Question about Defederation that I am stuck on

Using Beehaw's /c/gaming community as an example: Can someone please explain why I am still able to view this community and even see new posts? I also saw a few posts from beehaw users themselves in the last day. According to the explanation from the admins, I should be able to see posts in /c/gaming ONLY from other lemmy.world users, however that does not appear to be the case. I am seeing content from other instances, including beehaw. Can someone explain?

I read the explanation for defederation like 20 times and I still don't understand. It is incredibly confusing so if someone could explain this properly, that would be great. Thanks!

The thing I’m confused about is whether or not we should be seeing posts from anyone on /c/gaming @beehaw.org (as an example) that’s not from lemmy.world. Does that make sense? According to the admin’s post here, we shouldn’t, however I am still seeing a few posts that look new. Is this due to the caching issues? Because I’m definitely not seeing ALL of the new posts, just a handful. This is what i cannot seem to get a straight answer on. The below says no, however I definitely am 100% seeing posts from non-lemmy.world users on /c/gaming@beehaw.org…

https://lemmy.world/post/149743

“This won’t ever stop. You’ll notice that all posts after defederation are only from lemmy.world users. You won’t see posts/comments from ANY other instance (including instances that ) on beehaw.org communities. Those communities will quickly suck for us, as we’re only talking to other lemmy.world users. Your posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. I highly recommend just unsubscribing from those communities, since they’re pretty pointless for us to be in right now.”

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It's an artifact of how caching and one sided defederation works(beehaw has defederated with lemmy.world, but lemmy.world hasn't defederated beehaw)
When beehaw defederated, they've done two things:
blocked lemmy.world users from participating in their community
blocked beehaw users from particpating in lemmy.world
But lemmy.world doesn't know any of this. So it continues to sync /c/gaming (read access to communities isn't blocked by defederation) and you'll see new posts and new comments.
If you try and comment though, it gets weird. Your comment will show up in lemmy.world's cache of the community, but when it gets sent to beehaw it will be rejected. So now your comment only exists in lemmy.world. Local users will see it, but beehaw won't and other instances won't since they're syncing the 'real' copy from beehaw directly.
- Ah ok this checks out. So as a Lemmy.World user, I am still going to see all of the new posts in those communities. I just can't comment? I could have sworn that the documentation stated that we wouldn't be receiving any new content (posts/comments) from Beehaw. So you are saying it is just a read-only? It does seem that we aren't picking up all of the new posts from /c/gaming@beehaw.org. If you actually go to beehaw.org, there are way more new posts. Do you know why this is? There are also comments on the beehaw version but not the lemmy.world version. Aren't you saying we should be seeing comments?
  
  That may be related to our general issues with federation. Things aren't always syncing properly -- see here for more known issues: https://lemmy.world/post/15786
  
  Got it. Thanks. I think I have a much better understanding now. That was very helpful. Hopefully this defederation nonsense works itself out as people spread out into their preferred instances/communities. It is a shame about Beehaw since they have some of the "currently" largest communities, such as /c/gaming. I assume people will just migrate to another one.
- https://lemmy.world/comment/538560
  This comment seems to directly contradict what you said. Am I missing something? Is this person wrong?
  
  The comment you linked to is provably wrong per your post. You can test whether the alternate theory is correct by posting on beehaw from your Lemmy.world account and then viewing the thread from beehaw (just don't login if you don't have an account).
  Let us know how it goes.
  
  The thing I'm confused about is whether or not we should be seeing posts from anyone on /c/gaming that's not from lemmy.world. Does that make sense? According to the admin's post here, we shouldn't, however I am still seeing a few posts that look new. Is this due to the caching issues? Because I'm definitely not seeing ALL of the new posts, just a handful. This is what i cannot seem to get a straight answer on. The below says no, however I definitely am 100% seeing posts from non-lemmy.world users on /c/gaming@beehaw.org..........
  https://lemmy.world/post/149743
  "This won’t ever stop. You’ll notice that all posts after defederation are only from lemmy.world users. You won’t see posts/comments from ANY other instance (including instances that ) on beehaw.org communities. Those communities will quickly suck for us, as we’re only talking to other lemmy.world users. Your posts/comments are not being sent to any other lemmy. I highly recommend just unsubscribing from those communities, since they’re pretty pointless for us to be in right now."
  
  It's important to remember as well that whether or not we should and whether or not we are or not the same thing.
  
  Right, which would imply there is an issue across the fediverse with properly enforcing defederation. I'm just trying to make sure I understand how it's supposed to work.

13 comments