this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation
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This isn't the best example, but helped me a lot in understanding it (mostly) It works kind of like E-mail. Each instance is like an email provider. Lemmy.world, beehaw, lemmy.ml, ect are kind of like gmail, yahoo mail, and outlook. So the instance you signed up for is your "lemmy provider" as if Google is your email provider. Now when you email people, you can email to any other provider (yahoo, outlook, etc) and vice versa. They are all similar services but different providers, but they all work together so any person can email any other person. They are federated - one big services, but each provider has its own autonomy in deciding rules, features, etc. So most instances can work with other instances to share information/posts. But not all. Some have deferdeated form others and don't share posts/information. As if yahoo said they we're no longer accepting emails from google. So gmail user's emails would not get sent to Yahoo mail users, but others, like outlook, would. You would say they defederated from google. Much like beehaw did from lemmy.world.
I think that’s a pretty good analogy. One of the things I’m still struggling with is how communities work across instances. If I follow casual conversations on one instance, will I see posts on that community from other instances? Or do I have to follow each individual instance of that community? As I’m trying to find new communities to follow, I often get confused if I’m already following a specific community or which instance I should choose to follow it on.
You can see posts/conversations from other instances if the instances are federated(communicate with each other), which most are/do(?). You just have so subscribe to the communities that aren't on your instance to do so. But some instances aren't federated. For example, Beehaw defederated from lemmy.world (and another I forget which) early on due to the open sign ups and moderations issues. I'm on lemme.world, I can go on a beehaw community, I can see the posts, and read through the conversations, but I don't think they can see if I reply to anything( so I don't). But this is where I start to lose my grasp on the technology too, so if anyone more knowledgeable than me wants to chime in...
Why would an instance choose to defederate? Maybe I am misunderstanding but wouldn't this result in several communities being split into several instances without even knowing about each other? Smaller communities (for example I was following a subreddit for bicycle touring) might be too dispersed to function then, no?
While you are correct, the reasons for Beehaw defederating from lemmy seems to be something they have to do in order to moderate their own instance. As the technology grows (and hopefully modtools get built - like bots perhaps? and more mods in general), there will be no need to deferederate like Beehaw did. However, to give you an example as to why an instance would want to defederate (essentially, be private), is if it's for an exclusive group of people. A workplace, or a subscription add-on. (think like, subscribing to a patreon, and as part of their offering, you get to sign up for their lemmy (or whatever server) instance). Maybe that isn't how it would work, but in my brain, that's a way it could be used and be beneficial :)