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How does Federating work? (latte.isnot.coffee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

7 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi all, first time posting. I've tried googling a bit but its not totally clear to me. Say I have servers A, B, C, and D.

Can servers A and B federate, and then separately C and D federate?

If so, can A B and C be federated, but separately C and D be federated, so D is not recognized as federated for A?

If A, B, C, and D are federated, and it becomes apparent that D is a bad actor, how does D become defederated?

I feel like these kinds of situations are critical to ensure long term success. I really appreciate any answers anyone can provide!

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[–] kersploosh 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can servers A and B federate, and then separately C and D federate?

Yes.

If so, can A B and C be federated, but separately C and D be federated, so D is not recognized as federated for A?

Yes.

If A, B, C, and D are federated, and it becomes apparent that D is a bad actor, how does D become defederated?

A, B, and C each individually decide whether they want to deferate with D. Maybe they all do, or maybe only some of them do. It's analogous to groups of people deciding who they want to be friends with.

At least that's my understanding.

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

Thanks! This is an ideal method for keeping servers in check once user base starts gathering steam.

Side question but I assume servers have the ability to make communities private. Is there any segregation of content when it comes to federated users? For example, could you make content only visible to users, or federated users, or federated users from a specific server? Thinking in terms of bad actors exploiting bandwidth

[–] kersploosh 1 points 1 year ago

That's a great question that I cannot answer. Hopefully someone else can chime in.

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

From a philosophical perspective, it is pretty complex.

This is a good start

-Allowlist: Explicitly list instances to connect to.

-BlockList: Explicitly list instances to not connect to. Federation is open to all other instances.

-Open: Federate with all potential instances.

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

Thanks this link is great!

Thinking long term, it feels like "open" or "blacklisting" methods are not sustainable. Bad-actor servers can come along much faster than servers can coordinate blacklisting. Is there any movement towards "factionalized" communities or whitelist groups? Hoping there's not a limit on number of whitelisted instances because it could get pretty long in the future.

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

It's tricky. But I keep thinking that 'bad servers' bring similar issues to those of bad actors on 'good servers'....

Not sure how they might approach it - or what exactly is even available now. I should probably stand up a lemmy server just to have a poke around 🫣.

[–] Ajen 1 points 1 year ago

I was just wondering about this too, specifically in regards to small instances. One of the things that interests me about the fediverse is that anyone can spin up a server and participate, but with beehaw defederating instances that don't share their philosophy about vetting members, I worry that it will become increasingly difficult for individuals to start a new instance without the support of an existing community.

To be clear, I'm not criticizing beehaw. I understand why they made that decision, and appreciate that they acknowledged the downsides involved with defederating. I realize how difficult it is to be inclusive while also protecting vulnerable members of the community.

Does anyone else share my concern? Maybe Lemmy just want designed with the goal of giving individual users that much power/independence?