My mistake, apologies. I saw this sub recommended to someone else in a thread over at Lemmy.world community discussing something tangentially related but I realise now I may have missed something important as to why it was recommended to them. I previously posted this question in a lemmy.world thread but people did not understand my question lol.

It's a pretty bad oversight, and makes me think the best thing to do is temporary mutual defederation until it's addressed which obviously isn't ideal at all, but I do worry about the implications of so many reasonably sized communities being completely unmoderated on our end. Thank you for the advice tho, I'll make sure to save your comment so I can refer back to it if this isn't fixed!

Maybe I'm not being clear here.

lemmy.world users can still make new posts in LGBTQ+@beehaw.org, which is only hosted on lemmy.world and there is no indication in the UI that the community is a 'false' version, only visible to other lemmy.world users

The posts made in LGBTQ+@beehaw.org by lemmy.world users are not hosted on the 'true' beehaw instance. The 'true' community is moderated by beehaw mods. The 'false' community is moderated by who?

lemmy.world never had moderators for these communities because they were beehaw.org communities. So who is moderating these posts?

Examples of posts in beehaw communities by world users after defederation

https://lemmy.world/post/172609

https://lemmy.world/post/167045

https://lemmy.world/post/158352

https://lemmy.world/post/185750

https://lemmy.world/post/162320

Is it a rare bug if it's possible on multiple beehaw communities? These are all posts on different beehaw communities by lemmy.world users after defederation that I can only see while logged into my lemmy.world account. Last post by me that I just made.

https://lemmy.world/post/172609

https://lemmy.world/post/167045

https://lemmy.world/post/158352

https://lemmy.world/post/185750

See this post here. example of what I'm talking about

This post is available to all lemmy.world users. But it is on a 'false' beehaw instance, completely unlinked from the true instance. Previous moderation was done by beehaw mods

Not this one, the beehaw shell communities that are still accessible but disconnected from beehaw mods

Amazing post with great info, thank you! There literally nothing in UI to let people know this is how it works tho and relies on words of mouth sharing. Communities essentially look exactly the same but like there's been no activity unless lemmy.world users post in it so you have to be able to guess posts are on a defederated instance or be hypervigilant in checking usernames if you haven't seen any posts about it, or are a new user in a week when this is t discussed as frequently. This is a huge oversight tbh and leaves me feeling a little uneasy. With more questions.

For example the LGBTQ community hosted on beehaw. Hypothetically say all of us genuine users who are aware of this unsubscribe because we find other communities that allow us to participate with a wider community. The shell community is still there, using beehaw branding, looks like a legit LGBTQ space but is now exclusively populated by trolls and unfortunate users who have missed announcements that this has happened. Nothing in the UI informs anyone posting or commenting there that it is not the true instance, and therefore no longer moderated by the owners.

Unaware user who already subscribed before the defederation posts a topic they want to discuss in a few weeks time, and suddenly they're flooded with highly upvoted troll responses That post ends up on the lemmy.world local/all page and is broadcast to other users who may not be aware, and a lot of new users who have no idea this ever happened. Now Beehaw is known as a hub for homophobic trolls that allows queer users to be trolled, and the trolls know they can get away with it in that community. Sure, eventually someone will come in to let that user know what's up and where to go, but by that time the damage is already done.

That also leads me to question how reporting works for this type of thing. If I report a user for breaking sub rules on the false version, who does that report go to? Is it a random lemmy.world mod/admin because we are both lemmy.world users in a community without beehaws mods or is it lost to the ether because there's no longer a connection to beehaw mods? If it goes to world mods, what if someone violates the subs rules that are still shown on the false instance, but not lemmy.world rules? My understanding was that moderation happened in communities by the host instance so does that mean these shell communities are completely unmoderated? That makes me feel very uncomfortable that these shell communities are even still available to world users, if it is the case, and should be cause for a mutual defederation until it's addressed but I'd like to have my reasoning corrected here if I'm off base. I'm still learning but this has me a little concerned so would appreciate being corrected if I'm wrong.

