Why YSK: Choosing an instance with defederation policies you’re most comfortable with is important to make your Fediverse experience smooth in the long run.
Here is a chart showing the defederation count of each instance.
| Instance | Defederated with how many other instances |
|---|---|
| beehaw.org | 405 |
| feddit.de | 101 |
| lemmy.world | 63 |
| lemmy.ml | 44 |
| sh.itjust.works | 4 |
| exploding-heads.com | 3 |
You can get it by going to the instance’s instance list and scrolling/Ctrl+Fing down to “Blocked Instances”. To find the instance list, go to https://your-instance.url/instances, for example, https://lemmy.world/instances
So is it possible for users in lemmy.world to see content from beehaw? Does this only limit beehaw users from seeing content on lemmy.world?
Lemmy.world users can see behaw posts, but beehaw users can’t see Lemmy.world posts. Comments cannot be seen by anyone outside their home instance.
Beehaw defederated from Lemmy.world, but Lemmy.world did not defederate from beehaw.
If you look at a Lemmy.world community through beehaw, you will only see posts from before defederation, or posts made by unaware beehaw users.
What do you mean by comments cannot be seen by other instances?
If instance.c has defederated with instance.a and instance.b, instance.a can still comment and post on communities from instance.c—but neither instance.c nor instance.b can see those posts and comments.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure it goes both ways.
You are wrong. Defederation only goes both ways if both instances decide to defederate each other.
Beehaw and Lemmy.world was one way only. You can see all of beehaw’s posts, but none of your interactions will leave your home instance.
The comments under a post will only be from Lemmy.world users, however.
Thank you for clearing that up. I feel like I’ve heard both yes and no to this question. Still learning everything so it’s hard to recall what was correct. Also just want to say how cool it is that people don’t make you feel dumb for being wrong here. That’s one thing I will not miss about Reddit.
You can view beehaw through a browser. If you want to check for yourself. I did verify this by viewing the same community from beehaw and not just before commenting so I’m pretty certain I’m giving accurate information.
Welcome to Lemmy, I hope you enjoy your time here.
EDIT: upon further checking, what I have been saying seems to be inaccurate. It seems beehaw is no longer sharing posts, the newest beehaw post I can find in Lemmy.world is from 2 days ago. It is likely that 0.18.1 blocks post sharing to defederated instances.
So users in instance lemmy.world can see only the post in beehaw but not the comments in beehaw, because beehaw defederated from lemmy.world (one way only)? This actually creates more questions for me.
Why it is not possible to see beehaw users comments if lemmy.world has not defederated from beehaw?
Can I see comments on that post from users in instances that didn’t defederate from lemmy.world? Can I reply to those users?
When you view any content on Lemmy, you are viewing and interacting with the local copy on your local instance.
Federation means that your instances’s local copy should be up to date. Any changes or comments made on your local instance will be sent to the host’s instance, to update the master copy there, which is then sent out all other instances.
Defederation cuts this off, leaving users only able to interact with their instance’s local copy.
Posts are public. Any instance can download posts, so when Lemmy.world asks beehaw for new posts, it gets them so you can see all of beehaw’s posts, and get your content.
Beehaw defederated with Lemmy.world, so beehaw is no longer requesting updated posts from Lemmy.world. So beehaw users will see increasingly out of date local versions of Lemmy.world communities if they try to view them.
Defederation also means that beehaw blocks anything that requires two-way communication, such as comments and votes. This is why beehaw will have mostly empty comment sections on Lemmy.world.
If you post or comment on a beehaw community, that interaction will not be federated. Beehaw will not get it, beehaw will not add it to the master copy.
But Lemmy.world added your content to its local copy. Other lemmy.world users will see it, but no one else. Even an instance in full federation with both, because instances only get updates from the master copy on the community’s host. And defedrration means you cannot update the host’s copy of the community.
This behavior is weird and confusing and not user friendly. I think future versions should treat one way defederated communities as unavailable or read only. Content that is out of date without explanation, or comments that go nowhere without an user-facing error message is not good ux.
Thanks. Very clear.
This is a great explanation, thanks.
Well that sucks, is it possible to transfer our account to another instance then?
My understanding is that we cannot. I’ve seen people talking about it maybe becoming a thing in the future, but right now the only option is to just go register your name on another instance. Alternatively, I guess you can host your own instance with just you (or a few friends I guess) and then you control what gets federated, but for me that seems like a little too much work right now. I may consider that in the future if I had more free time.
Not yet, but is planned: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1985
https://github.com/bunburya/lemmy2opml
https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim
https://github.com/wescode/lemmy_migrate
some tools you can use to transfer your subscriptions and such.
It was my understanding that defederation was a one way thing? So if instance A defederates instance B, A will not see anything from B but B could still see things from A?
I can’t get past your username, you degenerate
Thank you