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It's not "drama", it's protecting their community from an instance that's currently being bombed by trolls. Seriously, the concern trolling around here regardi

It's not "drama", it's protecting their community from an instance that's currently being bombed by trolls. Seriously, the concern trolling around here regarding federation is almost comical. Apparently when major private corporation admins or volunteer mods arbitrarily intervene in the functioning of a platform it's totally fine, but when local server admins do it by moderating locally or de-federating from problem instances (whether temporarily, to deal with a flashpoint problem, or permanently in the case of problem servers), suddenly it's a huge problem and an indication of "drama".

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> the concern trolling around here regarding federation I clicked, excited. I closed the tab when it required me to select a server. I don't want to read up on what rights server admins have over my account, why I should choose one versus another, which servers are de-federating which others, et cetera. This is a real and recurring hurdle to the adoption of these technologies.
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  Yeah, definitely better to just blindly click through a ToS on some private corporate social media service...
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > definitely better to blindly click through a ToS on some private corporate social media service Philosophically, no. Practically, yes. Because it actually delivers the product. Creating an ideological and technical filter at the mouth of the funnel is absurd. This is heading straight for either Reddit getting its act together or one of Facebook, Twitter or Substack taking the prize. Because they spent two seconds thinking about onboarding. Perfect is the enemy of good.
    - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
      > Creating an ideological and technical filter at the mouth of the funnel is absurd. So then just pick a large, popular instance and be done with it. You've already made it clear you don't care what the platform's policies are, so why are you pretending this is a barrier?
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > pick a large, popular instance and be done with it .world is having technical issues. (I could sign up. But first login spawns an infinite spinny. The only reason I know that's one of the larger servers is because of this thread.) I'm doing it. But it's tedious, and the hacker in me sees an opening for a competitor to scoop out the 90% of users who don't care about federation, they just want it to work. > you don't care what the platform's policies are, so why are you pretending this is a barrier You really don't see the barrier?
        sudosysgen 3y ago
        The problem is that there's no reason it won't end the same as Reddit if you don't have federation, so you actually can't scoop out 90% of users because they might as well stay on Reddit.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > there's no reason it won't end the same as Reddit if you don't have federation, so you actually can't scoop out 90% of users because they might as well stay on Reddit It will end up like Reddit. But right now it isn't, and that's good enough to make a play for the users. Given a choice between that and choosing a server, signing up, finding its log-in unresponsive, looking for another server, signing up... (I haven't gotten further than this) who do you think wins? By the way, we agree. I want a federated system to work. But simple sign-up fuck-ups, where even someone who's curious for curiosity's sake has to spend half an hour figuring out which servers even work at the moment,
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    You don't take an aeronautics course when you buy a plane ticket, because 99% of people don't want to do that. I've been a nerd for ~40 years, I used to live on Usenet, I understand federation inside out, and I don't want to learn another protocol just to try a new website. Blindly clicking through a ToS while chuckling that 'nobody reads that shit lol' is in fact a better user experience for almost everyone. If your approach were so great, there would be physical cities whose population consisted entirely of architects and engineers.
    - Barrin92 3y ago
      >there would be physical cities whose population consisted entirely of architects and engineers. the analog to a digital federation in the physical world, is literally just that, an actual federation. People making choices about what community they participate in isn't technical, it's social. Everyone who lives in a democratic society does in fact participate in how their city is run and governed or understands how to move from one state to another. You do not need to understand the technical details of federated systems, but it is absolutely infantilizing to pretend that people are unable to choose or build the communities they want, and take some responsibility in maintaining them. This 'consumer' mentality needs to die, people need to learn to be proper citizens on the internet. We ask it from people in the real world, so we can do it online. Why are we pretending the online version of some 19th century company town is inevitable?
      - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
        > You do not need to understand the technical details of federated systems, but it is absolutely infantilizing to pretend that people are unable to choose or build the communities they want, and take some responsibility in maintaining them. Not only is it infantilizing, it's wrong. People create communities online all the time. Whether it's Facebook groups or subreddits or Discourse forums or Discord groups and on and on and on. That's literally how the internet has always worked.
        captaincrisp 3y ago
ihateolives 3y ago
It's literally throwing thousands of babies out with bathwater. Beehaw in their attempt of building a happy place has disabled downvoting so community can't downvote trolls and only tool they apparently have to fight trolls is to defederate two of the biggest instances. Problem solved? It's like blocking entire small country by IP because your had two port scans from there.
- mdhen 3y ago
  Beehaw disallows the creation of new subs by users. It's run by total control freaks. Hard pass on them.
- soundnote 3y ago
  Some of the most toxic places in existence are those obsessed with positive attitude.
anigbrowl 3y ago
It's not concern trolling, drama exists because everyone gets distracted by organized trolling and federation stans don't have a good answer for this problem. Federation is confusing and alienating to non-technical users, and nerds who love federation tend to have a mediocre grasp of social dynamics and gloss over the inevitable abuses. Federation stans need to grasp the fact that nobody who is not a full time nerd cares about how federation works at the technical level, they just want a place to socialize with the assurance that they won't be overrun by assholes. All the Federation stans go into it the idea that 'you can just defederate' whereas non-technical users go into it with the idea that they don't want to get raided in the first place. The existing model of federation is not working. Users don't want to know about the infrastructure any more than people going into a coffee shop want to looka t the architectural blueprints of the building, and federation is clearly unable to pre-empt raiding behavior automatically.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Federation is confusing and alienating to non-technical users, and nerds who love federation tend to have a mediocre grasp of social dynamics and gloss over the inevitable abuses Doesn't this also describe Reddit mods?
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    It does, and that's another opportunity to repost this evergreen paper describing how these issues manifest on Reddit. https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03697 https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03697
- zozbot234 3y ago
  "Raiding behavior" has been around forever, including on Usenet. It's not a serious objection to federation, since "raids" and other obnoxious behavior can happen irrespective of it.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    I'm not objecting to federation as such, I'm objecting to the belief that users want to become federation evangelists in order to engage in social conversation. It's limiting the uptake of federated services because it forces users into making a meaningless-seeming choice before they can participate. When I show a site like Lemmy to my non-technical friends, their eyes glaze over and they are confused by the necessity to choose an instance and the inability to make any kind of meaningful comparison between them. This is the exact same reason that Mastodon has never really taken off.
fnovd 3y ago
If the federated system can't handle the trolls and bad actors that Reddit is currently equipped to deal with then the whole idea is dead in the water.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> the concern trolling around here regarding federation I clicked, excited. I closed the tab when it required me to select a server. I don't want to read up on what rights server admins have over my account, why I should choose one versus another, which servers are de-federating which others, et cetera. This is a real and recurring hurdle to the adoption of these technologies.

