this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025

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Communities not existing on all instances is a big problem. (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Example, Lemmy.ml and Lemmy.world have duplicate communities aren't connected at all. So we are artificially isolating groups more and making it confusing for would be converts.

Short and too the point

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago (3 children)

One of the things that I'm experimenting with is to have "communities that can follow communities". So, if community A follows community B, then it can re-post anything that has happened on Community B.

If you do it "properly", it doesn't even need to be a lot of data duplication because the "follower" community would just be creating Announce activities.

The only thing that is making me hold out on this experiment is because I am 100% sure that some people will see their posts on a community they never interacted on and they will panic on the grounds of "mah privacy" or something silly like that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The only thing that is making me hold out on this experiment is because I am 100% sure that some people will see their posts on a community they never interacted on and they will panic on the grounds of “mah privacy” or something silly like that.

Don't hold out out of that. There are idiots everywhere and they should not be taken as a good driving force for anything.

Half the point of the Fediverse is that your activity is public. It's the entire point of why have activity with a community or instance in the first place. Heck, it's "kinda" the name of the protocol: "ActivityPub".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Thank you for the encouragement. In principle I agree with you 100%, but we also need to keep in mind that this corner of the internet is extremely averse to having their presence exposed outside of their original context.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

Hi! We should chat.

NodeBB also does this, and currently still does. A category (group actor) can follow another category (also a group actor).

It essentially is synchronization of categories using 1b12.

Proof of concept does work but it needs reworking in some ways. The largest issue is that Lemmy itself doesn't understand when a group actor tries to follow a community.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

How would comments happen? Would they not get back to the original poster?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Sorry, but this will be a bit too technical...

The thing is that Lemmy (at least, others probably do the same) don't treat the Linked Data as the canonical representation, they work by translating every message with an as:Activity to their own internal representation in the database (with separate tables for Posts, Comments and PrivateMessages).

This means that all it takes for a Lemmy instance to treat a post as "new" comment is to produce an "as:Announce" attributed to the "follower" community, and then all instances will process it as a new post/comment/vote.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Alright, so

A - Origin community
B - Other community
C - following community of A & B

User posts to A, a "as:announce" on C is generated. A user replies to the post on C. Will user A see the reply? Will someone looking at the post on A see the activity on C?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

They are still separate communities. Users following only A will not see the posts from C. Users following both A and C will everything.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Yes. When the reply is posted to C, it is sent to A. A then sends as:Announce to C, as well as any other communities that follow it.

B seems to be irrelevant here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Piefed solves that issue: https://piefed.zip/post/100161

All comments from 5 crossposts in a single view

A few options

https://piefed.social/ - flagship instance
https://piefed.zip/ - lemmy.zip team
https://piefed.ca/ - lemmy.ca team
https://feddit.online/

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There's also the pretty new: piefed.blahaj.zone

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Indeed, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Piefed connects them and shows you comments from other communities on other instances.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago

It's valuable for .ml to have duplicates since certain instances and numerous individuals are defederated from them. There are also people who are trying to diversify the fediverse by moving communities off .world. Big, opinionated communities like the different news communities are going to spawn new versions as people disagree with mod decisions or the background culture and feel they can't have the conversations they want.

Some splitting is inevitable, imo, and healthy, though whether it's good in this or that particular case is a useful conversation to have. Merging communities is also useful, but only when it makes sense (one is barely moderated or barely used, or people have defederated from an instance one is on because of spam, etc.)

I think it's a case by case basis type situation.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 days ago

Not a problem for me, since I don't follow any communities in lemmy.ml

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Most of the time one community comes out as the strongest contester and then that one is mainly used. But people can also use communities on others instances, for example if they don't agree with moderation. When I started on Lemmy 2 years ago I was also skeptical of this concept, but now I see it as a perk. Regarding the duplicated communities on lemmy.ml, just instance block ml and you are fine.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

While I can see why people might prefer it that way, we are preventing communities from growing and allowing people to find communities who might want to switch from Reddit. If you prefer the UI of one to another now you have to create a brand new community which is going to take time to fill. I use old.lemmy.world because I like the old reddit UI

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

If you prefer the UI of one to another now you have to create a brand new community which is going to take time to fill. I use old.lemmy.world because I like the old reddit UI

I think there's a misunderstanding?

You can use remote communities, for example: [email protected] for you is https://old.lemmy.world/c/[email protected]

the "Old" UI seems to hide the list of communities, but it's here: https://old.lemmy.world/communities

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

oh thank you for this. That helps that specific issue.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Federation fixes most of it. I can follow the big community that's become the main one and still the smaller ones with their own focuses and views.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Lemmy.ml seems to have a clone of most of the “top reddits”, somehow the most subscribed communities out there, and all dominated by one or two posters who post pro-China/pro-DPRK/anti-Western content all day long.

It definitely is going to confuse newcomers and make a bad first impression. I wonder if they auto subscribe people to those so their propaganda ends up at the top of the communities list.

Part of the solution is to better inform new users the part of the community name is the host, just like Main St in one city is different from Main St in another city. You choose the city you want to live in first.

But, it may also be interesting to have the ability for admins to selectively merge like-named communities with other agreeable instance admins, and count subscribers to both as one group.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I want the ability to merge the display of communities that I choose, so any number of News, World News, HotNakedNews, etc. communities could be displayed as a group of communities based on a topic type as an alternative to the instance/community/subscribed groups. Maybe personal tags for communities would be useful.