In the graph above I’ve arranged the 28 Threadiverse instances with at least 200 monthly active users (MAU)—orange instances running Lemmy, green Piefed, and red Mbin—on the basis of which instances they defederate.
Each instance has its MAU count listed below it, sourced from the latest MAU figures at Fediverse Observer, with adjustments made to the totals for Piefed (due to undercounting by outdated instances, as noted here; I used @Vicinus@piefed.zip’s suggested estimate of 7,200 Piefed users) and Mbin (due to tardigram.com having a duplicate listing).
After adjustments, there are an estimated 43,287 monthly active Threadiverse users (35,184+7,200+903), of whom 87.84% are on the 28 largest instances. The percentages listed alongside the MAU figures correspond to each instance’s share of the total MAU count.
Defederation data was sourced from Federation Checker. The tool doesn’t support Mbin instances, so I left fedia.io in its own category. If any defederations are missing, feel free to let me know. Ideally such a chart should also include community blocks to better illustrate which instances block what, but that data doesn’t appear to be as easily searchable.
I also noticed cases of some instances being listed as being defederated by another instance, despite not appearing on the defederation list for that instance (i.e. reddthat.com and lemmygrad.ml are listed as being mutually blocked, despite neither having the other on their block lists). In testing that federation, I noticed that !wholesome@reddthat.com did not federate to Lemmygrad while !memes@reddthat.com did, so clarification on that matter would be helpful.
While I’ll update my generalized chart as needed to correct errors, perhaps at some point an automated federation mapping tool similar to the one feddit.de formerly hosted could be developed to more completely illustrate instance federation.
Kinda eye-opening, thx for making the chart. I hadn’t realized it had gotten this bad. In my opinion, defederation should only ever be used to combat spam, not because of ideological differences or disputes between individuals.
One of the most common tips for people looking to switch over from Reddit has been that the instance you choose doesn’t really matter. But it clearly does. Choose the “wrong” instance and you may suddenly find yourself cut off from a sizable portion of other users because someone else decided they know better than you what you should and shouldn’t see.
I’m lucky to be on an instance that has “only” defederated one instance in this chart (lemmygrad.ml). I don’t really follow the drama around here, so I have no idea why that instance is banned. All I see is that there are 558 active users I’ll never be able to interact with just because someone I don’t personally know (my instance admin) made that decision at some point.
Wasn’t there just a big drama because some app developer built-in their own opinionated blocklist into their app or something? How is this any different?
My point being, why not leave these kinds of drastic decisions to individual users, who can and should block whoever they want, instead of dividing threadiverse into silos at the instance level?
Many fantastic instances do exactly that.
But in answer to your question, you may want to research The Intolerance Paradox. In short, when people refuse to follow the rules it kinda becomes spam. Even if you were okay with CSAM or pictures of pigs actively showing the poop falling out of their anuses (sadly, I bet you think I am being hyperbolic here? nope, this is kinda Hexbear’s major schtick), the fact remains that it scares away newcomers.
I will note that if you self-host your own instance then you have perfect control over every aspect of your experience, being able to fine-tune it to perfectly suit your precise needs. Otherwise you will want to choose an instance provider that aligns with whatever your needs are. Some people will choose one of the instances that defederates from almost nothing, while others actually want an experience that is more what they are used to and would expect coming over from the overly bot-modded Reddit, i.e. they want (even outright demand) that censorship be done for them.
This is why the instance pickers need to carefully explain what each instance is about, since there is not just one audience with a single set of needs & expectations.
Yeah, I get your argument, and obviously it’s good to have instances with different federation policies. It’s just that when big instances like the ones in this chart start swinging the defederation hammer around, I worry that some (or many) users end up disconnected from users and communities without ever realizing it or agreeing with the decision.
Have you ever tried to organize a fun game night with friends but two of them just can’t get along, ruining the whole thing? That’s kinda the feeling I get from this.
Okay but… have you ever tried to force your group to get together despite those two being unable to get along? e.g. Russia vs. Ukraine? China vs. Taiwan? Israel vs. Palestine? USA vs. a neighbor with oil?
Whether one side (e.g. Ukraine) can “get along with” the other side there (e.g. Russia) depends a LOT on whether they are able to agree to follow some shared rules (e.g. to not murder the other side). These are not mere political differences in the sense of left vs. right, but rather those who are proud to remain ungovernable (while seemingly not understanding what that phrase originally was intended to mean) vs. those who would rather nope out entirely than exist side-by-side with them.
