@evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org complained about this the other day, but I just experienced it first-hand.
A lemmy.world user got instance-banned on lemmy.world, and the result was their post in one of my communities created and based on lemmy.sdf.org got automatically removed. How the fuck is that a sanctioned inter-instance functionality?
That’s absolutely squirrel turds to me. It sort-of makes sense if my own instance admin were to ban that user, but reaching across instance lines to nuke posts is just wild. That feels like it blurs the lines of what federation should entail, and also is just rife for abuse.
That feels like it blurs the lines of what federation should entail
There’s nothing stopping you from modifying your server software to change the behaviour. For instance you could implement a feature where instead of just removing the posts of banned users from other instances, you could put them into a moderation queue to be approved/rejected by an instance admin or the community moderator.
When a spammer posts many times in different communities on multiple instances it’s much much less work for everyone if the admin on their home instance nukes their account and all their posts and have that automatically propogate to all instances.
The alternative would involve admins/mods on every instance that received spam having to remove their copies. On many smaller instances that just wouldn’t happen and their copies of the spam would be left online forever. That would make the fedi extremely attractive to spammers and even more would turn up. We’d effectively have turned the fedi into a spam amplification botnet.
What if the banned user was a prolific spammer posting on lots of different instances?
Banning the user would leave all those spam posts still existing on the other instances as orphaned posts.
I could see this happening again. Admin takes work. If you trust another instance admin, you might replicate their ban actions automatically. Done in the name of efficiency, but has the potential for abuse and mistakes.
How can that happen? I thought each instance was governed and… stored(don’t understand lemmy) by its own admin.
Cross Instance manipulation seems antithetical to the decentralized nature of Lemmy.
How does their instance reach over and change another instance?
It’s because an instance ban is a major action usually reserved for bots or pedophiles spreading bad things. If every single admin had to remove that user and their posts it would allow bots to spread things like wildfire and for CSAM to stay up for an indefinite amount of time.
It’s much better and safer for the entire fediverse that instance bans propagate deletions.
oh, yea that makes sense. thanks
I have no idea, and it’s entirely possible there’s some sort of weird coincidence, in which case if someone can prove me otherwise, I will eat my cowboy hat.
You first need to provide us proof that you do indeed own a cowboy hat.
