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Fediverse is 100% Decentralized or not?

Somehow, I feel like the federated network is still centralized, because there is still censorship; it’s just distributed across more servers.

I mean, it definitely gives users more rights to free speech, and I’m not worried about privacy issues. However, the removal of content and the banning of accounts are things that are diminishing my passion for sharing my thoughts publicly(on reddit).

I just dont want this happened on here but I am seeing some…

UnanimousStargazer ,

If you start your own server, you moderate yourself.

Whether others want to federate with your server is up to them.

Tar_alcaran ,

You can absolutely have free speech, but nobody is forced to actually listen to you.

Which is good, because in the real world, every place that has “zero censorship” rapidly devolves into a Nazi invested shithole.

woshang OP ,

Ya, I agree with you that no one is forced to actually listen to me, but removing content… I mean, I was spending a lot of time writing those and looking for replies, but they just remove it before anyone sees it… That sucks.

Bendavisunlv6 ,

No one is required to host your content, spread your voice, give you a platform. You really need to stop using the term “freedom of speech” here. It means something totally different. Publisher won’t print your book? “Censorship!” This is what you sound like.

collegefurtrader ,

They’re afraid of my raw power!

woshang OP ,

I am😂

dilan ,

Okay okay, stop being so angry about it man, you know I am talking about ‘censorship’ when I say ‘fos’

pjhenry1216 ,

They're literally saying it's not censorship. If a publisher doesn't publish your book, is it censorship? No. Folks aren't forced to host your content if they don't want to.

Bendavisunlv6 ,

Exactly, thank you. It’s neither an infringement of free speech nor censorship. None of us has any entitlement to amplification here. We participate by the good graces of the mods and admins.

(I think this dude is 14 and still thinking of everything as black and white, and also everything being about him)

JackbyDev ,

What did you post that got removed?

woshang OP ,

But other people who are on my server might think the same way as I mentioned

Bendavisunlv6 ,

Well it’s yours so you get to decide. Go make your own platform and you can have all the freedom you want. But it always seems to be that folks want a share of someone else’s platform, and when they can’t get it, their freedom has been taken away. SMH

pjhenry1216 ,

You should have spent time reading the rules of your server before spending time with writing your content. It doesn't matter if others care or not. Someone has a wall and is letting you write on it. It's their wall, not yours. They can make their own rules. You are free to have your own wall.

UnanimousStargazer ,

You don’t need to allow other people on your server.

JackGreenEarth ,

The great thing about this system though is that you can always create an account on your own instance, and interact with any instance that hasn’t been defederated from you.

JackGreenEarth ,

The great thing about this system though is that you can always create an account on your own instance, and interact with any instance that hasn’t been defederated from you.

woshang OP ,

I am not quite understand it, can you maybe explain a bit? Thx

JackGreenEarth ,

They can ban your account from a particular instance, but you always move to or create a new one.

woshang OP ,

I see, kind of like Nostr, right? But what about all the history, like messages and communities, that I was following from the other account?

collegefurtrader ,

Poof, gone.

woshang OP ,

ic, better to behave than

HamSwagwich ,

Why would this even be a consideration? Why is your default to misbehave? It’s attitudes like this that gives rise to moderation and censorship, because you can’t self moderate or behave without someone forcing you to.

HeartyBeast ,
@HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

You can create your own Lemmy or Kbin server just for you and post whatever you want. Whether other servers federate with you is another matter of course.

The Fediverse gives you absolute freedom of speech and everyone else absolute freedom to block you.

jordo ,

I can’t help but feel that you’re conflating censorship with centralization. A defederated network just means that the servers you’re on will choose what they’d like to censor. Running your own server or looking for one which you probably agree with is something which may work for you, while giving others the ability to defederate and not have to read what you’re saying.

HorreC ,
@HorreC@kbin.social avatar

while you have the ability to say what you want, in this you do not get to force others to read it. Make your own space, or find one that you like. It will be an echo chamber, but like I said no one is obligated to read what you post about.

leraje ,
@leraje@lemmy.world avatar

Its decentralized nature isn’t due to censorship, or a lack of it, but its structure. Of course there’s going to be some degree of censorship because instances all have individual rules which, if you break, you’ll be penalized for which can take the form of removal of content.

The only way to have total free speech is create your own instance which is a total free for all but then you’ll attract the worst sort of people and your instance will end up defederated by instance owners who don’t want content from literal Nazis federated to their instances.

Phanatik ,

That second paragraph highlights exactly how the Fediverse works. If you're a shitty friend, no one will want to be friends with you.

