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Is defederation from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works still necessary? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by theangriestbird@beehaw.org to c/support@beehaw.org

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This is more of a question for the admins, but this can certainly be a more open discussion.

Per this thread, beehaw defederated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works two months ago, around the time that the reddit exodus was happening. Lemmy was blowing up, those instances had an open sign-up policy, and this meant that admins of other instances (like Beehaw) that wanted to heavily moderate their communities became quickly overwhelmed with the number of users from these two instances. Beehaw defederated to make the workload more realistic.

Two months on, I'm wondering if this defederation is still necessary. It seems to me that Lemmy overall has slowed down a lot, and maybe the flow of users from these outside servers would not be as overwhelming as it was before? I respect the decision of the admins one way or the other - I know that the lack of moderation tools was another factor in this decision. I'm just curious if this is something that has been considered recently?

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[–] Lionir@beehaw.org 65 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 children)

From where I'm standing, I can't really much has changed unfortunately.. which really sucks..

Lemmy.world has grown substantially meanwhile the moderation tools have not improved at all. All I can say about the moderation tools is that we now know that the tools suck more than they used to.

Here's a list of moderation problems that we have discovered since then:

If a Berson is reported on another instance, we never get the report.
If a mod is banned from the community they mod, they can still take mod actions
If you get site-banned from Beehaw while you are from another instance, you can still post on the community and people from that instance and kbin can see your posts
People from other instances can't know who if someone is an admin on the instance they're interacting with
People from other instances can't see when we use the shield function to signal we're talking "officially / as a mod"
The modlog is not chronological
The modlog breaks if you ban someone for more than 4 digit days.
A banned user's description is still visible so if they link to a scat image in their description, it is still visible to moderators.

Despite these newly known problems, there have been exactly no improvement whatsoever to the moderation tools. It is honestly unsettling and terrifying.

[–] Janvier 35 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I just finished writing a small book in a thread about federation on literature.cafe yesterday, the thrust of which is that moderation, not federation is the threadiverse's killer feature, and when in doubt smaller instances shouldn't federate with larger ones. This list makes a perfect post-script to my point. Do you mind if I crib it? I'm a big fan of what you're doing here. I'd also love your feedback on my observations if you have time.

[–] TerryTPlatypus@beehaw.org 14 points 1 year ago

No, you are definitely right. There is a time and place for federation, it's like a town deciding to incorporate with a larger region. If the town is too early in its infancy, the overall culture and debate will be drowned out by larger servers. But the risk of also not federating the town means that there is a chance of the community dying off. I'm thinking there should at least be a snaller period of considering the effects of opening up your server to the network, and consulting other instance admins about the idea.

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