this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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It's likely that we'll be seeing a large number of instances switch to whitelist based federation instead of the current blacklist based one, especially for niche instances that does not want to deal with this at all (and I don't blame them).
Basically ruins the fediverse concept, as it will ultimately lock out all small instances of self hosted instances, which really is a shame.
I mean, you could have some sort of application system and allow instances to pull from you by default. That way you're "read only" until approved by other instances
Sounds a lot like email where it is really difficult to self-host your own email server since you'll be flagged as spam. It seemed like something that would happen to Lemmy eventually, but I didn't think it would be a strong possibility this soon.
I don't think it does, since self hosters can just federated with any number of instances they would like to interact with and not worry about the rest.
Those instances would have to actively fedeate with the self-hosters though. Blacklist is better than whitelist - keep the internet open.
Although a blacklist also wouldn't stop someone from firing up their instance, and posting CSAM to the bigger instances that way.
It's a downside of the Federation model. If an instance is blacklisted, they could just shut it down, fire up a new one, and get around it that way.
Whitelisting basically puts power in the hands of a few and suddenly the fediverse is capable of being bought. I'd prefer looking into other options if possible prior to essentially putting the nail in the coffin of an open fediverse.
That's always the case, since people will automatically flock to the larger and more stable instances, and anyone who's looking to buy in has the financial resources to build one of those.
It's part of the reason why lemmy.world and lemmy.ml got so big, since they were the largest, and most active instances, which made them the most attractive places for new users to flock to.
For example, XMPP is an open standard, but it was effectively bought and shut down by Google when they opened up their Reader(?) service, and shut that down after a while. The service still exists, and you can fire up a new server/join one, but it's dead for all other intents and purposes.
Lemmy isn't any more resistant to that than XMPP was.
Yeah, but notice that Google didn't have to deal with the dark web or CSAM or ridiculous amounts of money to cover their purported tracks.