Why does it seem different platforms of the fediverse are not so good at communicating with each other? Is this something that will change eventually?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Kill_joy@kbin.social⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

https://kbin.social/m/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world/t/232182

I have an account on kbin. Recently I saw a post across my feed of a magazine I follow (that's based on a Lemmy instance) was celebrating over 1k subscribers. When I visited, I saw only 240 or so.

I decided to check it out from a Lemmy account and saw well over 1k. I also saw massive amounts of content that was not being pushed to my kbin account. Even when looking at specific users, I could see only the occasional post they made was visible to me on kbin while on Lemmy I could see massive amounts of content that they had posted to this magazine.

It bummed me out because one of the things they shared is extremely niche and I've never seen anyone else out in the wild interested in that topic and I would have loved to engage... But it never made it to my kbin feed.

Is this an issue with kbin vs Lemmy? Is there hope it will be fixed? I feel bad because I don't want to use Lemmy and have loved kbin but am certainly jarred that I've been missing out on 80% of the content from a magazine I've been invested in engaging with.

TIA

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Comments

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BitingChaos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It’s beta software syncing with beta software, all while being crushed with a flood of users no one expected before last month.

I’m surprised things are working as well as they are now.

Things will get better and more functional as time passes.

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- DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah I’m also surprised at how well it’s all holding together.
  
  I can’t think of another opensource / indie ecosystem which has grown so quickly.
  
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B_noire@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I was having huge problems with kbin as well, even after federating was supposedly fixed. Posts I made to Lemmy communities would not actually show up to Lemmy users, and likewise there were way too many Lemmy posts not showing up on my kbin. Ended up giving up on it and just making an account on a Lemmy instance instead.

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- HamSwagwich@showeq.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I was running a KBin server, but federation never worked well, even with other KBin servers.
  
  Finally gave up myself and spooled up a Lemmy server.
  
  It’s unfortunate because KBin is just better in almost every aspect compared to Lemmy, but the lack of reliable federation just kills it
  
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100thCatMarch@kbin.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Here's what the kbin dev has to say about the problem you're experiencing. TLDR is he's planning to improve the federation. Personally have no idea if it's a kbin or lemmy problem.

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- HamSwagwich@showeq.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s a KBin problem. My KBin instance wouldn’t even federate properly with another KBin instance at least more than half the time
  
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Chickenstalker@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Be patient. We are like pioneers settling a newly discovered land.

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ren@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Hey @Kill_joy@kbin.social is this about !AlternativeNation@lemmy.world ? Yeah, it’s super weird. I also found that if I searched for “music” under some Lemmy instances, Alternative Nation comes up for some, but not others. It’s one of the reason why I started posting in those instances and kbin.social to spread the word because Federation seems a bit “early days” still.

I saw similar issues with Federation with Mastodon in very early Lemmy versions, but that’s gotten much better. I hope Kbin & Lemmy get a little more synced up soon though! Want us all as one big happy alternative music community!

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- Kill_joy@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It's happened to several, but yeah, alternativenation was the one that set me off lol. I saw so many posts about so many great artists when I viewed from Lemmy! I was so bummed seeing everything I missed and didn't even realize I was missing it!
  
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  - ren@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    super weird - hopefully it’s just an issue of “early days” but if the instances (kbin and/or lemmy) have these weird disconnects, it only prevents people from really getting into communities.
    
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ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
All platforms on the fediverse communicate using the ActivityPub protocol, but the platforms can have very different setups which makes sharing stuff complicated.

Mastadon and Lemmy are both on the fediverse but if someone on Mastadon “boosts” someone’s post (Mastadon’s version of a retweet) how does Lemmy interpret that? Lemmy doesn’t have boosts. If someone on Lemmy creates a new community for underwater basket weaving, how does Mastadon interpret that information? Mastadon doesn’t have communities (i think? I don’t use it).

So each platform can share the activities their users are doing, but between platforms those activities often don’t exist. I can only assume there are some specific kbin actions which lemmy’s programming isn’t setup to handle and vice versa.