BaseballPhysics 3y ago
Yeah, definitely better to just blindly click through a ToS on some private corporate social media service...
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > definitely better to blindly click through a ToS on some private corporate social media service Philosophically, no. Practically, yes. Because it actually delivers the product. Creating an ideological and technical filter at the mouth of the funnel is absurd. This is heading straight for either Reddit getting its act together or one of Facebook, Twitter or Substack taking the prize. Because they spent two seconds thinking about onboarding. Perfect is the enemy of good.
  - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
    > Creating an ideological and technical filter at the mouth of the funnel is absurd. So then just pick a large, popular instance and be done with it. You've already made it clear you don't care what the platform's policies are, so why are you pretending this is a barrier?
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > pick a large, popular instance and be done with it .world is having technical issues. (I could sign up. But first login spawns an infinite spinny. The only reason I know that's one of the larger servers is because of this thread.) I'm doing it. But it's tedious, and the hacker in me sees an opening for a competitor to scoop out the 90% of users who don't care about federation, they just want it to work. > you don't care what the platform's policies are, so why are you pretending this is a barrier You really don't see the barrier?
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        The problem is that there's no reason it won't end the same as Reddit if you don't have federation, so you actually can't scoop out 90% of users because they might as well stay on Reddit.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > there's no reason it won't end the same as Reddit if you don't have federation, so you actually can't scoop out 90% of users because they might as well stay on Reddit It will end up like Reddit. But right now it isn't, and that's good enough to make a play for the users. Given a choice between that and choosing a server, signing up, finding its log-in unresponsive, looking for another server, signing up... (I haven't gotten further than this) who do you think wins? By the way, we agree. I want a federated system to work. But simple sign-up fuck-ups, where even someone who's curious for curiosity's sake has to spend half an hour figuring out which servers even work at the moment,
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  You don't take an aeronautics course when you buy a plane ticket, because 99% of people don't want to do that. I've been a nerd for ~40 years, I used to live on Usenet, I understand federation inside out, and I don't want to learn another protocol just to try a new website. Blindly clicking through a ToS while chuckling that 'nobody reads that shit lol' is in fact a better user experience for almost everyone. If your approach were so great, there would be physical cities whose population consisted entirely of architects and engineers.
  - Barrin92 3y ago
    >there would be physical cities whose population consisted entirely of architects and engineers. the analog to a digital federation in the physical world, is literally just that, an actual federation. People making choices about what community they participate in isn't technical, it's social. Everyone who lives in a democratic society does in fact participate in how their city is run and governed or understands how to move from one state to another. You do not need to understand the technical details of federated systems, but it is absolutely infantilizing to pretend that people are unable to choose or build the communities they want, and take some responsibility in maintaining them. This 'consumer' mentality needs to die, people need to learn to be proper citizens on the internet. We ask it from people in the real world, so we can do it online. Why are we pretending the online version of some 19th century company town is inevitable?
    - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
      > You do not need to understand the technical details of federated systems, but it is absolutely infantilizing to pretend that people are unable to choose or build the communities they want, and take some responsibility in maintaining them. Not only is it infantilizing, it's wrong. People create communities online all the time. Whether it's Facebook groups or subreddits or Discourse forums or Discord groups and on and on and on. That's literally how the internet has always worked.
      - captaincrisp 3y ago

