this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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I made a VERY BUGGY tool to check both "blocked by" and "blocked" of a Lemmy instance (federation-checker.vercel.app)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by god to c/[email protected]
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How to use:

The url must be the hostname only, NO SLASHES, like this: lemmy.dbzer0.com, don't use https://, don't append a slash afterwards (lemmy.dbzer0.com/), only the hostname including the subdomain if it has it (in this case, lemmy).

If the instance has blocked the IP address from the server, or it is stuck and its API is not working correctly, it returns "Not a Lemmy instance" (I am too busy to fix this right now).

If the url is not formatted in a way it can process it, it will say Invalid URL. Better processing can come in the future. I won't be updating it now.

In the backend, it just scrapes https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain={url} and uses the api https://{instance}/api/v3/federated_instances

PRs welcome.

Honestly it works better when deployed locally in a development environment. I think Vercel's IP address is just blocked by cloudflare and other blacklists that stop automated stuff? Idk. Can check back in a few days.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I would like to find a website with something like this to see the total blocked users for each instance, sorted from least to most blocked users, to make an account and not feel like I'm missing out, because you can sometimes see different comments from different instances.

[–] god 2 points 1 year ago

Can do. Later. If the API has that number it's not hard to do. It's not super fast though because it has to be requested from every server any time a request comes and some instances have over 50 servers in their lists on either side of the block.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I've been using https://fba.ryona.agency which does the same.

[–] god 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This thing uses ryona too on the backend. I state it at the end of my post. The only difference is it fetches both sides at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ahh I see. That site does list both blocked by and blocked, but not simultaneously.

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

Ah shit I didn't know that. That's useful. I can scrape it for both sides if the API is broken for a lemmy instance.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This tool is primarily used for ban evasion and harassment and is run by people from kiwifarms (a known bad actor on the fediverse).

Please don't feed them data about fediverse instances by querying new domain names.

Further more: what is exactly the purpose of knowing who is blocked by whom? All it does is stirr drama and it will be used for harassment.

[–] god 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

POV: you're joining an instance. You check the tool. The instance is blocked by instances that have communities you like. You decide not to join that instance, and instead check the tool to find a place that 1. Doesn't block what you like and 2. Is not blocked by what you like. Seems easy enough to understand to me, especially since sh.itjust.works got defederated by beehaw.org and everyone is talking about defederating this and that over some reason or another.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would you not directly join an instance that has the communities you like?

Even playing devils advocate here I can at best see it as a tool to figure out which instances to avoid completely, but you can get about the same information by looking at the block-list of any instance that you like.

[–] god 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk what's hard about it.

SJW is blocked by Beehaw, I wanna see beehaw and SJW, I check the tool, I input lemm.ee, I see lemm.ee has both SJW and Beehaw and is not banned by anyone big, I join lemm.ee

It's a pretty simple thought process.

Another level of complexity is, for example, knowing that lemm.ee bans nsfw content and you can't post it. What if you want nsfw? You check the tool again, find lemmy.zip which doesn't have nsfw blocked and has not blocked or been blocked by SJW and Beehaw and many others, you sign up, and you have all you want. What's so hard or bad about that?

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

This kind of "what's best for me alone in the short term" thinking is absolutely destructive to a federated network and is really only a small notch above intentional ban evasion.

[–] god 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel that you're somehow missing the entire point. I'm not looking to evade any bans. If I wanna read news from beehaw.org and sh.itjust.works on the same Subscribed feed, and potentially interact with the comments, I cannot do that from either sh.itjust.works or beehaw.org, but I need to go to a third instance that has both available. Am "I" as an individual banned? No. Am I part of the target group banned? No. I am simply caught in the crossfire. To pretend like, by doing this, I am somehow harming federation, is not realistic for me.

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

You have to think about this a bit broader. You are one of many actors in a federated network that together help shape the network.

Let's say Facebook opens a fediverse instance (which they will soon do) and most of the well managed instances imediatly block them since they are a known bad actor and actively harmful to the ecosystem.

If you now intentionally look for a instance that federates both with these instances and the one run by Facebook, that is a form of ban evasion that is indirectly detrimental to the health of the Fediverse.

