Is it possible to make a lemmy instance private were no communities, posts, user profiles and the homepage is not available unless your logged in?
Used to be possible by ticking both federation and private on the admin page. But now they made it where you can’t toggle both simultaneously.
I’d like to see that return as a feature. I’d like to have my local instance have private communities for my users but still provide my users the ability to go out to the rest of the fediverse. My instance is friends of friends sort of stuff. So I have no reason to host communities out to the whole of the fediverse.
By leaving the federation box unchecked and having the private box checked off, will the instance not be visible to the public unless your logged in?
Federation unchecked and private unchecked. An instance that is publicly accessible, but doesn’t talk to other instances
Federation checked and private unchecked. An instance that is publicly accessible, and does federate with others. (Most of the big instances are this)
Federation unchecked and private checked. An instance that is private and requires logins to access the communities and other parts, but doesn’t federate.Federation checked and private checked… Used to work. communities hosted on the server would require a local account and would still federate out. This was outright blocked from 0.17.4 I believer…
The last case is perfect for me. I want to setup communities for my friends around particular topics on my instance, and still use my instance across the rest of the fediverse.
I wonder what the consequences would be if you updated the database?
On boot, with both options selected, the server locks up.
Updating it after boot? I don’t know.
I guess it was worth the test to find out https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3237
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3073
On start-up Lemmy checks if both the private_instance and federation_enabled flags are set. If they are, it raises and error which stops start-up meaning administrators are unable to edit the settings which cause the error.
As a means of prevention, I’ve added some validation when editing or creating a site to ensure that both options are never selected at the same time.
I thought about adjusting start-up behaviour to disregard one of the flags (like ignore federation if the private flag is set) but I thought it would be easier to just prevent the invalid state from being saved.
This could probably coincide with a change to the UI as well but I can do that after.
Federated and private means you can post in other people’s instances and view their users and communities, but you are hidden from them. Sounds unfair and a perfect vehicle for anonymous harassment, so I see why it was removed.
Sounds unfair and a perfect vehicle for anonymous harassment
I don’t really see how this is possible?
If I go to your community and harass it… A mod can just ban me.
If I harass you personally you can just block me.
I don’t really see how a private community would really change the above options. I can understand that from a moderation/administration standpoint that it could be harder to make decisions if you can’t see the users post history… but I don’t quite see that as being sufficient to take away the ability to have private communities.
Imagine if Facebook did it with Threads and all of a sudden 90% of users you see on Lemmy you can only interact with by replying to their comments on other people’s instances.
It destroys federation by priveledging certain users.
That’s basically 100% of how I interact with people as it is.
I’m not chasing you back to your instance to talk to you about some other topic. I’m interacting with you in the communities that I want to be a part of.
Before when you can check off federation and private instance, you could not view the instance unless you were logged in but could you view the instance from another instance being logged into another instance or no being logged into another instance?
Or does it only federate in a way were users inside the private instance can access the fediverse but the fediverse cannot access the private instance?
So private checked means that you have to be signed into the local instance to see the content.
Federation means that you can interact on the fediverse.
With both checked, it meant the communities INSIDE the instance would not transmit out… but the rest would work as normal.
it meant the communities INSIDE the instance would not transmit out… but the rest would work as normal.
Lets say you have a private federated instance named salk.world. salk.world users can access, post and comment on other instances like lemmy.world but other instances and users cannot view content on salk.world?
Correct.
