Comment on How is content like this banned on .ml for being "political"?
belluck@lemm.ee 4 weeks agoI don’t think you quite understand how the Fediverse works.
Lemmy has no control over the instances. It only provides the format and connects the instances with each other. That is the „fed“-part. Federation. A central authority controlling how each instance moderates itself would defeat the point.
If you don’t like an instance, block it and move on. Nobody except the person who runs the server can do anything to change how they run it.
kingofras@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Ok, perhaps I don’t. Can you explain what people mean when they call for “defederating from” an instance then?
tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 4 weeks ago
If an instance decides to not federate with another one they don’t see each other anymore. You can’t subscribe to their communities and vice versa, you don’t see their users posts in third instance communities. From your perspective it stops existing.
It’s sometimes necessary e.g. if an instance doesn’t do moderation by itself and hoards of trolls are coming from one instance spamming in many communities so you don’t have to ban each of their trolls. It can also be a tool if moderation goals differ too strongly from each other, and some instances have decided to defederate from lemmy.ml and more vocal tankie instances like lemmygrad and hexbear.
kingofras@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Ok thanks. I’m a little confused by what that means for voting. Is it possible that anti authoritarian posts or comments still get downvote- brigaded by an instance that is technically defederated from the instance of the OP?
So let’s say instance A and B are defederated from each other, but both are with instance C. User from A posts something on C and every B user still gets to downvote everything to oblivion right?
So .ml is effectively r/TheDonald and we can’t do much against brigading?
can@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
No, instance A sees no comments by instance B users regardless of its on instance C.
For example, Beehaw defederated my instance.
They could be commenting all through this thread and I’d never know.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Instances are servers that host communities.
Instances are servers that host user accounts.
Federated instances allow users from one instance to view and post in communities on other (federated) instances. If the instances are defederated there is no connection whatsoever being made between the users and communities.
Now, there are communities that have very strict and often very political moderation policies. Technically only the instance administrator has the power/authority to override communities, but only on the instance they administrate.
This can become an issue, especially when people who get moderated run to the admin demanding to talk with who is in charge. The netKarens get really mad if the admins back up the community, so they’ll start these instance crusades demanding defederation and such.
So as a result there are some natural divisions across the major instances based on how the admins tend to back up community rules.
So for a rough examples: .ml communities have zero tolerance for American Liberalism. Lemmy.world allows communities to be heavy handed against criticism of NATO or Israel. Blahaj.zone has zero tolerance for transphobes gatekeeping. My instance, sh.itjust.works, allows for combat footage and communities dedicated to documenting(harassing) the .ml instance, their admins and the lemmy devs (who admin .ml).
The average user need only pay attention to the communities they post in. The instance of the user is mostly irrelevant, nevermind the butthurt individuals who want a worse and fragmented Fediverse.