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- blazera@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Theyre talking about seeing a post, does lemmy not have posts?
  
  This issue keeps getting brushed aside as people answer with completely unrelated nonsense.
  
  why are posts not viewable from kbin
  
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  - Kill_joy@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Thank you! I'd boost your comment but I get an error message each time I try
    
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  - Countmacula@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The admin of the instance may have blocked the bot that grabs those things. Lemmy.ml did for a time.
    
    Also, it can just take time, sometimes.
    
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- Nepenthe@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  If someone on Lemmy creates a new community for underwater basket weaving, how does Mastadon interpret that information? Mastadon doesn’t have communities (i think? I don’t use it).
  
  To clear cat up, communities/magazines come across as users to mastodon. They already had the equivalent, and it's basically a bot user that auto-retweets anything tweeted at it, that people can follow.
  
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- r00ty@kbin.life ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This is where things get even more confusing. Kbin DOES have boosts. Plus upvotes and downvotes. So, mastedon boosts become boosts. Lemmy upvotes become upvotes. Lemmy downvotes become. Well nothing right now. There's a lot of things that are still work in progress and even though they all talk the same protocol there are concepts that are interpreted differently.
  
  There's also the standard, and then what's generally used. I fixed an issue recently with kbin, which was happening on the rare occasion I had an interaction with "lotide" (another activitypub program). Lemmy and kbin (and probably mastedon, I dunno) always put "To" and "Cc" as a json array even if there's just one element. But lotide doesn't if there is only one item (often the case in To). This is fine as far as I can see in ActivityPub's structure. But, kbin expected an array. These kind of things are going to be ironed out now there's far more content moving around. The errors will be appearing in our logs and they will be gradually resolved.
  
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whiskers@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I share your experience but unfortunately don’t have answers

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Gutotito@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
At some point, maybe. Back when I was running my own Mastodon instance, things were pretty much in this same state, but lots of other things have improved.

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HubertManne@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I know I saw someone announce a keeshond dog magazine and I could not get to it with the url hack and I regularly search the magazines to see if it synced and so far (including just now) it does not show.

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- Kill_joy@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yes, I have had ongoing issues with friends on lemm.ee accessing my magazines on kbin.social, despite being federated. That problem has persisted for about a month.
  
  I guess even the things that seem to work properly have kinks to iron out.
  
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PeleSpirit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I think right now it’s like you can communicate but you have to call or check up on each other often, especially if it’s niche. When you put in a web address in your search to find another community from another instance, they’re calling to see if you can get the number. Once you subscribe, it all depends on how you have the time specified and if they have called into to check with all the other instances. That’s for Lemmy to Lemmy, not Lemmy to Kbin which is probably worse. Please anyone correct me if I"m wrong, but that’s my understanding.

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- r00ty@kbin.life ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Half right. I can talk from kbin->kbin/lemmy. Since that is what I'm doing here.
  
  Yep, when you search for a remote community your instance will connect to the remote one to look for that community/group/user. If it finds it, it will show all the info about it. Kbin will also automatically subscribe you to it.
  
  Once the remote instance has your subscription, from that moment on it will send all interactions with that community to your instance. This results in some confusing things happening. You'll see a lot of new stuff start to appear, but sometimes old stuff, but not all old stuff. The reason for this is, if someone on another instance comments or likes a comment on old content, your local instance will not be able to action that like (or at least show it) or comment without getting the comments above that one up to the post. Which is why you'll see a mix of old and new content, but never all of it.
  
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  - PeleSpirit@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Thank you for explaining it to me, I finally get it. That’s why a 3 year old post was showing up a couple of days ago and then I liked it not seeing the date, then a whole bunch of the same post started showing up. My like must have sent it to someone else to start a cycle of bringing a 3 year old post back to life.
    
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puddlexplorer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

I have an account on kbin. Recently I saw a post across my feed of a magazine I follow (that’s based on a Lemmy instance) was celebrating over 1k subscribers. When I visited, I saw only 240 or so.

user count: 240/kbin – rest/lemmy.

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