I’m not sure I completely understand the differences. Are they seperate or somehow connected?

Also I’ve read you can view kbin instances on Lemmy somehow. How does that work if they’re two different things?

I’m using Liftoff is it somehow possible to view kbin instances on there?

  • @chaoraceEnglish
    5•1 year ago

    This information exists wherever your account exists. It’s nonfederated data, similar to things like your email address, hashed password, and 2FA master key. No other instance has any need to know what notifications you’ve viewed, so they are never made privy to that information.

    To clarify: federation is not like P2P where everyone gets a copy of everything. Federation only shares exactly what needs to be shared for the software to function. In the case of Lemmy, this boils down to the following data:

    • User profiles
    • Communities
    • Posts
    • Comments
    • Votes
    • Follows
    • Blocks
    • Private Messages

    Some of you may be raising eyebrows at this list. Does this mean that anyone can see your votes & PMs at any time? No, not exactly. There’s two big things to keep in mind here:

    1. When possible, the smallest possible amount of federation is used (e.g.: votes are only sent to the instance where the post/comment is, Blocks/PMs only get sent to the instance where the other user is, etc.)
    2. Unless it’s something the website shows, only instance admins can view the data that gets federated with it. Your PMs may not be secure, but they’re not exactly out on Google either.

    At worst, here’s what information can be captured by a random bad actor running their own evil instance:

    • Your username
    • Your public bio
    • Your home instance
    • Your moderated communities
    • Your moderation history
    • Your comment history
    • Your post history
    • Your votes specifically for posts/comments belonging to the bad instance
    • Your follows specifically for communities belonging to the bad instance
    • Your PMs specifically to users belonging to the bad instance
    • Your blocks specifically of users belonging to the bad instance

    The majority of this information is already publicly searchable on your home instance’s website. Pretty much all of the scary stuff requires you to actually directly interact with the bad guy’s instance. If you’re about to vote or follow something sketchy, consider double-checking who runs the instance before you attach your name to it (that’s what the rainbow link is for).