~~hmm that's interesting because I did not have a lemm.ee account! 😁~~ just 3 tons of links to it.

edit: I misunderstood it, no I didn't have an account there

also in the meantime I did some research. it turns out I was probably remembering the Lemmy Universal Link Switcher userscript: greasyfork.org/en/scripts/4692…

it can look up posts by their activitypub id, which is the de-facto ID of a post, that is same across all instances. this ID is the url of the content on the original instance. so, the following could be an activitypub id, if the post was actually created on lemm.ee: lemm.ee/post/64477597

to look up a post by this, the userscript uses the /api/v3/resolve_object API endpoint.
it searches your local instance, and if you are authenticated it also queries the host in the url, lemm.ee in this example. but of course this remote query does not work anymore.

now here comes the twist. I know I always read lemmy through sh.itjust.works, so whatever I saved should be known by this server. and the link that I save, often does not point to the origin instance, because clients work that way.
so it seems 2 lemm.ee links that I tried to look up were not actually posted there, because bmy server does not know a post that has this ap id, I just somehow got a link that points to the lemm.ee version of that post or comment........

Fortunately the messaging app I misuse for link collection always loads the title and image of the webpage, so by some manual work I should be able to find the actual links to each of them.

Lemmy Universal Link Switcher

Ensures that all URLs to Lemmy instances always point to your main/home instance.

^{greasyfork.org}

schizoidman

2025-05-20 13:26:25

Bankrupt 23andMe Just Sold Off All Your DNA Data

Regeneron is to pay $256 million in cash to acquire "substantially all" of 23andMe's assets, including its massive biobank of around 15 million customer genetic samples and data.

https://futurism.com/neoscope/23andme-sold-dna-data

Bookmarks won't help if the content gets removed. You've got to copy the important information elsewhere.

I tend to use either a note app (Joplin) or a self-hosted wiki for that.

Yes with ActivityPub there's always failed federation. But Lemmy will send the delete request out when you delete your account. Other software or instances might not honour it, but the intent is there.

As opposed to reddit who do not remove comments when an account is deleted, only mark it as a comment from a deleted account.

I'm not against Lemmy's implementation, but it does require you to collect information you need at the time not assume it will always be there.

Since he said that the authenticator is the one that handles the communication & access, I expect banning the person from the authenticator would already automatically prevent anyone using that authenticator (or any other authenticator federating with it) from seeing the content.

As I understand it, the only thing the content provider would do is hosting the data. But access to that data would be determined by the service doing the access control, in the same way current instances are doing it.

Complete bans (at the home instance level) would require synchronization between the content provider instance and the authenticator instance.

What are you referring to as a ban? Complete bans already require synchronization between different federated instances. Sometimes the home instance of a user is unable to entirely delete the content of a user because of it.

Mod actions are caused by users comments on content, so the two aspects are closely intertwined, you can’t dissociate the content from the users.

Not really. Mod actions are over a community, not user history. They are perfectly able to remove user comments within their community, and since they are the authoritative source that controls whom it is spread to that has greater influence. That never stops the same content by the same user from appearing elsewhere.

At the moment, admins synchronize in a group to deal with toxic users, usually leading to the ban of those users on their home instance.

They would still do the same, but the "usually leading to the ban of those users" perhaps does more to reveal what your actual problem is than anything else. You and me will have to disagree, because admins should not be authoritarian figures, but should only have control within their domain.

• If they want to administrate over a group of users, they can have control over which users are and aren't allowed over that particular group. They can issue their own warnings to users.
• If they want to administrate over communities, they can have control over which communities are allowed and how users are allowed to interact with those. They can remove users from those communities entirely.

The small but loud minority of toxic users can just have their authentication instances defederated if those instances refuse to do anything with them. If it is an authentication instance doing the defederation, then it will affect all of their users. If it is a content provider instance, it will affect all of their communities. In the current system, it does both because both are coupled into the same instance, so it's even compatible with it.

It stops bad faith actors from trying to pollute communities to slur entire instances, like lemm.ee or blahaj, because of their problems with their userbase, by simply stopping it from being an issue. Administrators don't have to worry about policing communities or users if they don't want to, they would be able to better choose whom they are catering to without bad faith backlash elsewhere.

Almost nothing of the current structure changes, except that dedicated instances have the functionality they don't need disabled. Both can still block each other to their heart's content, and if your problem is having more "splits" - that is literally what federated instances are, there can always be more ... Maybe your problem is with the fediverse and its distributed nature? You are making it out to be as if there is only ever a big bad group of toxic users and that all administrators always completely agree on all bans to make your argument work. At that point, just create your own reddit clone.

I addressed a few of your points in the parallel thread with @Ferk@lemmy.ml (actually, it seems like you read it as you commented below)

As I stated in one of the comments

At that point, the content instances would be merely storage. This model is already possible now, but the vast majority of instances host both users and content, because it is more interesting to have users to build a local community than just being a storage server.

If some admins were interested in only being storage servers, you would see more instances not allowing user registrations, but all the 35th most active instances allow them: lemmy.fediverse.observer/list

I had a second look, and instances not allowing sign up are either going to shutdown (lemmy.one) are false positives (bookwormstory.social/signup) or are single-person instances:

Your vision is possible now, but it seems like almost no one wants to implement it.

