Why not, just host your own lemmy instance? Then you'd only get defederated if you got banned basically. or if you are looking for one for you and your friends. then you can just federate with the groups you want to federate with
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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Because I shouldn't have to be at the mercy of other moderators to communicate with people.
If I have an identity, I should be able to use it however I like.
So don't let people create communities, right?
Then your whole instance would be controlled by you and your whole forum would be yours
The server moderator creates the community, or gives users permission to create communities on their server. I have no problem with that model.
Hosting servers basically have 4 functions:
- Registering users
- Authenticating users to other servers
- Hosting forums
- Pushing/Receiving notifications
Let's say you're running server at example.com, and I sign up. My username is bob. So, I'm bob@example.com.
Example.com has several local forums, but they lack a significant tech community. So, I go to example2.com, which has a large tech community. Using my login from example.com (and postMessages), I login to example2.com, as bob@example.com. Example2.com has example.com whitelisted as a valid authenticator. So, it will accept their users.
Let's then say that Bob gets a reply at example2.com. Example2.com pushes a notification to example.com, where Bob can read it.
If you're hosting it yourself, you wouldn't be at the mercy of anyone else. You would get full control over your communication experience, along with any consequences that come along with that.
And, if a moderator of another instance defederates me?
If the other party doesn't want to communicate with you, then what are you trying to achieve?
I think I'm missing something from your premise. Who are you trying to connect to in this case?
Lemmy works by your posts propagating to other servers.
If you're on server A, and I'm on server B, server B's moderator can block all of server A. They can make it where I never see your content.
I think the confusing part is, you are talking about starting a cross domain system. Which means, 2 or more people will need to set up and install their own versions (or you are planning to install it on multiple of your own domains), but the same can be accomplished just by, instead of asking people to install something new, form a group that guarantees to keep eachother federated, and have everyone you want make their communities and users on the unified cluster". Yes other instances might defederate you from them per their rules. But how is that different than no one outside your group even making an instance to begin with of "new open BB" to start with.
Because of the social expectation that Lemmy sets. The social expectation is that moderators have the option of defederating anyone on their users' behalves. They shouldn't have that right.
I understand that moderators exist across multiple jurisdictions, and their servers fall under multiple laws. So, while a moderator would be able to control his own server's content under my system, his users would be able to login to other servers which he lacked control of. Granting mods control over local content, but not user interaction with the network.
Balancing expectation between user freedom and server ownership -- the mod also being able to whitelist servers he'll accept other users from.
I think in order for this to work, you would need to make it so that the server admins cannot see the contents of the communication. It wouldn't work with public content
At that point, you might be better off using something like Matrix or a similar encrypted chat option.
If I remember hearing it correctly, some lemmy instance admins defederate by proxy. Meaning: they go look at your instance, see who you federate with (even if you do it passively by not blacklisting) and then defederate you if you federate with any instances they don't like.
(And tbh, I'd do the same, but it doesn't seem like OP would like that)
I think you should be able to decide which forums and cross-domains users you host and federate with on your own server, but not which cross-domains and forums your users interact with on other servers.
If the Lemmy instance isn't public anyway, then it seems like its federation list doesn't have to be public either, so other instance admins would have no way of knowing what such an instance federates with.
Can you leave comments from your non public isntance on communities from other instances ?
Yes. I have seen comments before from obscure instances that didn't seem to be open to the public. It wouldn't really make much technical sense to prevent that.
ok, clearly I don't understand the federation protocol, because I thought if you can see/interact with the instance (like in the @ after the username), you can find out who they federate with.
I don't know if that's true if they don't publish a list of that. I certainly wouldn't know how.
This sounds a little like the AT protocol (or my weak understanding of it). AFAICT on a protocol level your identity and personal data is decoupled from a content aggregator.
Yeah, that was in place decades ago. Usenet/nntp.
i dream of a server system where each person can contribute to a topic as a whole without any intermediary governing force.
lets say i meet up with alice and bertha at lunch. alice bring up the latest one piece chapter and bertha is totally clueless and im super into it and we talk for 30 minutes.
that information is between all three of us, and bertha didnt even care. her fidelity of the story may not be as sharp as alice or mine, but she still syncronized some of the data by proximity in relation and location.
so lets say a server looks at a conversation between us three. but in this case, its one server, built out of the intersection of our 3 servers, and then the separate 3 servers where they dont overlap. the overlap region here would be thr "lunch forum" and a "one piece discussion board" on that "lunch forum". any of us may dc or choose to idle the resources while others do their talking, but could be pinged back in by a new discussion board, say "doctor who" that all three of us like. this is a reason to have a decentralized implicit server built out of 3 very centralized personal servers. then anyome can leave, and any one can join, amd you recreate the data system that is social interaction.
how such a syncronization might work i would guess would put things into a temporary or public port where you offload data into a charitable server contribution, jusy like social interactions demand a certain amount of charitable interaction. and anything in that shared space can be freely copied or shared, unless encrpyted by a signature such as a dialect or inside translation key where people understand one piece is about a treasure and not a single piece swimsuit. this is off the cuff ideas, but im sure the big wigs of networking could make a system a lot more fluid.
but this achieves a federated and defederated network that is federated at the meeting up in a meta server byilt off two or more independent servers agreeing to pool resources and synchronize experiences
Tried scuttlebutt?
Manyverse is a great client.
just read up on it. seems really interesting and solves a lot of communication concerns and similar syncronization techniques i entertain. something like ssb paired with a decntralized file system wpuld be cool. like soul seek, but with a partionable space to permit through traffic to relieve congestion for either high demand to low supply files or just to contribute a generic support to single host files to provide additional failsafe support. and by generic, i mean setting those as options with a partitiom that seeks across the network to fulfill charitable network and drive offerings as you best see fit. maybe i wanna offer coverage for low view count peertube videos or indie pop is what i want.
sorry for ramble, ssb looks really cool, and having a sorta mesh of systems like that and soulseek or peertube alongside self hostability feels like the future internet to me. or just my dreams of what could be
On a whim, a moderator could decide to defederate with one of your favorite servers for no reason at all.
Sure, that could happen. Mostly though, it's because your favourite server is some variety of bigot bar and you really want to hang out with bigots.
Every single time people want to have an unmoderated, unchecked space, it's because they — you — want to be able to air your most unsavoury opinions with impunity.
Then come the Nazis, then come the CSAM, the decapitation videos, the harassment and doxxing, and so on until some part of it passes your personal line in the sand for what's acceptable.
Then all of a sudden it's "Wah wah, mommy give me moderation". It's the same for all this freeze peach crap.
Every single time people want to have an unmoderated, unchecked space, it's because they — you — want to be able to air your most unsavoury opinions with impunity.
Exactly!
Then come the Nazis, then come the CSAM, the decapitation videos, the harassment and doxxing, and so on until some part of it passes your personal line in the sand for what's acceptable.
That would be up to the server owner (Moderation). There's nothing wrong with decapitation videos.
Then all of a sudden it's "Wah wah, mommy give me moderation". It's the same for all this freeze peach crap.
There's already moderation built into this.
So basically, you're confirming that you want a Nazi bar for you and your Nazi friends. That's an easy block from me.
There's nothing wrong with decapitation videos.
You and I have very different definitions of "nothing" and/or "wrong", buddy.
My grandmother was Ashkenazi. Bark up someone else's tree.
Also, who moderates the moderators?