evaluate their life and choices. I’m concerned about the health of the fediverse, I don’t support the trolls.
Yeah I absolutely agree with you on the forum part. It feels like they didn’t quite think things through when choosing a really open platform like Lemmy. Like you said, what probably suits their use case is just a good old fashioned forum that is not linked to anything else in any way.
I also want to see Lemmy grow and I am curious to see where we end up with this whole federation thing. The whole idea sounds really nice and if we get sites working together this could in the end make it super easy for people to find cool communities. Or maybe sites don’t even need to actively work together since just being federated should take care of it!