The way federation works, however, is that it allows for User A to connect their server/Lemmy instance to User B's server/Lemmy instance. This allows for users on Server A to talk to people who are using Lemmy over on Server B.

However, letting your servers interact with other servers is not required. If users of one server are causing problems with your Lemmy instance, you can remove your server from theirs, which removes their access. This is referred to as defederation.

So when Beehaw is defederating other servers, it means they are blocking other servers from interacting with Beehaw.

[–] seethepattern@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is this why when I try to subscribe to a Beehaw server it says subscription pending?

[–] 3migo@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Exactly. Beehaw is no longer accepting users from other Lemmy instances, so your subscription will not go through to a Beehaw community, unless you are accessing it from either Beehaw, or one of the other instances Beehaw still federates with such as Lemmy.one.

[–] rpj@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

Got it. Thanks!

[–] marsokod@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Imagine you are at school and every class display their drawings/paintings. And because the teacher are super nice, they allow you to write comments under the drawings. That school is one lemmy server, with each class being a subreddit.

What is nice about lemmy is that it is federated. This means that by going into your school, you can also view what other schools are doing, and that is really nice to learn what other people are doing. This is also used so that you can have lots of small school everywhere with a smaller size, closer to everyone's home and can also be better for some people.

However, at some point the administrator of beehaw saw that some pupils from lemmy.world were a bit annoying, putting graffitis and making a mess. And the administrator of lemmy.world wanted to have as many pupils in his school as possible, which makes filtering and managing bad pupils difficult. So the administrator from beehaw basically established a rule: the pupils from lemmy.world cam still view our drawings, but they are not allowed to write anything. And this will be the rule until the behaviour of the lemmy.world school improves.

[–] Weirdmusic@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks so much, perfect ELI5

[–] AB7ORH7D@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting, thanks! What is wrong about Lemmy world, though? It seems like everything here is going very smoothly.

[–] marsokod@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I honestly don't know. Beehaw defederated a couple of instance and after a discussion with the other instance reintegrated that one, saying that they could not get in contact with lemmy.world. While I saw a chat from lemmy.world saying they could not reach out to beehaw admin. My best bet is a communication issue and that will be resolved, and this is mostly about beehaw wanting stricter standards than lemmy.world and getting spammed by a few people on lemmy.world, making their life difficult for a while and without a fast communication channel with the admins of lemmy.world decided to go with the quickest option.

[–] danQui0xte@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This was a pretty good explanation.

[–] rpj@lemmy.one 3 points 1 year ago

That was an indepth explanation. Thanks for sharing.