I realize the title question is a bit vague but I’m not sure how to make this question succinct… I had the thought when sorting by active posts and finding that the option doesn’t seem to work.
Basically I know from the past year a few things about how federation works (please correct any which are wrong, or have changed - this whole question may be obsolete for all I know).
- The all feed is populated by instance users finding communities to join which populates them for the whole instance. (This is the reason I haven’t spun up my own instance)
- Comments, posts, and other interactions from non-federated instances don’t show up, as though they don’t exist at all.
- The all feed for each instance is unique as a result of 1+2.
- The comments on each post could change based on instance.
- The vote count on each comment can change based on instance. (Is this also the case for posts?)
- Comments replying to a defederated-instance-user’s comment will also not show up.
But what about the sort ordering of those posts? If comments from non-federated instances don’t show up, do the votes or even the “engagement activity”? Could there be a post, say on beehaw, that I can see because we federate with them, which is wildly popular on an instance I can’t see, let’s say dbzer0, that looks to me like a mostly dead post way at the bottom looking sad and alone?
So in this hypothetical, post is on beehaw, and I can see it, but the top comments and upvotes are mostly from dbzer0 users, which I can’t see. How would the sorting work for that? I assume it would treat it as though dbzer0 doesn’t exist, but if all the top comments came from them, would that mean there’s just nothing there at all? Or is there some behind-the-scenes magic that counts the engagement from non-federated even if the activity itself is hidden?
I didn’t know comments didn’t show from non federated instances, so does that mean if you self host you won’t see any comments?
If you’re looking at the All tab, there is no difference between a local post, or a federated post when it comes to sorting.
Lemmy’s sorts are described here.
Thanks, but I’m not asking about local posts at all. I’m asking about posts on a third party instance, which can be seen, and the influence of the other third party which can’t be seen. If they made all top-level comments thus suppressing all other activity on the post, what would that mean?
It will be slightly different for all, it most posts are on the top 10 instances. Beehaw, hexbear and dbzero are defederated from some instances. So those posts and comments will be absent on instances that don’t federate. Yes, you may miss some content due to that. But you can change instance if its generally content you want to see.
There will be some difference based on voting too, depending on how you sort.
If younspin up an instance and federate within the top instances, you’ll see more content than those instances that have more users but defederate from some. However, community discovery will be lower, so you might miss content in other ways.
Try not to think of content as complete anywhere. You can’t read all comments on any social media. Just participate within communities you like and are federated with.
