If they all want to pile into exploding-heads, it would at least make them easy to contain.
I wonder if there could be a way to effectively shadow-ban entire instances.
There is. Lemmy.ml is currently shadowbanning kbin for unknown reasons.
Lemmy.ml is blocking the bots kbin uses for federation. The devs have ignored anyone asking why. It’s been weeks and only applies to Lemmy.ml, so it appears to be intentional. They’re running slightly different code on their flagship site than what all the other instances use (which makes me wonder what else Lemmy.ml has changed compared to what’s publicly available).
@EnglishMobster I think this is good. Personally, I think kbin-social should return the favor.
I believe that’s what “defederation” is. It’s when a server decides to no longer import or share content with another instance.
No, defederation isn’t shadowed. If an instance defederates from you, you stop receiving content from them, and it’s pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that you’ve been defederated.
Plus, on Lemmy at least, block lists are publicly viewable.
That’s not how I understood defederation. If an instance defederates from you, that instance stops seeing stuff from your instance. But not necessarily the other way around, as defederation is a one-way action.
So if the Cow instance defederates from the Poopie instance, people from the Poopie instance can still see content and comments from Cow users. But Cow users cannot see content or comments from Poopie users. For the scenario you’re describing to take place, the Poopie instance would also need to defederate from the Cow instance.
That said, it’s still not quite shadowbanning. The admins of the defederated Poopie instance would be aware that Cows were not seeing their content. It would depend on the admins to inform the Poopie users that they’ve been defederated. If the users were not aware of the defederation, then it’d effectively be a shadowban.
