FOSSDLE PieFedHow do Fediverse instance wide bans work?
submitted by FundMECFSResearch edited
I’ve not been banned myself, I’m just curious.
Is it akin to getting banned from every community on the instance, but the users profile is still visible from accounts on that instance?
Or is it akin to the user getting entirely “defederated” from the instance they were banned from?
If user A from instance 0 is banned from instance 1, then they can't post on any instance 1 posts
but on instances outside of 1, they'll still be able to interact with instance 1 users as far as I'm aware.
Pinging as asked:
@sbf@feddit.org
But why would a user for example: @CDRMITTENS@sh.itjust.works who is instance banned from my home instance, have their last posts available to be seen by me from 7 months ago (right before their ban), but if I look at their profile from my LW alt, I can see they have a bunch of newer posts.
It’s almost like their new posts are “defederated” from my home instance.
The posts they make are in a federated community with my home instance. I’d bet if they replied to this comment, I wouldn’t see their reply. (assuming this comment is even visible to them).
(Edit: oops that was old and I forgot to remove this sentence - see below.)
The most recent content on lemmy.blahaj.zone that I see from sh.just.works is from 2 hours ago: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/1688895/11494679, so those two definitely are federated (I checked and don't see either one in the others' instance blocked list). However, as expected the user https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/CDRMITTENS@sh.itjust.works has no content more recent than 7 months ago. They both say that they are running the same Lemmy version - 0.19.5.
Searching... seems not to work for these style of posts, b/c while the searches pull up zero results for common things like a single space, a colon (inside a URL?), the single letter "a", etc., there actually are such posts, e.g. https://sh.itjust.works/post/27811262.
Also, !noncredibledefense@lemmy.blahaj.zone only has 10 posts total, but none are from cdrmittens.
So yeah I think you are correct - the old content that was already there in Blåhaj Lemmy's database remains, for their content posted to !noncredibledefense@sh.itjust.works, but after the ban anything that the Blåhaj Lemmy tries to pull in for that user just gets discarded, and not added to the database. i.e. it has the old but not the new content, for that user. Most likely votes as well as posts or comments (b/c why would that be different?). Though since !NonCredibleDefense@sh.just.works has nothing to do with lemmy.blahaj.zone, they can continue to post on their own home instance - it is only Blåhaj Lemmy that will not see those posts, by design, b/c of the ban.
I hope that makes sense!:-)
That part is odd and I don't really have a good guess or assumption as to why that's happening.
As far as I understand the system; banned users shouldn't be able to make comments on a home instance their banned from unless something is broken or has been deliberately been changed.
What I mean is I can’t see any of their posts they’ve made in a shitjustworks instance since their ban from my instance, even though my instance is federated with shitjustworks
I did get that, I just don't understand as to why that's happening; maybe a federation error?
All I know is that instance defederation on lemmy has a similar error. Sometimes communities are still visible as “artifacts” (not often though).
For example blahaj defederated from lemmygrad one year ago, but I can still view !ukraine_war_news@lemmygrad.ml (but posts from after the defederation don’t show up)
And for example I can still see posts and comments from @yogthos@lemmygrad.ml before defederation.
I don't know all the answers - nor have any of my own alts ever been banned so I did not have an occasion to look until now, but I see where the account is not removed, and in fact can be un-banned later. Here's an irl example: https://lemmy.ml/u/sagxd (which we can see ourselves without an account on that instance - plus it is also visible from elsewhere e.g. https://lemmy.world/u/sagxd@lemmy.ml). You can read the story behind that incident in https://lemm.ee/post/45204357.
Most of the time how it seems to show up in the modlog, at least whenever it happens from lemmy.ml, is a slew of being banned from every community on the entire instance. Although there does seem to be a modlog entry to do differently (note the presence in the pull-down menu of "banning from site"), which despite not seeming to be (commonly? ever?) used from lemmy.ml, is indicated as often being used from other instances.
In particular I don't know if a banned account can give or receive voting - I think I've heard people say both ways. I've saved your post and I'll check back in later to see if someone can say with some actual knowledge what is going on!?:-)
I’m not sure. Whoever responds first should reply to me so I get the notification, too. I’m curious.