[–] god 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you now intentionally look for a instance that federats both with these instances and the one run by Facebook, that is a form of ban evasion that is indirectly detrimental to the health of the wider Fediverse.

No it isn't. Let's say I join "littlehorseylemmy.org" which has, say, 30 people, and I just wanna see what the facebookers are doing and what the regular lemmings are doing, as long as I am not sharing content between sides, I am not even affecting any of both sides.

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

This is short term thinking.

Instances block other bad actor instances to either get them to stop being bad actors or to isolate them from the network. Its a kind of built in immune system so to say.

By intentionally choosing to not participate in this collective effort you are at best a fool directly helping Facebook to get a foothold in the Fediverse.

[–] god 1 points 1 year ago

Nah, by not following the footsteps of a bunch o people who think they know better than me, I am at best finding pleasure in life and not following the spooky arbitrary rules others set for me. It's not short-term thinking, it's long-term thinking about what's best for me. My effect on me will always be much greater than the infinitesimaly small effect I have on a collective made up of hundreds of thousands of people. As long as I'm not trolling or ruining people's experiences, I am free to do whatever I want.

And besides, you're arguing about the biggest possible problem that there will be, and even then the effect I can have is tiny. My effect on other things such as the SJW-Beehaw block, or the lemmyworld-beehaw block, is even tinier, because these two are not even targeting each other, but are simply trying to make moderation easier. My so-called "ban-evasion" would not be harmful to any as I am not even the target of this "ban".

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

Not OP, but my communities are homed on a number of different instances. At minimum, I need to be able to interact with them, both reading and widely distributing my posts/comments. Preferably all on the same account, but that's gotten more difficult lately.

For any communities I may create, I generally want to ensure that they can be accessed widely, by most users in the fediverse.

All of this preferably without having to deal with tankies, Nazis, etc.

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

Please don’t feed them data about fediverse instances by querying new domain names.

I don't believe searching for domains will feed them data as such. You can crawl the lemmyverse starting from a few known servers. It's how awesome-lemmy-instances works.

what is exactly the purpose of knowing who is blocked by whom?

Before joining an instance it seemed useful to get an idea of their moderation policy. It just gives transparency as to that instance's policies, as well insight into how the rest of the fediverse views that instance.

I wasn't aware it was created by known bad actors and it wasn't my intention to promote them. It was just a useful tool.

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

Yes querying for new instances in that tool will make it aware of them and from then on it will start tracking these instances block list.

And I don't see how this helps at all. You can figure out the moderation policy by looking at the block list of the instance. Knowing who blocks that instance at most gives you a hint if an instance is generally considered a bad actor, but that is usually immediately visible by looking at their local feed.

[–] god 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Knowing who blocks that instance at most gives you a hint if an instance is generally considered a bad actor.

Nope. It only tells you who dislikes it for any reason. Is sh.itjust.works a bad actor? Is lemmy.world a bad actor? If not, then why did Beehaw.org block them? According to them it was because they were open registration. Misunderstandings like these are common.

If, because I follow your advice, I join sh.itjust.works and I don't have Beehaw content available because I am blocked, is it because I'm a bad actor? Nope, I just picked the wrong instance. Nothing wrong in looking through the list to see who isn't blocking what you want to see and joining that.

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

Both these instances are temporarily blocked by beehaw as they couldn't get trolls originating from these two instances under control otherwise.

The lack of registration screening on a federated network is at best a sign of severe mis-management and you really should not join such instances as long as this situation remains as it is.

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

Both these instances are temporarily blocked by beehaw as they couldn’t get trolls originating from these two instances under control otherwise.

Yup. And if I wanna interact with Beehaw, I need to do it from elsewhere. In my case, I use Lemm.ee because it has both SJW and Beehaw.

and you really should not join such instances as long as this situation remains as it is.

I joined right after SJW was created. I had no idea there would be problems with management. Many people don't even know about this. And how could they, if they don't check the list of instances that are blocked or asked why such and such are blocked?

Still, that doesn't mean that there aren't valuable communities in SJW. If I wanna interact with them, I need to know from where I can do that, and from where I can't. From Beehaw, for example, I can't. So after checking the little tool I'd know that Beehaw is not the right community to join because it sucks cuz it has too much banned stuff that I wanna see.

