Another traveler of the wireways.

  • 13 Posts
  • 81 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The tricky part is, the group-supporting fediverse software and the microblogging software need to improve how they interact for this to be as good as it could be.

    Right now Mastodon barely supports group users/actors/accounts, however they’re called, translating stuff from Lemmy’s format in a rather clunky way. Meanwhile Lemmy also has to roughly translate Mastodon’s format to its own, working pretty well all things considering, but leaving clear artifacts (subject line/first line repeating, community mention remaining shown, etc.).



  • And correct me if i am wrong, but banning a user just stops them from posting, but i thought it did not delete their post history without additional mod action - which i cant see in the modlog

    There’s an option when banning a user to also remove their content, albeit unless it’s an admin action I don’t think it would affect their whole post history beyond the specific community.

    I’m kind of getting the sense as I look into this that it may be related to how Voyager is rendering the thread, as I’m not able to observe what’s being described from the web interface. That’s another catch in all this, the other apps and interfaces have their own quirks in how they handle rendering things, which itself is typically related to how they work off the base software (Lemmy in this case).


  • Edit: why am i forced to upload a photo for a new post?

    Which way are you posting? Mobile/web interface? Shouldn’t need to add an image to post…

    That aside, regarding your main question:

    I think it’s very confusing when a single post appears with different comments on different instances, and have no idea how this works.

    A basic reason for the difference in which comments are appearing across different instances/sites is because of delays in networking (federation) between the sites due to a variety of reasons. One of the common ones with the fediverse tends to be the software itself, and sometimes differences in versions’ federation handling. In this case it’s probably because Lemmy World is still running an older version of Lemmy with clunkier federation at Lemmy World’s scale, which causes delays in activities on there updating elsewhere (particularly those hosted in Australia).

    Edit:
    See also Kichae’s comment for a more detailed explanation, covers how things operate under more ideal conditions.


  • ElectroVagrant@lemmy.worldtoFediverse@lemmy.world@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Sort of, it’s because a lot of microblogging software doesn’t have the same post format with title/post body. The current workaround for microblog to Lemmy and similar is to format it like this:

    first line title

    second or more lines post body

    @communityname@site.name

    #hashtags if desired







  • If we remain in our current comfort space, Lemmy will likely continue to stagnate as a niche platform.

    I follow what you’re getting at here, but I think this line of thinking, of Lemmy as a platform, also contributes to the issues in drawing more people to this network of communities/sites.

    As Kichae said in your other thread:

    […]
    “Lemmy” doesn’t exist like Reddit does. It’s not a place people can go to talk about shit. It’s a website engine. It exists like WordPress does. One of its features just happens to be “can pull content from other websites”.

    If we want this space to grow, we need to focus on building community websites that stand on their own. Then we can market it as “hey, you love it here on MyInterest.social, but did you know you can also talk to people from SomethingElse.social? Pretty cool, huh??!?” Nobody seems to want to do that, though. That means we’re totally at the mercy of places like Twitter and Reddit, waiting for them to fuck up badly again and hoping more people just kind of land here, in some cheap and uncanny knockoff of where they really wanted to be.

    On one hand I agree that the interface, and in turn the user experience, is worth focusing on to help get people to participate around here. On the other, I think you also need what Kichae describes at the end of their comment. Communities that can stand on their own with their own distinct identities and interests that also happen to let you talk with and see stuff from other distinct communities.

    At some point I’d like to move to a little more focused sort of community like that built with Lemmy (or Piefed, or Mbin), but haven’t had luck finding any that fit so far since many are broader in scope instead.



  • True, but as noted, it isn’t a necessity to run a full-network relay, which those resource demands and costs relate to.

    At the same time, one of the larger Mastodon instances, Mstdn.social in terms of financial costs alone amounted to about 1000 euros per month as of October 2024.

    The architecture of ATProto also enables a greater degree of flexibility in separating out costs by comparison, which in some respects may be an interesting model worth consideration for new or developing ActivityPub software, and in some respects is already in the works with projects like Bonfire and ActivityPods. On the ATProto side there’s already at least one person looking to adapt ActivityPub to ATProto’s PDSs in a manner similar to ActivityPods, just using ATProto data formatting instead.




  • It’s not so much that ActivityPub can’t scale up, so much as that for one, as I’ve understood it that’s not really been desirable anyway (undermines the point of decentralization/distribution), and for two, it starts getting bogged down as you already recognize. It also runs into similar, if not worse, cost problems to operate as ATProto’s full network approaches are now.

    ActivityPub is more suited to scaling across multiple instances/sites than up, and I’d argue that’s its strength. It unintentionally has an implosion threshold to counter centralization in terms of cost and performance.

    On the other hand, ATProto’s advantage is that it enables scaling up while also enabling better data portability. I’m aware of work on this with ActivityPub as well, but it’s still very early stages. My thinking is that there may be some ways to work with both to push towards their similar shared aims in terms of an open social web, with more flexibility in moving between spaces and adjusting experiences to better find what one wants from these different spaces.


  • Ideally they would be compatible, I agree.

    Also you’re right regarding the capacity to scale up, and frankly, while ATProto makes it feasible, I don’t think it’s necessarily desirable even with ATProto. Part of the point of it is to have various independent relays that would better distribute the load, and enable people’s mobility when any of them go bad. Setting that aside, they don’t all have to be full network relays, in fact someone is already toying with running a small network relay.

    I also agree regarding moderation problems at a larger scale, and that ActivityPub’s various software should take this as a wake-up call to improve the user experience, not so much for “big social media vibes” but for a better, less finicky experience.

    However I also think there are potential benefits to ATProto, which blended together with ActivityPub, could make both better overall. The technical literacy and insistence on independent servers of the ActivityPub culture could make ATProto properly distributed and federated, which would be far better than letting it languish in corporate hands. Meanwhile the openness to optional transparent, customizable algorithms and preference for a smoother user experience of the ATProto/Bsky culture could make ActivityPub a more accessible, and livelier feeling space for more people.

    Both can improve from one another, so long as both communities choose to try to learn from one another.