Each server (AKA "Instance") is kind of like an email provider, or like a bunch of individual Reddit websites. On Lemmy a "Community" is their version of a subreddit. Each server/instance hosts its own communities, but if you have an account on one server, you can still subscribe, read and post on off-server communities.

Each server is a piece of the federation. Some Instances do not federate with all other instances though. I'm not sure if there are any instances that access every other instance.

I'm not sure about lemmy, but I know that on other fediverse projects like Mastodon there were some servers that were completely unmoderated, filled with terrible content and were defederated by most other instances. Most decent people don't want to see that stuff on their feed.

> some servers that were completely unmoderated, filled with terrible content and were defederated by most other instances. Most decent people don't want to see that stuff on their feed.

Why not solve that by blocking them yourself, instead of forcing everyone else to block them?

From a user point of view that would do just fine. Maybe server owners might not want to be associated with those instances for potential legal issues.

Some servers admins have also defederated from certain instances because they were receiving increased trolling/spam from certain instances and it was too much work to moderate with the current number of mods they had.

That's kind of the thing about the fediverse: that's basically not possible. Any instance that doesn't engage in some blocking will probably be blocked for what it doesn't block. You could, of course, run your own instance, but obviously that's its own can of worms.

So... It's tricky.

edit: also, sites like joinmastodon USUALLY just completely exclude anything too controversial, for pretty obvious reasons. Dunno about join-lemmy but I'd bet on it.

> Any instance that doesn't engage in some blocking will probably be blocked for what it doesn't block

Yikes.. damn. I haven't really jumped in to the fediverse yet, but I've been excited about its potential. But this sounds incredibly toxic. Basically it sounds like we've gone from having to conform to the corporation's rules, to having to conform to the center of the venn diagram or else you get shut off. Am I misunderstanding?

> having to conform to the center of the venn diagram or else you get shut off

There's no shutting off. The instances that are blocked still work.

It's like email. If cheapviagrapillz.com is identified as sending a substantial amount of spam, they will be blacklisted. Their server still works, they can still send emails, but many servers will not accept those emails.

> Any instance that doesn't engage in some blocking will probably be blocked for what it doesn't block.

So if I'm understanding correctly, it's a platform that encourages peer pressure and bullying? Or am I misunderstanding?

Yes. That's exactly how it played out with Mastodon.

It's basically run by infantile people.

You know what made Reddit popular? Share ability. How the hell am I going to send a link to the Lemmy verse or whatever to my brother in law?

It's on the web, so you can send links the regular way.

Either right-click a post, copy link, paste into brother-in-law chat.

Or open a post, copy the browser's address bar, paste into brother-in-law chat.

E.g. https://beehaw.org/post/529329