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How would that realistically happen on Lemmy?
Server costs, lawyers, management will add up eventually. Ads or other financial incentives will take part in this at some point. The biggest instance, which will have the most funding, could monopolize by defederating others. Though with future account portability it could be made impossible. As in if reddit was the instance, most communities and users would seamlessly move over to others. But right now the risk is real.
Beehaw just defederated lemmy.world and users have to either move with the bigger fediverse of lemmy.world or stay confined to their isolated instance.
Why did beehaw defederate?
Too few moderators, poor modding tools, no backchannel to original instance, overwhelming amount of users from big instance.
New to the fediverse, I notice I can still access my beehaw.org subs. Does defederating mean that users on that instance can't see out? Or does it just delist everything, but you can access other communities if you know the address?
if you are in an instance that was not defederated by beehaw, then nothing changes for you or them.
if you are on an instance that was defederated, then you see a snapshot of old behaw content, possibly updated content from beewaw, but beehaw wont get updates from your defederated instance. local interactions and other instances still federated with your instance are unaffected.
important to note that beehaw will likely refederate once the current wave dies down and more admin and mod tools are in place.
beehaw admins have the right to manage their instance as they see fit and beehaw users have the right to disagree and move to another instance if they choose (while still remaining on the lemmy network).
edit: words - they be hard sometimes.
Got it. Is there a way to move your account from instance to instance, or do you have to make a new account?
Unfortunately as of now you have to make a new one :(
Do you happen to know if that's something the devs are working towards? I assume it's possible bc Mastodon can and they're both based on AP. I think the ability to switch instances and preserve your history would be a big draw to people.
I particularly don't know about developments in this feature, but it's definitely a welcome one. Maybe having a local (or maybe on a registered email) periodic backup of your comments, upvotes, joined communities and saved topics, and being able to export and import it would be the most viable solution for instance hopping.
Damn... beehaw seem kinda "trigger happy" in defederating. Shame because I subscribed to a few communities there.
If they refederate, do we still keep the subscriptions? Or do we have to subscribe again to the communities?