How to use:
The url must be the hostname only, NO SLASHES, like this: lemmy.dbzer0.com, don’t use https://, don’t append a slash afterwards (lemmy.dbzer0.com/), only the hostname including the subdomain if it has it (in this case, lemmy).
If the instance has blocked the IP address from the server, or it is stuck and its API is not working correctly, it returns “Not a Lemmy instance” (I am too busy to fix this right now).
If the url is not formatted in a way it can process it, it will say Invalid URL. Better processing can come in the future. I won’t be updating it now.
- URL: https://federation-checker.vercel.app/
- Source code: https://github.com/lemmygod/federation-checker
In the backend, it just scrapes https://fba.ryona.agency/?domain={url} and uses the api https://{instance}/api/v3/federated_instances
PRs welcome.
Honestly it works better when deployed locally in a development environment. I think Vercel’s IP address is just blocked by cloudflare and other blacklists that stop automated stuff? Idk. Can check back in a few days.
POV: you’re joining an instance. You check the tool. The instance is blocked by instances that have communities you like. You decide not to join that instance, and instead check the tool to find a place that 1. Doesn’t block what you like and 2. Is not blocked by what you like. Seems easy enough to understand to me, especially since sh.itjust.works got defederated by beehaw.org and everyone is talking about defederating this and that over some reason or another.
Why would you not directly join an instance that has the communities you like?
Even playing devils advocate here I can at best see it as a tool to figure out which instances to avoid completely, but you can get about the same information by looking at the block-list of any instance that you like.
Not OP, but my communities are homed on a number of different instances. At minimum, I need to be able to interact with them, both reading and widely distributing my posts/comments. Preferably all on the same account, but that’s gotten more difficult lately.
For any communities I may create, I generally want to ensure that they can be accessed widely, by most users in the fediverse.
All of this preferably without having to deal with tankies, Nazis, etc.
Idk what’s hard about it.
It’s a pretty simple thought process.
Another level of complexity is, for example, knowing that lemm.ee bans nsfw content and you can’t post it. What if you want nsfw? You check the tool again, find lemmy.zip which doesn’t have nsfw blocked and has not blocked or been blocked by SJW and Beehaw and many others, you sign up, and you have all you want. What’s so hard or bad about that?
This kind of “what’s best for me alone in the short term” thinking is absolutely destructive to a federated network and is really only a small notch above intentional ban evasion.
I feel that you’re somehow missing the entire point. I’m not looking to evade any bans. If I wanna read news from beehaw.org and sh.itjust.works on the same Subscribed feed, and potentially interact with the comments, I cannot do that from either sh.itjust.works or beehaw.org, but I need to go to a third instance that has both available. Am “I” as an individual banned? No. Am I part of the target group banned? No. I am simply caught in the crossfire. To pretend like, by doing this, I am somehow harming federation, is not realistic for me.
You have to think about this a bit broader. You are one of many actors in a federated network that together help shape the network.
Let’s say Facebook opens a fediverse instance (which they will soon do) and most of the well managed instances imediatly block them since they are a known bad actor and actively harmful to the ecosystem.
If you now intentionally look for a instance that federates both with these instances and the one run by Facebook, that is a form of ban evasion that is indirectly detrimental to the health of the Fediverse.
No it isn’t. Let’s say I join “littlehorseylemmy.org” which has, say, 30 people, and I just wanna see what the facebookers are doing and what the regular lemmings are doing, as long as I am not sharing content between sides, I am not even affecting any of both sides.
This is short term thinking.
Instances block other bad actor instances to either get them to stop being bad actors or to isolate them from the network. Its a kind of built in immune system so to say.
By intentionally choosing to not participate in this collective effort you are at best a fool directly helping Facebook to get a foothold in the Fediverse.
Nah, by not following the footsteps of a bunch o people who think they know better than me, I am at best finding pleasure in life and not following the spooky arbitrary rules others set for me. It’s not short-term thinking, it’s long-term thinking about what’s best for me. My effect on me will always be much greater than the infinitesimaly small effect I have on a collective made up of hundreds of thousands of people. As long as I’m not trolling or ruining people’s experiences, I am free to do whatever I want.
And besides, you’re arguing about the biggest possible problem that there will be, and even then the effect I can have is tiny. My effect on other things such as the SJW-Beehaw block, or the lemmyworld-beehaw block, is even tinier, because these two are not even targeting each other, but are simply trying to make moderation easier. My so-called “ban-evasion” would not be harmful to any as I am not even the target of this “ban”.