Please also note that Lemmy’s block tools are so misleadingly misnamed as to be almost worthy of the moniker of calling it disinformation. What “blocking an instance” does is to:
What that so-called “blocking” does NOT do:
Besides, even if insurance blocking actually worked, it would still do nothing to not showcase the content for an anonymous guest account or a newly created account, i.e. it does nothing to help others deal with “the situation”, only yourself. Which is especially notable when people access Lemmy’s content from apps like Voyager that by default does not show the instance name, thereby treating all content from all instances as being equal. However, I would argue that e.g. Poland does not fear attack from all nations equally - does Poland want to be on guard against Taiwan? Or North or South Korea? What about Russia?
Defederation is a blunt tool, but is virtually the only one offered by the Lemmy devs. When the software is made more robust to offer some other alternative… then this issue can be revisited at that time.
Also, you are free at any to self-host your own instance. But to tell Ukraine and Russia that they must get along… or else what? I am saying that I reject the underlying premise of your argument. “People getting along” should not be the ultimate goal of the Threadiverse. A better goal IMHO would be “People enjoying their experiences while here”. Which for many, means blocking Hexbear - and yes, for some it means NOT blocking it - and therefore since the answer is neither a clear yay or nay, we are forced into preaching the controversy for every new potential member, even though that very complexity itself is often what drives others away.
Though PieFed.zip offers an intriguing and innovative compromise: upon joining the instance a user block is placed upon the Hexbear and lemmygrad instances, and a message sent to the new user about how to remove or place such blocks. This makes federation with those highly controversial instances as opt-in, as opposed to opt-out or impossible to block or not block. That’s really neat! However, that delves into a whole other can of worms on how PieFed instance blocks have problems - namely that people on the receiving end can still reply to them, though only people on the same originating instance will see those replies (or perhaps it’s worse and everyone using Lemmy will see them while everyone using PieFed will not? or perhaps something else altogether?). Also this in turn opens up an entirely new rabbit hole on top of that, where Lemmy and PieFed (and Mbin, and nodeBB, etc.) would need to agree on a set of shared practices…
In short, the technology of the Threadiverse is still quite primitive in so very many ways, despite the upcoming release of Lemmy vs. 1.0. Yes defederation is a very blunt instrument, but it’s all that we have been given to wield for the most part. But the alternative IMHO would be far worse, being forced into allowing bullies to thrive. The Paradox of Intolerance is ironic, but very real: allowing the intolerant to exist in your space, worse yet platforming and even promoting them, means that you yourself are intolerant. Fences between neighbors is the only hope the Threadiverse even has of surviving. Yes you are allowed to be sad at that fact, but it remains true nonetheless. Move past your sadness, to get to what must be done to thrive and move forward in a positive direction?
e.g. learn Rust and contribute to the code development of Lemmy!? Unfortunately, merely donating money is unlikely to help, as much of those funds go into the moderation and instance maintenance costs of the “highly controversial” Lemmy.ml, and the devs have refused to open a way to provide funding for the former independently of the latter. Or learn Python and contribute to development of PieFed? It likely won’t help with interoperability between PieFed vs. Lemmy, and both require investments of several years, but if you want to help then there is no better way. So long as the technology remains as primitive as it is now, these kinds of blunt instruments are all that are available to us - someone would need to invest the effort to provide better.
TLDR: there are extremely good reasons why things are as they are now.
Note that defederations with smaller instances (representing 12% of users) are not represented here, so there are even more defederations than what is listed here. Hopefully that will come across better with more data in the next version of the graph.
As requiring new users to implement multiple blocks off the bat can be a big ask for those still on the fence about leaving Reddit, defederating known NSFW, troll, and tankie instances can improve new user retention. For those who prefer more hands-off moderation practices, specific instances can cater to them, but I think a more tailored experience is better for users arriving from Reddit.
Idk, that is exactly how lemmy.zip does it. Fairly straight forward if you ask me.
I’m not so sure, I’d rather have a prepopulated blocklist that I can further configure myself, as opposed to instance level blocks that I can’t reverse.
I think the main issue is that this isn’t communicated clearly. Most people joining a random instance listed on join-lemmy.org won’t know what defederation means and they have no way of knowing that by choosing that particular instance they’ll be cut off from a certain number of other users.