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Why do some posts and communities not show up on all instances? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by zabadoh@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
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Reddit refugee and Noob to lemmy/fediverse here.

For example, I'm currently logged into my lemmy.ml account, and subscribed to !anime@lemmy.ml and I can see a lot of posts there. I can also see that it has over 3K users.

If I log into lemmynsfw.com, and look at my subscription to !anime@lemmy.ml, I only see a few posts, and I know there are several that are missing. Also, it tells me that the community only has 8 users.

Is this synching problem common in lemmy, and/or the fediverse in general?

Do I have to create a new account on each server hosting communities that I want to keep up to date on?

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[-] dekatron@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've noticed that viewing the same community through different instances even when not logged in can show different posts, comments, and votes. I'm not sure why either.

For example, compare these:

https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world

https://mander.xyz/c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world

https://lemmy.world/c/mildlyinfuriating

[-] Chickerino@vlemmy.net 1 points 1 year ago

i would think that this is due to server load and it'll sync up overtime

[-] zabadoh@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, I think this post answers my question.

IMO this is a key weakness of Lemmy as it stands right now.

That, and I need my nsfw, so defederating lemmynsfw.com from here is a big minus for this instance.

[-] RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Why can't you maintain two accounts exactly? Also, lemmynsfw was having issues early on in their AI porn community where some very questionable stuff was being posted, requiring an explicit age rule to be implementing.

When you sub to a remote community that content is synced to your home instance. I wouldn't touch NSFW content being federated to an instance I own either. Way to much of a liability. Especially since I would be at the mercy of the random users Im hosting.

This is a strength of Lemmy imo.

[-] MrAegis@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but once an instance has been defederated with another, you will not be able to see posts from users associated with that instance, even if they post into a community that you are federated with.

[-] TauZero@mander.xyz 0 points 1 year ago

lemmy.ml is defederated from lemmynsfw.com, so they cannot exchange any posts anymore. You can see the federated/defederated list at the "instances" link at the bottom of the page. This is the flip side of fediverse: the power to moderate their communities and to chose whom to associate with is given back to the users, but it has the potential to create a "swiss cheeze" social network. To create a user, look for servers that have "free speech" as one of their community values, which would not defederate for ideological/nsfw reasons, and hope no one would defederate from them for being too "free".

[-] zabadoh@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

2 days ago when I posted this, lemmy.ml and lemmynsfw.com still listed each other as linked on their instances pages. Then 1 day ago, lemmy.ml listed lemmynsfw as defederated.

But my complaint, that the posts and communities from other instances is "swiss cheesed" as someone else put it, still stands.

[-] TauZero@mander.xyz 0 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I'm noticing a lot of missing posts/comments/votes too now. It's as if the federation protocol is taking a long time to catch up, even if nothing is otherwise blocked. For now I have to browse the communities I like on their host servers through https://lemmyverse.net/, then copy the fediverse URL of the comment I want to reply to, and paste it into my instance's search box. That usually syncs it up and I can reply then.

[-] pitninja@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

It's pretty bad, if your instance is missing comments and posts from another instance, they're going to be missing the comments indefinitely unless back filling is ever added to the protocol or unless users do what you're doing to manually pull comments and posts in. I think we'll see some federation improvements on the next major version of Lemmy after v0.18, but it's probably going to be shitty and unreliable until then. My personal instance is basically unusable right now.

[-] CoolRhino@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

I’m not sure but it might be that they defederated? A fair number of instances don’t federate with nsfw ones. Here’s an explanation of defederation: https://lemmy.world/post/149743

[-] zabadoh@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

Both instances list each other under Linked Instances, on their respective instances pages, fwiw.

[-] interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago

As far as I can tell, this is a defect in the design of Lemmy. When you go to lemmy.example.com/c/cats

Apparently the server only shows you /c/cats posts made in that server. This annuls the social part of this social media network.

lemmy.example.com/c/cats must show all /c/cats post of the entire fediverse.

Nobody cares about only /c/cats on some random instance like lemmy.example.com.

If this is not fixed soon, the Reddit user base will realize Lemmy is broken and go back to Reddit, just like twitter users did with mastodon when they realized it's unusable.

[-] RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 year ago

You are really missing the forest here. I'm registered on a explicitly Marxist-Leninist instance, where I talk to like minded people. I might want to talk to them about Cats, and only them.

However, I'm subbed to a lot of other communities outside of my instance. My subs are synced with my instance and then show up in the All list on the instance for everyone to explore.

There is a instance explicitly for Starteck, startrek.website, it 3 communities. I'm subbed to their c/startrek and my instances c/startrek and both instances engage with startreks very differently.

This is the strength of Lemmy. It's more likely that over time niche instances will become the norm, where the communities within them are centered around something (a ideology, a brand, a fandom), but because it's federated everyone can connect with everyone if they wish.

this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2023
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