On feddit.de, lemmy.world is only temporarily defederated because of CSAM until a patch is merged into Lemmy that prevents images from being downloaded to your own instance.
So I’ll just be patient and wait. It’s understandable the admins don’t want to get problems with law enforcement.
Makes quite a bit of sense
Depending on jurisdiction it can be pretty hairy if your instance downloads it
IANAL but I’m pretty sure that in the US you have a “duty to report” and you can have legal protections if you end up getting it and then reporting it
But IANAL so I’d recommend looking into it with an actual lawyer if you run a website that hosts content
Won’t that lead to some horrible hug-of-death type scenarios if a post from a small instance gets popular on a huge one?
Yes, but arguably it was never very scalable for federated software to store large media. It gets utterly massive quick. Third party image/video hosts that specialize in hosting those things can do a better job. And honestly, that’s the kinda data that is just better suited for centralization. Many people can afford to spin up a server that mostly just stores text and deals with basic interactions. Large images or streaming video gets expensive fast, especially if the site were to ever get even remotely close to reddit levels.
If you’re only responsible for caching for your own users, you don’t unduly burden smaller instances.
We need more decentralization, a federated image/gif host with CSAM protections
How would one realize CSAM protection? You’d need actual ML to check for it, and I do not think there are trained models available. And now find someone that wants to train such a model, somehow. Also, running an ML model would be quite expensive in energy and hardware.
There are models for detecting adult material, idk how well they’d work on CSAM though. Additionally, there exists a hash identification system for known images, idk if it’s available to the public, but I know apple has it.
Idk, but we gotta figure out something
Maybe a system where the files federate after 3 upvotes from outside the original instance?
That’d still be exploitable. You could just run 3 of your own instances. Coming up with a system to stop malicious users that can’t be gamed would be tricky.
Caching only if some number of your own users upvote might work.
This is what I’m waiting for before I host my own as well. Rather not have to worry that much about constantly having to admin out CSAM.
Not to shill but I just found the other day that cloudflare has a csam scanning and reporting engine built into their proxies. In theory it gives them a window into the data stream by them decrypting and re-encrypting that could snatch a password hash, but 2FA makes that useless after a minute. Basically it scans anything that gets put in the cache and reports it, notifies you to pull it down, and automatically puts up a 451 block on the link.
❤️
Feddit is defed from so many instances it’s actually not usable for me.
Even on public instances, I don’t understand why people think defederating hurts the fediverse. Just join a different instance, how hard can it be?
I’m on 3 different instances right now
Do we have a way to combine feeds yet? I don’t know of one. So it’s kinda annoying to jump from account to account to make sure your seeing everything.
I’m not sure there is. Personally, I wish there were a way for an individual to block entire instances since I’m a terminally online individual with 3 accounts who sorts by all -> new for content :P
I get what you’re saying, and hopefully it’s a feature that gets added. I’m sure eventually it will, or maybe someone will make an app or an add-on
I definitely can block inetances, I did with one click. Maybe it’s the app I use? (Connect)
I still see comments from it’s users but they’re behind a (comment from blocked instance) button.
I believe it’s a per-app feature. After switching over to Eternity (Infinity for Lemmy) I had to do my Blocklist again. Also each app handles blocked instances differently, and I think connect does it the best with how it still shows the comments, but not posts.
Interesting. I use Jerboa, which makes it easy to block communities, but not entire instances. I’d check out connect, but I browse just as often in a desktop browser, so it would be really nice to have consistency.
It’s not that big a deal to me, just a feature that would be nice to have imo
I don’t see the blocked comments or posts with the Eternity app.
…But I also can’t make my own posts yet…
Edit: wait… Not sure if it still shows comments from people on instances I’ve blocked.
Sync lets you block entire instances, and that includes the comments.
It’s a cool self federation
The “block instance” feature is apparently in the pipeline for Lemmy.
Kbin currently allows you to block entire instances, so that’s nice.
Oh, that’s good news! I know it’s been a request on github for quite some time.
sorts by all -> new for content :P
^ this poster right here, officer
Yes, actually! Liftoff for Lemmy is still in early development, but you can get it on iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux, and it provides precisely this feature. There are a lot of features that Liftoff is yet to incorporate, probably most notably moderator tools and support for adding Kbin accounts – but give it a try regardless, and do what you can to contribute to its further development. Liftoff is an app with a lot of promise and a surprising amount of functionality already this early in its development.
It’s worth noting that Liftoff is a fork of the now abandoned project Lemmur, which I believe was the first Lemmy client to support combining feeds.
Cool thanks for the heads up!