If admins goes missing like the feddit.de ones did, the same problem would still impact that instance, be it a user or a content instance

If admins just want to shutdown without willing to transfer the instance / domain like the lemm.ee ones did, the same problem would still impact that instance, be it a user or a content instance

Using instances with non profit like fedecan.ca/en/ (lemmy.ca and piefed.ca) seems a better way to mitigate that risk.

Welcome | Fedecan

Discover a new way to connect online. As a Canadian not-for-profit, we can help you join a growing network of federated social media that prioritizes community over profit.

^fedecan.ca

I think you are misunderstanding the problem being solved. Expecting all instances to become non-profits and manage even more responsibility exacerbates the problem and inhibits the fediverse growth. Non-profits also have their share of pitfalls and is an entirely different beast.

lemm.ee told you the reason they were shutting down - not enough people to keep the place running and burnout. I can't force you to see how minimizing and distributing responsibility helps those issues if you don't want to. Less responsibility, easier for people not to ditch projects or end them.

That has nothing to do about what they decided to do afterwards. I thank them for not transferring the instance domain to a completely different party without user consent, and people would have disagreed with that so it's best everyone found their own solution. It would even have put their account information at risk.

lemm.ee told you the reason they were shutting down - not enough people to keep the place running and burnout. I can’t force you to see how minimizing and distributing responsibility helps those issues if you don’t want to. Less responsibility, easier for people not to ditch projects or end them.

Lemm.ee had the option to close their registration at any time. But registrations are only one source of user management.

In a scenario where Lemm.ee would have become a content instance, but kept their federation policy, they would still have received all the reports about posts on the communities they hosted, wherever the reported user comes from.

Lemm.ee was the instance with the most active communities after LW, there's no way to avoid a certain level of responsibility.

Like I said, I can't force you to see it.

In a scenario where Lemm.ee would have become a content instance, but kept their federation policy, they would still have received all the reports about posts on the communities they hosted, wherever the reported user comes from.

Being a dedicated content instance provider would also inherently imply dedicating that instance to a certain, more controlled type of content. An authentication instance might want to cater to a geography, which will probably decide to interact with the rest of the world and to provide adequate verification and certification mechanisms. A content instance might want to cater to a geography or a subject, resulting in specialized participation, with certification and verification based on the content, not the user.

You keep seeing monolithic instances that congregate the most communities as a plus. That's a negative in my perspective on the fediverse. It shouldn't be competing reddit clones with the one having the most communities winning out.

Being a dedicated content instance provider would also inherently imply dedicating that instance to a certain, more controlled type of content. An authentication instance might want to cater to a geography, which will probably decide to interact with the rest of the world and to provide adequate verification and certification mechanisms. A content instance might want to cater to a geography or a subject, resulting in specialized participation, with certification and verification based on the content, not the user.

Those control mechanisms were available to lemm.ee. There's a reason most active instances mostly defederate from certain instances.

You keep seeing monolithic instances that congregate the most communities as a plus. That’s a negative in my perspective on the fediverse. It shouldn’t be competing reddit clones with the one having the most communities winning out.

I don't, I'm the one regularly pushing for more decentralization of communities (reddthat.com/post/20197120 , e.g. !privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com vs !privacy@lemmy.ml)

But I would rather have instances use the tools they currently have (and hopefully more will come with Piefed development catching up) rather than trying to re-engineer the whole platform when some instances don't use the existing moderation tools.

Like I said, I can’t force you to see it. The fact that you think it would mean re-engineering the whole platform means you aren't getting it. It's almost literally the suggestion of least effort, it's largely an organizational change that encourages instances not to cope with more responsibility than they can deal with by encouraging decoupling the current structure into two more specialized ones.

If you want re-engineering the whole platform, then I would suggest having all instances be authentication instances and rather than "host" communities to allow users to broadcast to community labels. Have any number of moderation groups be able to be created in an organized on that label or a personalized way by allowing users to select their own curators, perhaps even extrapolating it from the downvotes of trusted users and prioritizing the ranking of those they value. Work on providing a ground.news of discussions instead of biased takes and prunings from those in charge. Allow fast tracking of moderation across these adhoc groups for specially toxic content. That would solve the problem of nobody really going from a 10000 user community that has 100 daily posts to a 10 user community with 2-3 posts a week, because they would all operate within the same community but every user would be able to customize their perspective. The risk then is to balance the bubble they've created with transparency of all the other bubbles people are creating to interact with the community. Each particular instance would be able to be as biased as it wants to particular users or groups of users, but their content would truly be broadcast and federated.

Like I said, I can’t force you to see it. The fact that you think it would mean re-engineering the whole platform means you aren’t getting it. It’s almost literally the suggestion of least effort, it’s largely an organizational change that encourages instances not to cope with more responsibility than they can deal with by encouraging decoupling the current structure into two more specialized ones.

You make this about me, but nobody else sees it. As you said, content instance are possible today (admins just have to disable their registrations), but nobody does that.

Cool, I'll come to you to check on the feelings of literally entirely everyone else when I need to. I'm glad everyone went out and got themselves a spokesman. Meanwhile, I'll point you to an earlier mention in my comments about raising awareness.

You shift into completely diametrically opposed claims whenever it seems to suit you and portray a lack of awareness and possibility as consensus in this regard. Is it "trying to re-engineer the whole platform" or is it already "possible today"? There is no use like this because without willingness, people will just set up the instances like they've been told they have and perform slight variations on them. That is no proof or argument against the idea at all from people just following the cookie cutter.