ihateolives 3y ago

It's literally throwing thousands of babies out with bathwater. Beehaw in their attempt of building a happy place has disabled downvoting so community can't downvote trolls and only tool they apparently have to fight trolls is to defederate two of the biggest instances. Problem solved? It's like blocking entire small country by IP because your had two port scans from there.

mdhen 3y ago
Beehaw disallows the creation of new subs by users. It's run by total control freaks. Hard pass on them.
soundnote 3y ago
Some of the most toxic places in existence are those obsessed with positive attitude.

anigbrowl 3y ago

It's not concern trolling, drama exists because everyone gets distracted by organized trolling and federation stans don't have a good answer for this problem. Federation is confusing and alienating to non-technical users, and nerds who love federation tend to have a mediocre grasp of social dynamics and gloss over the inevitable abuses. Federation stans need to grasp the fact that nobody who is not a full time nerd cares about how federation works at the technical level, they just want a place to socialize with the assurance that they won't be overrun by assholes. All the Federation stans go into it the idea that 'you can just defederate' whereas non-technical users go into it with the idea that they don't want to get raided in the first place. The existing model of federation is not working. Users don't want to know about the infrastructure any more than people going into a coffee shop want to looka t the architectural blueprints of the building, and federation is clearly unable to pre-empt raiding behavior automatically.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Federation is confusing and alienating to non-technical users, and nerds who love federation tend to have a mediocre grasp of social dynamics and gloss over the inevitable abuses Doesn't this also describe Reddit mods?
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  It does, and that's another opportunity to repost this evergreen paper describing how these issues manifest on Reddit. https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03697 https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03697
zozbot234 3y ago
"Raiding behavior" has been around forever, including on Usenet. It's not a serious objection to federation, since "raids" and other obnoxious behavior can happen irrespective of it.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  I'm not objecting to federation as such, I'm objecting to the belief that users want to become federation evangelists in order to engage in social conversation. It's limiting the uptake of federated services because it forces users into making a meaningless-seeming choice before they can participate. When I show a site like Lemmy to my non-technical friends, their eyes glaze over and they are confused by the necessity to choose an instance and the inability to make any kind of meaningful comparison between them. This is the exact same reason that Mastodon has never really taken off.

fnovd 3y ago

If the federated system can't handle the trolls and bad actors that Reddit is currently equipped to deal with then the whole idea is dead in the water.