It’s why I’ve found myself gravitating to the less defederation-happy instances. But a new user wouldn’t know to do that.
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I’m building this into an app right now, I’ve got an android beta open if you’re interested in helping decide the course of it.
Right now it just does the normal stuff with some extra features and lots of filters, but the goal has always been to build custom feeds on your device from a lot of individual sources. I’m redesigning stuff under the hood with that and support for other fediverse integration, I’m looking at kbin and mastodon in the near term, but I think I want pixelfed and maybe friendica down the road
The name is Luna, let me know if you want a link
Cool, I can give it a try if you’d like!
Sure, but keep in mind the comparison to any non-federated site has to be that you had no other instances to jump to in the first place.
Yeah, banned groups would need to move to a different platform.
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That’s just fine with me. Quality > quantity
Some of the best forums I use have just a handful of active users
But quantity and quality are linked. If only, say, 0.1% of people will post high quality content, that means you need to attract a thousand people to get a high quality poster. You can’t just put up a sign that says “high quality posters only”. Plenty of quality posters also want an audience, so they’ll go where the people are and leave if that audience isn’t there.
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Ok, and I’ll go where I like the most people I like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I left reddit for many reasons. I don’t want most of those people here.
So, to be blunt, I don’t care
So circling back then, if the high quality posters leave here, sure you’ll leave with them and you’ll be fine, but it still hurts the fediverse if they leave.
Cutting out huge swaths of users at once just stifles the content including the small percentage of actually quality content. You can’t pick out and keep the good stuff when you cut off whole instances. It also brings down the engagement in your own content.
Take your favorite small forum and now split it according to political opinion, now split it again according to if users pirate movies(lol). Your forum is now dead since no one likes speaking into the void.
We should be treasuring the connections, not putting up walls because it makes the circle jerk easier.
Counterpoint: new users who don’t know the ins and outs of the fediverse might join an instance at random and see significantly less content.
Fair, but a lot of new users might also get discouraged if the first thing they see is content from exploding-heads or hexbear, and the instances that strive to be safe, inclusive spaces and thus do a significant amount of defederating are usually quite forthright about this when you sign up. For example, I knew just what to expect when I joined beehaw.
The instance I’m posting from now tries to keep things inclusive more via moderation vs. defederation. There are pros and cons to each approach. I can see both perspective.
I just don’t think either approach harms the fediverse. I think that’s a bit melodramatic.
Funny enough, Hexbear actually defederated from my main instance first, due to it not being inclusive enough for their standards. My own experiences with Hexbear as an autistic enby are that Hexbear is actually the most inclusive Lemmy instance out there, by no small margin. The issue with Hexbear is that its users like to “punch up” at non-leftists, pointing out how people propagate or benefit from exploitative systems, and justify these systems to themselves.
Being “dunked on” may annoy and wound the pride of non-leftists, but this is also very much not the same as the actually evil Nazi shit posted to EH, which “punches down”. I have for many years understood the difference between being annoyed and having my pride wounded for having a bad opinion, and being actively terrorized and marginalized for being a member of a marginalized group. The world would be better off if more people understood that difference.
By no means am I saying it’s just as bad or remotely the same as a Nazi instance. I mean, I consider myself anarcho-communist, so it’s not like they’re too leftist for me or whatever, but it’s hard to call it an inclusive space while communicating in such a toxic, off-putting way. It leads me to question whether they’re even genuine communists when they don’t seem to be motivated by any sense of community.
Maybe I’m a bit quick to judge them, but they remind me of dirtbag leftists from CTH, who were so toxic that I’d actually encounter them freely using slurs in the threads. Not exactly punching up, eh?
So no, I’d take a million hexbears over one exploding-heads, but to be honest l don’t have any reason to associate with any of them. Maybe it’s my age, but it all seems so very childish and off-putting to me.
Hexbear at least has a no-tolerance policy for open slurs, as far as I’m aware. But you’re saying with regard to /r/CTH, that it wasn’t, like, people reclaiming slurs, or using “slurs” for non-marginalized groups – that it was actual, proper, undeniably hurtful slurring you saw? And by the way, what is a “dirtbag leftist”, anyway?
I can definitely understand being put off by the way that the Hexbears often talk. I have managed to have a lot of constructive conversations with the Hexbears, where they honestly just write normally and almost unfairly politely for my asininity; but when the Hexbears aren’t in Serious Mode, which is most of the time, then their comments just look like cryptic emojis and weird slang, right? And I think that’s appealing for a certain type of person, but not for others. I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to be childish or flippant, so it doesn’t bother me.