Agamemnon ,
@Agamemnon@lemmy.world avatar

It’s not about freedom of speech (or by some peoples interpretation it would be more accurately called ‘anarchy of speech’). The need for moderation still exists just as the rights higher in the hierarchy of human rights still exist and need protection - especially from armchair anarchists.

cacheson ,
@cacheson@kbin.social avatar

Hey now, anarchists don't deserve this slander. Moderation typically falls under freedom of association/disassociation, which we're strongly in favor of. The people you have a problem with are the ones that think you should be forced to listen to them, which is pretty contrary to the anarchist ethos.

HandwovenConsensus ,

I think “polycentric” is a better term than “decentralized.”

Every instance is a center, and is vulnerable to failure and corruption like any service provider. But at least we have a choice of instances, and there isn’t a single point of failure for the whole network.

Chozo ,

I think that might be a little too macro for newcomers to understand.

HandwovenConsensus ,

macro?

woshang OP ,

I don’t think you quite understand what ‘decentralized’ means. Decentralization means there’s no central server, implying no data collection, no restrictions or moderation, and no banning.

Furthermore, it won’t corrupt when a single node breaks down. This is because a decentralized network is essentially built by all users within the network. Whenever one user quits or a node breaks down, there are always other nodes/users available to maintain the network. That’s the essence of a decentralized network.

HandwovenConsensus ,

I just said that lemmy is not a decentralized network…

mitexleo ,
@mitexleo@kbin.social avatar

Why do you think so ?

HandwovenConsensus ,

Because it’s polycentric. Each instance is a center. When an instance goes down, it takes all its users and data with it.

I know people around here aren’t fond of cryptocurrency, but bitcoin is what I’d consider a truly decentralized system. Nothing is lost to the network when a bitcoin node goes down. As long as you have your private key, you can spend from any node, and you don’t even need a node to receive.

I believe it’s helpful to distinguish between the two types of systems.

mitexleo ,
@mitexleo@kbin.social avatar

Thanks for explaining 😊

HandwovenConsensus ,

Thanks for asking. :) Have a good one.

shnizmuffin ,
@shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol avatar

A federated network is inherently decentralized, because the network can continue to operate in a diminished state after a node goes dark. Your local government and electric grid are decentralized.

I think you’re mixing up “Decentralized” with “Distributed.” A distributed network operates at full capacity as long as at least one node has (the majority of) the network’s content. git and torrent are distributed.

HandwovenConsensus ,

Well, as long as a distinction is made. I appreciate the information. I still feel that “decentralized” should be replaced with “polycentric,” but I’ll accept that “decentralized” is the standard term for a system with multiple centers.

pjhenry1216 ,

But it literally is.

woshang OP ,

Lmao, I missed the ‘term’ word, I thought you said is better than decentralized, sry bro

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

Implying no data collection, no restrictions or moderation, and no banning

That is absolutely incorrect. All of those things can and do exist but it is dependent on each instance. There isn’t a single entity controlling those things, each fediverse instance decides for themselves. One instance could collect everything you do, restrict what you post, moderate what users post and comment, and ban users as they please.

Decentralisation doesn’t mean “no rules”

pjhenry1216 ,

I mean, they're practically interchangeable words. They mean fairly the same thing. Polycentric is decentralized. You can use that word if it works for you, but decentralized is still correct.

HandwovenConsensus ,

Then what would you call a network where specific data isn’t tied to specific nodes and lost when the node goes down?

pjhenry1216 ,

You are describing a decentralized system. But you aren't describing a required function of decentralization.

Chozo ,

On this part of the Fediverse, things definitely lean a bit more left/center, in general, so that's something you may want to keep in mind with the communities you're interacting with. I've seen a few communities that lean a bit more to the right, but they're definitely more moderate, I've found. There's other parts of the Fediverse, though, that lean even further to the right. There's also a few that go waaaay further left than here. There's plenty of options.

But something else to consider, is that some of those instances are defederated this part of the overall network, so you may see that there's a sort of self-imposed firewall between some of these communities. But wherever you go, every instance is privately-operated, so you'll be beholden to somebody else's rules. The workaround for this is that you can host your own instance and do whatever you want. But, it's up to each individual community whether or not they want to allow your content on their platform, as much as it is you with yours.

I've not looked into your post history, so I don't know which way you lean. Maybe I agree with your opinions. Maybe I absolutely despise your hot takes. Either way, I hope you find an appropriate place to share them. Best of luck!

kbity ,
@kbity@kbin.social avatar

Centralisation in this instance refers to control over the network and standard itself rather than control over what's posted on it. There's no single authority that can unilaterally change how every Fediverse instance and system works - for example, there isn't anyone who can decree that from now on Lemmy will no longer allow connections from Canada, or that nobody is allowed to post pictures of capybaras any more.

