this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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I have just logged in on my own Lemmy instance, and I see a list of banned users in the administrative area, from other instances. I have not banned anyone myself.

How does it work? If you’re banned from an instance, you’re banned from the whole federation?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, instance bans propagate out to the federation. But if [email protected] gets banned, they can just go sign up as [email protected].

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you, it appears to be this way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Same question.
My theory is:
When the instance admins ban one of the users off of their instance, the ban event gets transmitted to everyone that’s federated, so that other instances can stop seeing posts from that user too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can’t test it but it seems that I cannot unban them from my instance. Meaning that a ban is at federation level.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

They're banned on their instance, so their instance wouldn't even attempt to federate their content.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That would imply that any instance admin, even those that created theirs for themself only, can just ban users on other instance. That would be a major attack vector and it kind of defeats the purpose of the autonomy each instance is supposed to have...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I assume it only gets shared when the admin of the instance bans a user that's registered on the other instance, but again, that's only a guess.

Go to the modlog of your instance and you can see they were banned of the mod of the original instance.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I assume it only gets shared when the admin of the instance bans a user that’s registered on the other instance, but again, that’s only a guess.

And that would mean I can set up my own instance, ban e.g. you, and you'd get banned on other instances as well. That doesn't sound like a well thought out design choice.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can only globally ban people who have accounts on your instance. Cause that's how banning works, I don't really see a problem here.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You said "when the admin of the instance bans a user that’s registered on the other instance" the other instance. Make up your mind.

You also said that ban gets distributed. It shouldn't and it probably doesn't because if it would as I said I could ban you on my instance and distribute that ban to other instances and just lock you out of the Fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“when the admin of the instance bans a user that’s registered on the other instance” - I meant an admin banning a user on the instance that they administer. "The other instance" here referred to an instance that isn't the one you host, but the one where the admin is.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

So you're saying the instance mentioned in "admin of the instance" and the instance mentioned in "the other instance" are meant to be the same instance, although it specifically says "other instance"?

Maybe you could reword all of that because what you've written until now is just extremely convoluted.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

When you say "my own instance" do you mean an instance you set up yourself and are the administrator? If so how and where did you set it up?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There should be a public modlog which should tell you when and why someone was banned. I haven't set up my lemmy instance yet, did you maybe leave your instance unprotected for long enough so some could add bans? Or did you use an old database with data from a previous instance? Did you pull the wrong docker image?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Everything is running fine. It is as @jon@[email protected] and @[email protected] write.

If I am server A, and I federate with B. If user@B is banned by B, this is propagated to me, so that A does not see content from B that comes from user@B. It makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are those instances you federate with?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, they all are only from instances I federate with.

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