By default, all Lemmy servers can talk to each other. An admin for a server can choose for their server to not communicate with any other server.
That means that people on those two servers can't communicate, but makes no difference to people not on those two servers.
That's it
So how are instances defederated? Is it done by majority vote or does one instance have more control than others cough cough lemmy world cough if so then this is not really federated is it and with each instance we now have basically upgraded mod power to admin power
This is quite a hard question to follow, but I will try to answer what I think you are saying. Each instance is it's own site. On my instance, the server connects to other instances and copies the posts and comments across to my instance.
Every instance has at least one admin, and they have control over who their own instance federates with. There is no central server and no central decision making. If lemmy.world wants to defederate from lemmyf.uk, they can. If beehaw wants to defederate from lemmy.world, they can.
A user from lemmy.world will not see posts or comments from lemmyf.uk. A user on beehaw will not see posts from lemmy.world. Or vice versa. However, if there is a post on lemmy.ml, a user on lemmyf.uk might comment on it. Users on lemmy.world will not see it, but users on other instances will see it. A lemmyf.uk user and a beehaw.org user might have a conversation on a post on lemmy.ml, all the while lemmy.world users will not see it.
Basically, every instance decides for itself (it's admins decide), and any content from defederated instances will not be copied to that instance. But they will be copied to other instances just fine.
so one more question is each instance independently monetized?
At the moment, virtually every lemmy instance is either funded through donations, or from the pocket of the person running it.
What would happen if one of the larger instances goes away? Can the content be archived and preserved through the federation?
Yes
If an instance is nuked off the planet, anything federated in the past can be accessed from wherever else the content was sucessfully federated to
But the community itself is effectively dead, any content posted there would only appear in the posters instance and not go to everyone else.
Yepp this is an important point - completely forgot to clarify this lol.
The community would mostly only be useful as an archival source at that point, a bit like vlemmy and fmhy.ml communities now
Does this also help with rollbacks? Beehaw had one last weekend that lost a few hours worth of content
But what about advertising I shouldve clarified that, does each instance have their own independant income through ads?
I'm not aware of any having adds currently. Just donations.
Sync has ads from what ive read from comments I use jerboa so I dont see any either. I was going to use sync but I couldnt agree with their privacy policy.
The ads in sync are not part of any instance, it's just the sync developer putting them in his app to make money. If an instance admin manages to get ads into their instance, I imagine most users would move to another instance.
Ah ok I better not bash sync too much I hear their dev team are mods in some instances but haveing said that why would anyone put themselves at the mercy of ads when theres ad free alternatives?
To support the instance. Hosting costs money. Having an advert toggle could be a good way of making it work without forcing it on users.
On the sync adds - it makes more sense for instances to have adverts as they have ongoing costs. That said, some apps might also have backend infrastructure they proxy through. They also have a right to make money off their work, if users don't like them they can switch apps.
lemmy.world being federated with a given instance has no impact on another instance being federated with said given instance
Every instance has its own rules, defederation lists, admins… etc. If you have specifics you’d like to know about, DM me as you’re on my instance.
Others have answered quite well but here is some info I think they have missed.
You can see what instances are federated/federated here: https://lemmy.world/instances (for lemmy.world) change the front to your instance to see who they allow/block. (Federated at the top, de-federated at the bottom in a different section.
When your instance defederates another instance, it won't show communities from that instance. Users of the blocked instance can still see your instances content.
(I don't actually know what happens to comments from the blocked instance on posts in neutral communities)
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