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ELI5: Why can't defederation be one sided? (self.askbeehaw)

submitted 1 year ago by LimitedBrain to c/askbeehaw

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I think I understand how the federation system works currently and I'm not sure if I think this is a good thing, but why does federation require the entire link between communities to be broken?

Like say that Community A wants to block out Community B. That's fine, but can Community B still see posts on A? And if not, why not?

And to go further, if I'm part of Community A and I still want to interact with Community B, why can't I? Like is there a reason for forcing users to only interact with communities that are federated?

Again, I understand there are restrictions with data and how things currently work. I'm just asking from an abstract perspective about the fundamental ideas.

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[–] Lionir 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It totally can. It's just not a feature at the moment. There's many federation restrictions that can exist but currently Lemmy only knows of like, ~3.

Open to everyone and everything

So everything is allowed, full-on communication

Open to everyone and everything but with a blacklist

So everything is allowed, full-on communication however blocklisted Community B becomes "dead" and can't interact with Community A.

Allowlisted community

You can only interact between allowlisted communties however when you go to Community B (allowlisted), you could see and interact with people from Community C (which is not allowlisted!) when in a Community of B but not of A. However, people from A cannot see or interact with communities of C and vice-versa.

[–] LimitedBrain 3 points 1 year ago

Clears it up a lot, thanks. I was asking because I'm hoping that in the future we can achieve the best community and user experience. So instances blocking each other isn't the end of the world for users, but is still effective to keep bans in place.

[–] retronautickz 5 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure how federation work with Lemmy (I think the answer is no), but in mastodon, for example, you have different types of defederation.

Limiting an instance means that the users on the defederating instance cannot see post from the defederated instance, except from those belonging to users they follow. But people from the defederated instance can see post from the defederating instance

Suspending an instance means that all connection between instances is lost and people in those instances cannot talk to each other, follow each other nor see each other's posts in any timeline. Instance are, in general, suspended when they house bad actors (hateful/"free speech", illegal content, etc).

Defederation is a serious tool and it's never done without good reasons. It exist to protect users and make their experience better. Even if its only by limiting an instance.

I don't think there's a level of defederation that allows people from a server to read post from another they are/were defederated from, but not to participate on them.

[–] hawkwind@lemmy.management 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It is technically one-sided, and it works at the instance level, not the community level. If instance (server) A adds instance B to their defederated list: instance A ignores everything from instance B and does not send any updates to instance B. Instance B doesn't have to add instance A to it's defederation list, but it doesn't matter because it doesn't make a difference to what instance A is doing.

[–] LimitedBrain 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right okay I see. But if instance B didn't block A, can instance B people still see instance A content?

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[–] almar_quigley 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’d imagine you can’t allow a community to read only and not comment to another so that would necessitate defederation being bi-directional.

[–] LimitedBrain 2 points 1 year ago

But would it be possible to have it read only? Or would that break functionality somehow (providing you at least inform the user they cannot comment or vote)?

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