Edit: people are misunderstanding what I'm saying in the comments.

Who is moderating posts made by lemmy.world users in 'false' beehaw communities since the official beehaw moderators can no longer see these posts?

https://lemmy.world/post/172609

https://lemmy.world/post/167045

https://lemmy.world/post/158352

https://lemmy.world/post/185750

https://lemmy.world/post/162320

For what it's worth, I'm not a tech person who didn't have anything explained to me beforehand, knew almost nothing except seeing the words 'lemmy instance' (didn't know what that meant, just that it was relevant so googled it and found a sign up page) and 'jerboa app' on reddit and figured out my way here lol. I probably have a bit more free time and patience than the average user and am not afraid to brute force my way through just to see if things work tho lol.

There needs some improvements before it'll be mainstream accessible for sure imo, most of which I've seen pointed out a few times already on different communities. I'd seen mastodon mentioned before in passing by non-tech friends who were just twitter users tho even without ever using Twitter myself, so I suspect if an average user can understand mastodon the same could be true here right?

It can be quite difficult to find communities especially using the app unless you see a post in all and can just click through.

If you open up your browser, open feddit.uk, click the search icon and type !https://lemmy.world/c/gunners I think that should work. You have to search from your 'home server' (the site you signed up on) so you remain logged in. It'll give you a link, and when you open it you can hit subscribe that way. Much easier to just click the sub name from a post in 'all' tho.

Absolutely, I suspect we'll see lots of duplicate communities to begin with and some will grow large, some will remain small and tight-knit, and some will just fade away. I'm still getting to grips with the whole fediverse thing but what I've experienced so far has been great and I think it's starting to make sense the more I use it so I have a good feeling about it. Some teething problems but overall it seems like a great place to be even if it doesn't totally replace Reddit.

I kinda love the anonymity of Reddit, I could talk about my personal life with strangers who won't remember me within 5 minutes so I felt safe being open about things I can't talk about IRL even if I didn't get any feedback. I'm hoping that regardless of size, the communities here allow me to do that and still feel safe. Obviously I'll be more cautious here with a smaller user base, but I was still cautious on Reddit too because bad actors who would do you harm exist everywhere and can't be totally avoided if you engage online at all. Sometimes a larger user base simply helps alleviate the stress because you are just another random user rather than a recognisable user for people like me, but it definitely cuts both ways and sometimes people forget you are a human too. The quality of the community is absolutely the most important thing tho, and good communities will grow naturally.

I'm just trying to subscribe to as many of the duplicates as I come across for communities I see and like. I suspect eventually some will become the most popular ones and 'win' the unofficial title as the 'main one' if the overall user base continues to grow. Am I right in thinking it also depends on which instances your 'home instance' continues to federate with (IE admins don't block) or have I totally misunderstood and overcomplicated how it works in my mind?

If I'm understanding this whole thing correctly: an instance that your 'home instance' (where you signed up) has federated with might host a larger user base for one community, but if their admins blocks your home instance or vice versa, you lose the ability to interact with that community(?) I would think this means ideally you want your home instance to host the community that 'wins' so you're less likely to lose access, right?

So if hypothetically for whatever reason lemmy.world or lemmy.ml blocked the other, users who signed up on lemmy.world would lose access to the communities hosted on lemmy.ml and vice versa. So duplicates would still pop up if the most popular community is hosted somewhere your home doesn't have access to, right? I'm far less likely to create multiple accounts just to access an unofficial 'main' cat community than I am to just click 'subscribe' on any available sub with the word 'cat' in it.

I wonder if it's a branding problem, where lemmy.world sounds inviting and plausibly serious where sh.itjust.works sounds like clowntown

That was my thought process when choosing an instance tbh. I'm not a tech person, I looked at the list and lemmy.world was the first 'safest feeling' instance that had open sign up. I saw sh.itjust.works and didn't even check their sign up process, there was too many periods in the strange name and it just looks weird to me as someone not used to these things. Edit: spelling