ou might have seen that we’ve been defederated from beehaw.org
[http://beehaw.org]. I think there’s some necessary context to understand what
this means to the users on this instance. ## How federation works The way
federation works is that the community on beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org] is an
organization of posts, and you’re subscribed to it despite your account being on
lemmy.world. Now someone posts on that community (created on beehaw.org
[http://beehaw.org]), on which server is that post hosted? It’s hosted on both!
It’s hosted on any instance that has a subscriber. It’s also hosted on lemmy.ml
[http://lemmy.ml], lemmygrad.ml [http://lemmygrad.ml], etc. Every instance that
has a subscriber is going to have a copy of this post. That’s why if you host
your own instance, you’ll often get a ton of text data just in your own server.
And the copies all stay in sync with each other using ActivityPub. So you’re
reading the post that’s host on lemmy.world, and someone with an account on
beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org] is reading the same post on beehaw.org
[http://beehaw.org], and the posts are kept in sync via ActivityPub. Whenever
someone posts to that community or comments on a post, that data is shared to
all the versions across the fediverse, and these versions are kept in sync. So
up until 5 hours ago, they were the same post! ### “True”-ness A key concept
that will matter in the next section is the idea of a “true” version.
Effectively, one version of these posts is the “true” version, that every other
community reflects. The “true” version is the one hosted on the instance that
hosts the community. So the “true” version of a beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org]
community post is the one actually hosted on beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org]. We
have a copy, but ours is only a copy. If you post to our copy, it updates the
“true” version on beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org], and then all the other
instances look to the “true” version on beehaw to update themselves. The same
goes for communities hosted on lemmy.world or lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml].
Defederation affects how information is shared between instances. If you keep
track of where the “true” version is hosted, it becomes a lot easier to
understand what is going on. ## How defederation works Now take that example
post from earlier, the one on beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org]. The “true” version
of the post is on beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org] but the post is still hosted on
both instances (again, it has a copy hosted on all instances). Let’s say someone
with an account on beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org] comments on that post. That
comment is going to be sent to every version of that post via ActivityPub, as
the “true” version has been updated. That is, every version EXCEPT lemmy.world
and sh.itjust.works. So users on lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works won’t get that
comment, because we’ve been defederated from beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org]. If
we write a comment, it will only be visible from accounts on lemmy.world,
because we posted to a copy, but our copy is now out of sync with the “true”
version. So we can appear to interact with the post, but those interactions are
ONLY visible by other lemmy.world accounts, since our comments aren’t send to
other versions. As the “true” version is hosted on beehaw, and we no longer get
beehaw updates due to defederation, we will not see comments from ANY other
community on those posts (including from other defederated instances like
sh.itjust.works). The same goes for posting to beehaw communities. We can still
do that. However, the “true” version of those communities are the ones on
beehaw, so our posts will not be shared to other instances via ActivityPub. And
all of this is true for Beehaw users with our communities. Beehaw users can
continue to see and interact with Lemmy.world communities, but those
interactions are only visible to other Beehaw users, since the “true” versions
of the Lemmy.world communities (the ones sent to/synced with every other
instance) is the Lemmy.world one. Communities on other instances, for example
lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml], are unaffected by this. Lemmy.world and beehaw.org
[http://beehaw.org] users will still be able to interact with those communities,
but posts/comments from lemmy.world users won’t be visible to beehaw.org
[http://beehaw.org] users, as defederation prevents our posts/comments from
being sent to the version of these posts hosted on beehaw.org
[http://beehaw.org]. However, as the “true” version is the one on the third
instance, we can still see everything from beehaw.org [http://beehaw.org] users.
So we see a more filled in version than the beehaw users. ### Why can I still
see posts/comments from beehaw users? Until they defederated us, posts/comments
were being sent to lemmy.world, so we can see everything from before
defederation. After defederation, we are no longer receiving or sending updates.
So there are now multiple versions of those posts. ### Why can I still interact
with beehaw communities? This won’t ever stop. You’ll notice that all posts
after defederation are only from lemmy.world users. You won’t see posts/comments
from ANY other instance (including instances that ) on beehaw.org
[http://beehaw.org] communities. Those communities will quickly suck for us, as
we’re only talking to other lemmy.world users. Your posts/comments are not being
sent to any other lemmy. I highly recommend just unsubscribing from those
communities, since they’re pretty pointless for us to be in right now. ### Why
do I still see comments from beehaw users on lemmy.world communities? Again,
comments from before defederation were still sent to us. After defederation, it
will no longer be possible for beehaw users to interact with the “true” version
of lemmy.world communities. Their posts/comments are not being sent to any other
lemmy. They also aren’t getting updates from any other lemmy, as the “true”
version of those communities is on our instance. ### Why do I see posts/comments
from beehaw users on communities outside lemmy.world and beehaw.org
[http://beehaw.org]? That’s because the “true” version of those posts is outside
beehaw. So we get updates from those posts. And lemmy.world didn’t defederate
beehaw, so posts/comments from beehaw users can still come to versions hosted on
lemmy.world. The reverse is not true. Because beehaw defederate lemmy.world, any
post/comment from a lemmy.world users will NOT be sent to the beehaw version of
the post. ### This seems like it’s worse for beehaw users than for us? Yes. In
my opinion, this is an extraordinarily dumb act by the beehaw instance owners.
It’s worse for beehaw users than for us, and will likely result in many beehaw
users leaving that instance. They said in their post that this is a nuke, but I
don’t think they fully assessed the blast area. Based on their post, I don’t
think they fully understand what defederation does.
Yohan Yukiya Seseㆍ사요한・謝雪矢
Dendan Setia (Nins)
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the