2d ago

Is federation working?

Can see accounts on pixelfed.social but I can't see any pics from them.

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There is some weird issue with federation on pixelfed... you can't search up hashtags either. I am not sure how the caching in federation works, but it seems like you have to wait for pixelfed.ca to "encounter" the post somehow first before you can search for/view them.
EDIT: There's definitely something about the way pixelfed.ca is configured. Or maybe pixelfed.social is configured in specific way (latest commits in the repo?). On pixelfed.social, you can view mastodon accounts (and all their photos) and hashtags. But on pixelfed.ca (and another server I've tried before), I can see the account, but none of the posts.
- When you search for a hash tag, you're searching the global feed. The global feed is local accounts, accounts anyone on your server is following, and accounts connected to a relay your server is following. On a new server, it takes time to build those connections.
  Also, when a server becomes aware of an account, only new posts are shown. The reason you can see all that stuff on pixelfed.social is that it's been active for like 7 years and has "known" about those accounts for a long time. When first connected, you'd get the same results on pixelfed.social that you're getting now.
  Federation is probably fine, but Pixelfed.ca is just in an awkward phase.
  
  I'm following #Vancouver hash tags and I don't see anything showing up on my Home feed, there's new posts though. Those new posts with the hashtag should be showing up on my Home feed right? I know they do on pixelfed.social.
  EDIT: It's weird. I see a post on my pixelfed.social home feed for an account @pixelfed.ca that has #Vancouver in the post.. but on my pixelfed.ca home feed, I'm not seeing that post. I can search for it though? Is there some kind of home feed setting I'm missing?
  EDIT 2: does anyone else have a similar experience with following hash tags that aren’t showing on the home feed?
  
  Ah okay. So it's just a matter of.. the more people use this instance, the more things are cached. Gotcha! Thanks for that explanation 🙏
  
  Yeah, early members have to do a bit more legwork making connections to make it easier for the noobs down the road ;)
  
  Gah. Time to search and load all the profiles 🥲👀
  
  That would explain a lot of behavior I was seeing. Will pixelfed.ca ever get content from the past? Or is all the stuff posted elsewhere before pixelfed.ca went live essentially gone?
  
  It's not really gone. You can see it on the original server and it'll show up if you drop a link in the search. But I believe it just grabs new posts. It could overwhelm the server grabbing the complete history of followed accounts because it's storing a local copy of everything from all followed accounts. You could end up in storage hell pretty quickly.
  
  Thanks for the reply. I guess "gone" isn't the right word but rather inaccessible. What do you mean by dropping a link in the search?
  
  ~~So, bad news off the top, I just checked and couldn't get it to work in Pixelfed.~~ But, in most server software if you search for a post url, it'll show the post even if it pre-dates your server's awareness of the account. It works in both Mastodon and Friendica, for example.
  Edit: Not true. It works!
  
  It actually did work for me when I just tried it. I opened a particular post on a user, and pasted the link into the search on pixelfed.ca, and it's available now.
  Although the order is a bit weird since it appears above the most recent post, while still having the correct date attached. Maybe that gets fixed when something refreshes
  
  Weird. I just tried it again and it worked too.
  Maybe a weird glitch or I somehow messed up copying and pasting (awkward!).
  
  Too bad. I've been trying to follow the accounts I was following on my pixelfed.social account but I can only find the one account that has posted recently.

15 comments