Steven Lang
@NivReggev interesting, it seems to be “working as intended” then. Weird choice though as this make, as you also mentioned, exploring a community across servers almost impossible without a lot of effort.
On top of that, this still doesn’t explain why I only see a certain subset of the users posts? Do you have any clue about this?
FediTips has moved!
The way servers federate is this:
If one person on your server follows someone, all of that person's posts from that moment on will be visible to everyone on that server.
If no one on your server has followed a person, and none of that person's posts have ever been shared with anyone on your server, then their posts won't be visible.
Servers only show posts that they've been told to "notice", either through an account being followed or a post being shared.
(1/2)
Steven Lang
@NivReggev how did users of my specific instance explore those toots in the first place then if I’m not able to see them?
I actually started at mastodon.social and saw that it’s under heavy load, then following @feditips recent toot and moved to another instance.
Niv Reggev
@slang my guess - you can only see toots that have been boosted by users in your specific instance, or something of that sort.
I’m on a small instance, and I suspect it’s impossible for the instance to store all the info on the big instances. social is definitely a big one.
FediTips has moved!
The reason it works like this is because it's impossible for every server to store all posts by all users on all other servers. The costs would be huge, data would be duplicated on thousands of servers and most never used.
So, servers notice what they need to notice.
A solution to the problem you raised would be that once an account is followed, the server should backfill older posts. This is the second most requested feature on the Mastodon github:
FediTips has moved!
p.s. A workaround is to open the public version of a person's profile, by visiting their profile on the website version of Mastodon and clicking on their profile picture. This will open their profile remotely on their own server, which will show all their posts ever. You can remotely interact with specific posts from there.
FediTips has moved!
Well, you will see the same thing happening on any instance where an account hasn't been followed by anyone.
Hopefully the backfill would be implemented, but once an account has at least a few followers it becomes very widely seen because each follower's entire server notices them.
This problem is much worse with brand new accounts, and less of a problem with accounts that have been around long enough to make connections.
Niv Reggev
@feditips @slang so, unlike often said, choosing a specific instance does matter.
Not super user friendly at the moment, I hope that will change
FediTips has moved!
This doesn't happen on centralised social networks, but as soon as they become popular centralised social networks tend to be bought out by terrible people who exploit their users.
Federation allows anyone to run their own server, allows people to change server without giving up their followers, and prevents anyone buying the network out.
FediTips has moved!
All I can say is that this problem goes away after you spend time on here. It is intially a learning curve, but it pays off with safety in the long term.
If you want to escape Elon Musk and people like him, this kind of method is what's needed. Every popular centralised network has eventually been bought by amoral exploitative people.
It's up to each individual to decide what their priorities are: the convenience of a centralised network or the safety of a federated one?
Niv Reggev
@feditips
While I sympathize with the need to highlight the advantages compared to the other network, and did read about it before opening this account, this doesn’t make it easy for users who have less tolerance for a prolonged adjustment period.
It might be part of the point for some people, of course, but is currently not highlighted at all.
FediTips has moved!
The servers only store data that is needed.
You don't have to wait for a toot though!
Log in through the website or a third party app like Tusky, go to the user's profile and click their profile picture. This opens their profile in a new tab.
You can interact here remotely, or copy/paste URLs of particular posts (or profiles!) into search box on your own server. This forces your server to notice that post, and it will remain visible on your server in future.
Steven Lang
@feditips @NivReggev thanks for chiming in and explaining what’s going on. This is actually quite unintuitive for new users. I thought that only the servers store their users and toots from these users. But apparently that’s not the case and there is some form of content fetch between servers instead of server <-> client.
So in the end I “just” need to wait longer until someone from my server has boosted a toot from a user I’m interested in such that I can see that toot?
FediTips has moved!
The official app is quite immature compared to the third party apps. The third party apps have more features as they have been around for years while the official app only came out this year.
FediTips has moved!
When you're starting out with a totally empty timeline, the directories are probably best:
https://fedi.directory
https://communitywiki.org/trunk
https://fediverse.info/explore/people
Once you've got some people in your timeline, you'll see posts shared and people mentioned in discussions.
There's the Explore tab (on the website) or the magnifying glass ? icon on the official app.
Also, when it's relesed, following hashtags will help a lot.
Rudram
@feditips @slang @NivReggev
So what's the best way to discover new folks outside of your own server?
FediTips has moved!
@MolemanPeter @slang @NivReggev
I would recommend just using the website if you're on a computer as it is very good and fully featured.
There are third party Mac desktop apps like Hyperspace, Mastonaut and Mast but they haven't been updated in a while.
Peter Moleman
@feditips @slang @NivReggev
Tusky is for Android, anything for MacOS?
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