Whether the Hexbear culture is toxic is a different question. I can feel comfortable asking silly questions there or expressing sides of my identity that I might hide in other spaces, but there are also parts of the Hexbear culture that I like less and wish would change. Foremost that they could use a reminder of Hanlon’s razor sometimes.
I think you’re trying to frame my disgust for hexbear on some non-existent sense of fragility. And I don’t give two fucks if they thought they were “reclaiming” or “tactically” using slurs. Fuck all of that, there’s also a reason people dislike 4chan and tumblr.
I’ve been quite active on subreddits like FWR and AHS, so I understand the difference between punching up and down, and I grasp the value in dismantling the patriarchy and other hierarchies. This ain’t it. I’ve not seen anything positive come out of hexbear, and any potentially decent conversation is spoiled by people deliberately acting like a bunch of unlikable d-bags.
Admittedly, I’ve got my own traumas to cope with as a gay person in a conservative region, and I can be sensitive. I actually ended up blocking 196 from your instance due to some unchecked misogynistic and homophobic slurs that were never addressed by the mods.
What’s this about people disliking Tumblr due to slurs…? I haven’t heard about people particularly disliking Tumblr for any reason, much less usage of slurs. And I don’t know what FWR and AHS are, either. The second seems to be American Horror Story, but I’m not familiar with that.
I don’t particularly like 196, either. It was the mod endorsement of an ableist slur on 196 that was sort of the impetus for Hexbear defederating from Blåhaj, actually. So I’ve always wished that 196 would just move to its own instance instead of being basically this parasite on the rest of Blåhaj Lemmy where prejudices are allowed to flourish.
It’s only just now occurring to me that when you talk about slurs you might be referring more specifically to a word that alliterates “quest” and rhymes “near”, and maybe also a word that alliterates “bid” and rhymes “switch”. Are those the words you’re thinking of? The first in particular would be a word that an older gay person from a conservative region would probably have a traumatic past with, but that younger people in spaces like Blåhaj Lemmy or Hexbear or Tumblr would use without having that trauma. I could understand taking issue with that if that is your trauma, because that is something that people should be more respectful and aware of, and that younger LGBT+ people in particular could do better about.
I’m sorry to have touched a sore spot.
Counter counterpoint: the other option is to give your unique identifiable butthole print to zuck
But he promised those pics were just for him!
I’m high as fuck right now
I’m high as fuck AND on three instances rn. I win, right?
You don’t win Lemmy until you have an account on every public instance!
Also, I’m slightly high, but “as fuck” would be a major exaggeration on my part
Too many people never used forums and think every site needs to talk to every site.
Forums died for a reason. Reddit took over that space for me because it was one place to see everything. Federation is a better version of that. Decentralized and connected is how the Internet should be
Reddit took over because threading on forums was awful. The centralization was just a nice bonus imo.
I added the ‘for me’ to curb the pedants, but it seems you still found your way. Your experience doesn’t invalidate mine, sorry.
Sorry I missed that. My bad. Fwiw I agree. I like having all my gaming subs grouped together.
I don’t get it either. Defederation is a tool just like banning or spam prevention. If it’s unused it’s pointless to have.
But you don’t ban everyone for a single offense just like to don’t defederate lightly. If you do then people will move elsewhere and the problem resolves itself
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Right, which is why I put the line after that in
My point is I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad SOP lol
I don’t disagree. I think if it’s an issue the users have the power to resolve it
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If instances weren’t supposed to be ever defederate, then we wouldn’t have the tool. In the absence of real moderation/admin tools it’s going to get used more frequently. And that’s the admin owner’s right!
I would say that a big part of the issue is the difficulty in transferring one’s account. Ignoring the fact that one simply can’t transfer their posts, trying to manually copy all previously subscribed communities to a new account is a rather tedious task. I am aware that there exists scripts that can automate that process, but I don’t think that it’s fair to expect that the userbase should run 3rd party scripts. Until account transfer is properly implemented, defederation will continue to be a major issue.
The migration must be perfect, which means posts, comments and up/downvotes from the source instance must appear as if they’ve always been on the target instance.
I think the best part of the fed is that you can see ALL the content from the other instances. I personally feel like its what the internet is supposed to be.
I just use one, but AFAICT they don’t defederate, they haven’t even defederated anyone on their mastodon instance and that’s had a lot longer to have all manner of inter-instance bullshit develop.
