Nope Lemmy’s blocking system is cosmetic only. It’s very much useless against defending from real malicious users. I assume the purpose it was built for was under the assumption that it was going to be used exclusively by easily offended snowflakes, which is backed up by the way that most users treat a person’s claims regarding a malicious user or malicious instance.
They won’t see any communities from the server they block. Users are not blocked in domain blocking.
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
Not yet anyway. I wouldn’t expect that to stay the same forever though. Especially considering the amount of spam that’s already on Facebook.
Facebook does not have good very good moderation on their platforms (it’s only good enough to keep up their image in the public eye), and I don’t think threads will be an exception to that.
I feel like it’ll probably be one of the bigger sources of spam and hate speech on the Fediverse, at least for servers that don’t block it.
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
So yes but not exactly. It’s not as effective as you would think that an instance block would be if it doesn’t block the users. That’s not even addressing the fact that Lemmy’s blocking isn’t even really blocking it’s more along the lines of muting, it’s just named blocking.
Spamming, threats, and bad behavior all around.
If that’s what you were hoping for you should join Nostr, there they don’t have defederation.
Here though we do, and we use it because that’s the whole point of it, to block servers that are harmful or push unsavory content. Those who block servers are not opinionated snowflakes who have invalid opinions either.
Look the thing is that the user freedom aspect of the fediverse is not that you’re in full control of your account, or that you’re able to have unrestricted access to federation, it’s that there’s more than one place to sign up at. It’s not like Reddit where when you get banned it’s game over unless you want to spend time messing with Tor and setting up brand new emails to make a new account. There are other servers where you can sign up to if your current server bans you or defederates the instance where your communities are on.
The thing is the federation aspect is grossly misunderstood and was misrepresented in the beginning to get people to join. It is not an open and unrestricted Network, that means that there are instances that will not be up to the standards of others, for those instances they get defederated. If you still want to interact with them you need an account on them that’s just the way it is and the way it always has been, and it isn’t going to change anytime soon. The sooner you make peace with that the better your time will be here, and if you can’t make peace with it or you hate it I would suggest moving to a more open protocol like Nostr, and getting situated there.
These open protocols do have their own drawbacks, though if having one account and never having to worry about defederation is so important you I would definitely suggest looking into that, fediverse and ActivityPub might just not be for you.
Not with the way instance blocking works on Lemmy, unlike Mastodon which limits interactions from blocked domains lemmy doesn’t limit interactions at all through user blocks, it just makes them not appear.
Combined with the fact that instance blocking doesn’t even actually block the users from those instances. All it does is filter out every single community. If you read the page on join-lemmy.org it’ll tell you that clear as day.
Like I said for both of these reasons user-based instance blocks on Lemmy should not and cannot be considered an alternative to defederation.
I mean there are ways around that (i.e. activitypub proxy) however I think the key point to remember is that by defederating you are saying no and not giving consent. If somebody decides to spin up an instance of activitypub proxy to go around that, it’s a very different situation than choosing to federate.
That’s the important key when you don’t give them consent and they barge in anyway it changes the dynamic, and makes them look bad, to all but the most brainwashed chuds. However when you let them in that won’t happen, it’s just on you (you being instance owner who chose to federate).
So the “we should federate and give them consent because they’re going to take the data anyway” argument is a really bad argument because it devilifies them in that situation, because they were given consent to do it by federating, but weren’t given consent when they set up instances of activitypub proxy to skirt the block.
I know the majority of people making this argument aren’t even going to read this response, and I’m sure that a good amount of them are just astroturfers (there’s already threads astroturfing elsewhere online, it wouldn’t be surprising to me to find it in the biggest Lemmy instance out of all of them).
It doesn’t seem like tagging on Lemmy is working at the moment, but you could reply to the thread on Mastodon tagging them there, and that would work (only if you tag their Mastodon accounts, lemmy accounts don’t support tagging on Mastodon, as far as I’m aware).
They’re confused and likely think that federation means no rules and unconditional access to any server from your account, when it couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve said it elsewhere but people craving that don’t want the fediverse, they want Nostr.
