this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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Lemmy
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Ha ... it seems like it at least.
I think I was being dumb in asking the question actually.
It's really just about the circle of users to whom the community is visible.
Local-only ... visible only to users of the instance. I'd presumed that it could be writable only to users of the instance such that only users of the instance could post/comment there. But double checking, no, it's only visible if you're logged on with an account on that instance ... so pretty private in the end actually.
private communities ... which are apparently coming ... are visible only to approved users, whether on the local instance or not.
And presumably, these will be stackable, so that a local-only + private community will be visible only to approved users from the local instance. So getting pretty closed.
Hopefully these don't start getting used too frequently, as it kind of... defeats the purpose of federation. Would not want to have to make accounts on multiple instances just to participate in niche communities.
The point of federation is to publicly share what you want to publicly share, not to have unfettered access to whatever you want to consume.
Eh, we already have private communities.
I did mention further down the comment chain the one use case for this I can think of - communities for info and feedback about the specific instance to / from its members; things like donations, financial disclosures, etc. - that you wouldn't want participation in from anyone not actually using the instance. It has its place; I'm more afraid of seeing popular communities going instance-only for whatever reason, with it being used solely to drive signups on a specific instance.