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Lol I’ve actually had people say to me things like " Do something productive instead of just commenting." It’s like sweet, you have no idea how much time I straight up waste in things like cookie clicker. Commenting is actually productive by comparison :P
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It would be less of a problem if we as users on an instance could block entire instances, effectively defederating it just for our user. Then those running instances could defederate only in severe cases.
Blocking an instance on a user by user basis has a key drawback in the sense of those instances you block can still influence the posts and comments via up and down votes
Defederating basically means that those instances no longer have any influence on the community you’re a part of
Basically think of it this way, say you’re on a queer friendly instance that is still federated with a right wing instance. That right wing instance can manipulate the posts of the queer friendly instance by up voting queerphobic content and down voting queer positive content. And you block the instance as a user those votes still federated over so you’ll see queer positive content getting down voted to oblivion.
Connect is a great android app where you can block instances. Though I agree this should be a site wide feature.
I can’t wait for Lemmy to catch up with Mastodon in this regard. Between this and not being able to easily migrate your account to a new instance, it doesn’t feel like Lemmy users have as much of the freedom that the fediverse can provide.
Would it though? I understand that the main reason for defederating is to avoid your instance downloading CSAM posted in another instance, which could get an instance maintainer in legal problems. Allowing users to block entire instances won’t help, because the illegal media will still get downloaded by the instance.
IANAL, if subscribers had a decryption key, and the instance only stored encrypted copies of the media, would instances still be liable? Kinda-sorta like Tor relay-only nodes; it seems like only exit nodes get in trouble.
INAL either, but I think these kind of tricks would only work if whoever tries to do them has enough money for lawyers and lobbying to make them work.
I’m not saying defederating should go away, but that this should be an additional way to deal with unwanted content.
“I don’t like drama” is always said by people who cause drama. This drama stirring meme is 100% expected from someone who would write that title
From the same people who gave you
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I’m never unfaithful
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I never get into fights
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I’m not a bully
See also: I tell It like it is; I’m brutally honest
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Ehh, who cares? It’s just more political nonsense anyways, and the less I see of that shit the better.
well that’s just not true
The whole epidemic of defederating is mostly because of all the csam issues, no?
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theres also some other drama with tankies and communists as far as I understand. I dont really care about political views of people
tbh i have noticed them a lot less in the last couple weeks. maybe they’re giving up
Yeah the hexbear brigades seem to have mysteriously disappeared (or at least decreased) after Facebook shut down the big Chinese troll farm recently
What does Facebook have to do with Hexbear?
Yeah it’s usually it’s the other way around, troll farm gets knocked of bigger sites they increase activity on smaller sites.
Though it is possible they may have been disrupted by another actor using capabilities beyond what Facebook has once it was identified. Or maybe they were active on both Facebook and Lemmy, but after Facebook shut them down, it wasn’t worth keeping it going just for smaller communities like Lemmy.
Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Who knows?
Maybe you just managed to block a lot of them ?
i havent blocked anyone
Wow. What an enlightened centrist take. All views are valid, great take
Found Stalin.
Lemmy.nz recently defederated Hexbear, they’re running out of instances that will talk to them. .world has also defederated as well.
I’m out of the loop, who’s defedding fro what now?
Some vile individuals started spamming a community on lemmy.world with some awful content, so some instances defederated with them temporarily as images are decentralised and currently hosted on any instance that has people who saw it as well as on the original instance it was posted to. That’d my understanding, anyway
Drama? In the fediverse? It’s more likely than you think!
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That white shoe between his feet confused the hell out of me for a second there…
This is hearsay, but you might want to be careful of csam material potentially being federated if you self host your instance.
Me, who uses it.
Didnt know you use this account lmao
That’s why I’m pretty happy I made one on Lemmy.ml, they’re not really defederating.
I read the title as “I don’t like Obama” lmao
Ootl here. Whats this about defederating?
Generally we can post topics and comments in any instance and can be viewed from any instance. After defederating, the communication between the instances will be cut. so we cannot comment/post with the instance that was defederated.
Pretty sure they meant why is this a fresh topic with OP acting like it’s happening all over the place. I’m similarly OOTL as I haven’t seen any big surge in defed announcements recently. Though I could understand if that was happening in response to the CSAM issues.
To add on to this: Instance admins have no control over moderating content from other instances that they’re federated with. An acceptable post on one instance could be rule breaking to another. The only option that other instance has is to defederate. Admins have acknowledged defederation is an extreme measure for what is often just a few problem communities or users, but they have no other option.
They can certainly remove and ban specific users, so it’s not like they have no moderation tools. Defederating is usually the nuclear option when you have instances with things like bigoted content or that doesn’t properly vet its applications
Is there not an option for blocking just that problem community or user?
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