This place is the way it is, why it’s enjoyable to be on, because we can and do defederate servers run by bots, trolls, or any other malicious actors, otherwise they run wild.
They can post to communities by mentioning their handle, mastodon users do it all the time. They’re certainly not going to be as much of a problem for us since it’s a deliberate process, but it’s also not that far fetched that users will sign up there to abuse it, especially if threads has poor moderation (it’s not looking good as it is).
Lemmy 0.19’s instance blocking does not filter users, only communities, in addition it does not solve the problems of content polution because it does not limit interaction from blocked malicious users in any way, just hides them (it only really works under the assumption that they’re not malicious users and the blocker is just throwing a fit). For these reasons it is not and cannot be seen as an a replacement to defederation.
Also as I already said users are 100% free to decide, they decide by choosing their instances. If you don’t like it you’re free to host your own or move to a more open protocol like Nostr. The idea of federation was built around the idea of communicating with certain instances and blocking others, not about users individually choosing the servers they connect with, Some servers do operate democratically but in the end the fediverse is designed around servers so servers have every right to choose.
Also I’d like to address the “defederation will kill the fediverse” claims I’ve seen floating around. It won’t in fact it’s a dedicated feature of activitypub and has been in use since forever, instances are able to block ones that go against their values either due to the way those instances are operated or the users they allow on them. This is how it’s worked since the beginning and almost certainly how it will continue. Some users don’t like this and believe that they should be able to access stuff no matter what, failing to realize that they do not own the server their account is hosted on, accessing content on other servers via activitypub requires the content be copied over to your home server, and if the admins don’t want that they can block that server, you don’t really have a say in it because it isn’t your server. So either host your own where you do own it, or move to a more open protocol which exist for the purpose of user freedom and anti-censorship.
You have the full right to decide, you can switch servers to one that chooses to, or open multiple accounts. That’s your choice. This isn’t Nostr, in the Fediverse instance blocking is normal and it happens without your input, but you know what does happen with your input? Registering your account on a server that fits your needs best, or as close as possible.
Indeed it is, they’re not saying you have to make an account on that person’s server, they’re saying that you can make it on a different server, that’s the point of federation you can join other servers that are connected to them. It’s not to be fully open without any limitations, because if it were then content moderation would be impossible.
Services like Nostr have this problem, they are like the wild West where anything goes and you can’t do anything about it. To some people that seems great but the fact of the matter is those services are filled with right-wing trolls and crypto scammers (likely plenty of other nasty stuff as well) because they cannot be moderated.
Get an old Thinkpad, the cheaper and the more beat up it is the better, as long as it functions. Flash Libreboot on it and get really into open source software, and I mean REALLY into it. Use that as your daily driver and only use open source software no matter how inconvenient. That’s one way you can still fit in with the Linux crowd.
I would disagree, I couldn’t care less about their work if they didn’t make it foss or at the very least source available because as great as it is they’ll take it with them when they go bankrupt if they don’t share their specs, schematics, and source code, just like the company with those implants for blindness.
That’s why you do the FOSS version, it’s designed to be easily upgradable and customizable to all your needs, and even on old hardware will still accept updates.
Could easily be fixed if they allowed User based federation the same way Kbin and Friendica do. Probably won’t happen though unless Desilantis and Nutomic pull their head out of their ass or the community gets fed up with them like people did with Kbin and created a community driven fork (like Mbin but for Lemmy) that implements what the community works on democratically.
I will say that as it is 0.19 isn’t going to be the holy Grail people think it is because the instance level blocking only affects communities hosted on those instances it does not hide users from those instances. So for instance is that are still Federated to hexbear it’s not going to remove the hexbear user spam and it likely won’t help in cases like this either.
It’ll mainly help in cases where the communities on the instance and not the users are the problem. Things like the NSFW instance.
Just to be clear if you do engage in trolling or bad behavior they may block your insurances as well. Not necessarily saying that you will but I know that some have tried. Yes there are tools that let you bypass the federation or you can just get new domains but that’s called circumvention and could be considered a cyber attack.
Great, if ActivityPub isn’t working out for you and you can’t stand defederation then there’s the door.