Sorry if this seems like a silly question but I have noticed over the last few months my feed(?) has started to act odd.
No matter what I do I don’t see any posts from .world. I checked and mander does not seem to block .world (kinda why I liked this instance) and even weirder is how my feed gets filled with mostly .ml posts with almost no activity no matter how I sort.
This did not happen before and got me thinking, I don’t even know how this works across federated instances.
Does anyone know:
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How does the sorting work on an instance? Is it all the same no matter what instance it is?
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Did anything change in the last few months, that would cause all .world (and I assume others) posts to not show?
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Other then changing instances what can I do to mitigate the weird slanted results?
The Lemmy algorithm:
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
The instances communicate between each other using special bots in the background that transport info between instances. Dot world is too big and makes too many requests to other instances. Most instances are reducing the number of transport bots back to dot world right now. There is supposed to be a fix in the next Lemmy version, but the code base is somewhat slow moving due to only two devs and it is written in Rust. Rust is a hard language like C, and not too many here are able to contribute to it, even though it is like the new gold standard of code.
So you might see a delay between posting and replies or the interaction may come in bursts that correspond with the transport bots carrying content between instances as the host admin have configured their instance.
I’m actually mildly surprised it’s still only two devs. Are they treating it like a walled garden, or is there really a complete lack of interest in contributing to the codebase?
Not sure. There was some controversy with some of the devs making alt front ends and admins complaining about the slowness. I’ve seen mention of one of the two devs learning Rust just to participate. So it is not entirely a walled garden. The front end devs wanted to make an alt from scratch but in something like JavaScript although I don’t recall the details exactly. There were a lot of red flags related to privacy and understanding the community at large in the posts I saw from them. When asked why they weren’t adding pull requests with Rust in order to address their complaints I got no reply.
All that said, I’m no dev. I can read in to around half the code I come across if I really try, and can successfully modify maybe half of that if I spend a few days on it, but I suck at clever code and the DRY cult types. I haven’t tried to look into Lemmy in any depth beyond figuring out the basics.
Hmmmm, and it does not help the controversy when this issue seems to happen to then fill smaller instances with .ml posts…
The .ml instance is run by the developers. If it isn’t well configured we would have no reason to be here.
Well we would also not want to be here if .ml was favoured over any other instance, that would kinda make the idea of federation a bit pointless.
It follows the first to market principal in many of the most active communities, and it is the most federated instance. Many instances that are not federated with each other are federated with .ml. You still won’t see those comments between instances. Like from my main account here on .world, I can’t see hexibear or beehaw stuff, but from my .ml account I can see them. I have accounts on many instances in order to help federate new communities and to check biases/instance behaviors.
I came over a few days before the rexodus and subscribed to the active communities before the influx. That sub list is still centered around the most active communities, and the majority of those are from .ml and before I joined Lemmy.
Instances all have different flavors. I don’t like using my .ml account as a main. I’ve tried it. But I find they are the center of the most interesting and productive conversations for a more broad audience, while Beehaw has the most positive and friendly conversations overall. The main benefit to .world is the speed of connectivity, general audience scope, but with a strong anti asshat policy.
We are two fulltime developers and a handful of devs who regularly contribute in their free time. We could definitely use more devs but the donations are simply not enough.
Rust is a niche language
It’s like starting a book club in Esperanto compared to English. Sure, Esperanto is supposedly a better language, but very few people know about it
Rust is not a niche language. It’s a strict and strongly opinionated language by design. People with background in strongly typed languages, who additionally use opinionated linters and formatters have an easier time adjusting. JavaScript “devs” (note: distinct from “software engineers”) probably pull their hair out over a lot of stuff in because in my experience, many js devs know enough about the language to work proficiently in a couple of frameworks, but haven’t really dug into the nuances of the language, and also have limited experience with strong typing.
So it’s a nice language.
Very nice even :D
My main argument about Rust being a niche language is how few contributors there are to the Lemmy codebase.
Mbin (PHP) has more spread across its contributors:
But maybe Rust isn’t that niche, but the Fediverse apps and projects are niche themselves.
The Lemmy frontend is written in Typescript which is a very popular language, yet it has even less contributors than the backend.
Lemmy is niche even within the fediverse, where microblogging still dominates and the threadiverse style apps are smaller. It’s just not a very large space.
I guess Reddit and similar link aggregators are just much smaller than we all think they are.
Even reddit is still niche when it comes to social media and has always been. It’s become a little more mainstream the last few years, but for most people social media still equals Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and such.
I believe there is some work being done on an alternative code base written in python with flask it has lots of promise and i recon with a bit of extra work it might allow for mastodon integration into one server which would be cool af.
Really want to get to the stage where an account is just a private key I hold and all federated services can work with a single username.
Imagine having a single username which is for all services.
https://piefed.social/ ?
Otherwise, for Mastodon integration, there is mbin with https://kbin.run/ for instance