It's intended to prevent a /u/spez or Elon Musk situation where one asshole can bring down the entire ecosystem built around an API. Nothing stops anyone else from hosting their own instance if they dislike lemmy.world, whereas if you don't like Twitter, you can't just host your own copy of it.

monerobull ,

Monero.town is very lax when it comes to moderation as long as you don’t say anything that could get you arrested in Germany.

dilan ,

What if I am in the US lol

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

If its a german instance they have to follow german law.

Just like if you’re an american living in germany. You don’t get to follow american law in germany. You have to abide by the local laws.

Take for example, the irish hosted lemmy defederated from another instance that allows posting … questionable/underage anime content. Its treated the same as CSAM under Irish law. Federating those instances would mean the admins of the irish instance would be liable for any data pulled over onto their instance.

monerobull ,

This issue should be solved if you could just set lemmy to not cache federated NSFW images (without fully disabling NSFW on your instance) since then users would load the images from the remote server and not the homeserver.

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

But that also relies on posts being tagged correctly

monerobull ,

True, guess not caching remote content at all should be an option as well. Then you can just block caching for every instance that doesn’t enforce proper tagging.

breadsmasher ,
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

so… defederating. like is already happening

monerobull ,

No, defederating would block all flow between instances. The problem is with hosting content that you don’t want to or arent allowed to host. Currently if I view a image from burggit, the image gets saved to the monero.town and then served whenever someone else views it from there, which is a problem. If instead every time someone wants to view that image, it gets pulled from burggit again, monero.town isn’t in trouble for hosting it anymore.

curiosityLynx ,

The fediverse being decentralized means that there are many servers/instances, each with their own codes of conduct (or lack of one). Similarly, different communities on those servers can have different rules they might want to enforce with removals of posts or comments. For example, a community about cat pictures will have a rule about posts having to be cat pictures and will remove a post about your grandma's vegetable soup recipe.

If your comment/post was removed, that probably means your post/comment was either against the rules of the community or against the code of conduct of the entire server/instance. If it's the former, look for or create a community where that kind of content is appreciated. If you're running up against the code of conduct of the instance, look for a server/instance where your content wouldn't be violating the code of content or make your own server/instance where you're the one defining the code of conduct. Of course, that code of conduct would only apply to communities on your server.

If your server becomes a source of constant shit, admins of other servers might decide to defederate from your server. Think of it like making your own email server: if too many of your email server's emails are spam, other email providers might decide to designate your email server as a spam factory and block all emails coming from it.

Roundcat ,
@Roundcat@kbin.social avatar

I'm just wondering what you are sharing that is getting you censored off of most of the major instances. Something illegal? Something morally reprehensible that most regular people take objection to it? Like I understand Beehaw being very uptight about what they allow (to the point of defederating most major instances) but world just seems free for all but the most extreme views, ml will allow straight up genocide and warcrime denial as long as it's China or Russia, and shitjustworks seems to be gamers in general, left or right.

Like there are instances that are just basically unmoderated free speech zones if that's what you're looking for. There are even instances that are echochambers for your political leanings if that's what you are actually looking for. But most of the major instances are going to be catering for a more general userbase. Afterall, part of the reason world became the biggest is because it's the one most former redditors were pointed to.

And the reality is, and part of the reason I'm apprehensive about Meta joining the fediverse, is because even in a decentralized environment, communities, opinions, topics and activity all becomes centralized around whichever community is the biggest. The internet itself is a decentralized network, but since everyone gathers in the same places, it ultimately became centralized around sites like reddit, insta, youtube, and twitter. That's one of the reasons we are encouraged as fedi users to join smaller instances. Not just to save on space and traffic, but to encourage the activity in our local communities to grow.

woshang OP ,

Thx for explaining these to me bro, your point about the defederation of some instances is important, as it highlights the diversity and autonomy within the network, even though it might cause some fragmentation. And indeed, while every instance is privately operated, the option to host one’s own instance provides individuals with the freedom to set their own rules.

BlueEther ,
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

you have been here an hour - I think you need to read some around how lemmy/federation and instances work.

devious ,

Censorship is also decentralised which means no single entity will be able to completely control the information, but that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want without consequence of all the decentralised instances agreeing that particular information should not be shared. Decentralisation does not guarantee you an audience!

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