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

Further more: what is exactly the purpose of knowing who is blocked by whom?

There's good reason as a regular Lemmy user. To properly interact with a remote community you need the instance of the community linked on your sign-in instance and you need your sign-in instance linked on the remote instance.

For example if I sign in on lemmy.ml and I want to interact with a community local to beehaw.org, I have to go to beehaw.org/instances and check lemmy.ml is linked. Then I have to go to lemmy.ml/instances and check beehaw.org is linked. It's kind of an unruly task with the /instances lists as large as they are so a tool to check that for you is very useful.

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

No you don't. Unless an instance is explicitly blocked, linking is automatic and happens as soon as you start interacting with another instance.

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

The purpose is not to link, but to know whether it's linked. Sometimes you wanna know if your recipient is gonna be getting your messages before you send them. Sometimes you wanna know if the email provider you're signing up to can even get emails from Gmail before singing up to it.

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

As I said, linking is automatic. You don't need to know if something is linked as it is automatically linked as soon as you want.

And gmail is an exceptionally bad example as they spamblock just about anyone other that a few others that are too big to block. And they do so for pure business reasons as they want you to switch to gmail.

[–] god 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As I said, linking is automatic. You don’t need to know if something is linked as it is automatically linked as soon as you want.

And I said, the purpose is not to link. Linking is not the purpose. It has nothing to do with the purpose.

The purpose is to interact. This tool checks if you can interact. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't, simple as that. If you want to interact but the instance you're considering can't, then you put it in your back pocket and keep looking.

And gmail is an exceptionally bad example as they spamblock just about anyone other that a few others that are too big to block. And they do so for pure business reasons as they want you to switch to gmail.

Yeah bad example. It's more like you have a sniper's rifle and you wanna see if you can pop a head or whether that head is vaccinated against the exact brand of bullet that you're carrying. Except instead of bullet it's a comment, and instead of head it's a post that you wanna comment on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Okay, let me say not blocked. Yes linking is automatic, but if an instance appears in the linked column, it can't appear in the blocked column. You want to check that neither instance is blocked, which is the same as saying both instances are linked.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hey, it's a start. 👍

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

That's odd. My instance shows up as blocked by several other instances. Yet when I check those instances, they show my instance as one of the linked instances.

[–] god 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My theory: your instance WAS blocked by those instances, probably because it had a bot issue. When it was dealt with, sunaurus' bot instance tracker removed your instance from the list and it was whitelisted and everyone else unblocked you. But Ryona checks don't update cache very often which means it still shows as blocked.

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

I'm thinking the same thing. Lemmy.ninja had a bot issue for a day or two until we figured out how to cleanly wipe the bot accounts. Do you happen to have a link to the bot instance tracker?

[–] god 1 points 1 year ago

Check https://lemm.ee/u/sunaurus, check post list. He makes few posts so you'll find the one he made about bots. I believe he may link to the tool.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It works great for me! I've bookmarked it, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

No luck using it for me.

Edit: Its telling me we're not a lemmy instance, but obv I'm commenting here so federated.> Lemmy@lem

Edit 2: Also says lemmy.world is not a lemmy instance...

[–] god 5 points 1 year ago

Also, hello, fellow God!

[–] god 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If you read the post, that's a known bug. It doesn't work for lemmy world. I think lemmy world doesn't allow the API to be used from the ip address I send the requests from. A local deploy fixes this issue as the IP address of your local computer would fare better. This is just a speculation. It worked for me locally. Sorry to disappoint.

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

No worries, I'm just trying to learn and looking for tools that can help me support the broader community as a fellow God.

For example, I'm still not sure I've got federation set up correctly because of some funniness around discovery. I think it might actually be the way lemmy.ml is set up.

Any tools that could help admin are just golden so keep cracking.

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

Maybe check out my hover cards on /c/[email protected], I use them to check account ages, amount of posts and stuff like that just by hovering. This helps with moderation. Dunno if you need to moderate rn. Hopefully I can add more buttons to it later like block, ban, send message, etc.

[–] god 1 points 1 year ago

This is why it doesn't work. https://lemmy.world/api/v3/federated_instances is inaccessible.

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