this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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No Stupid Questions (Developer Edition)

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what is the meaning of posts with "via programming.dev" ? (programming.dev)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by varsock to c/no_stupid_questions
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I'm still getting the hang of Lemmy and federated services.

I'm browsing the programming.dev instandce in the Liftoff app and I can choose to view:

  1. my subscribed communities on the server (currently none)
  2. Local communities on the server
  3. All (?)

I know All is not "all communities on Lemmy" but what perplexes me is I can see posts from another community that is hosted on a different server and it appears because it is "via programming.dev".

At first I thought it was because a user registered on " programming.dev " posted on another instance but I opened my eyes and saw the user's origin is no way related.

Any ideas?

EDIT:

After reading all the comments I’m pretty sure “via programming.dev” should read in the context of the post as !community@instance is known via programming.dev instance. I guess it makes it explicit which “all” I am browsing if I pick up browsing where I left off and forget I am not in the “all local”.

At this point I have only seen this on the Liftoff App for Lemmy but still trying other. Must be in the metadata and Liftoff decided to display it.

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[–] oessessnex 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You are seeing the posts on all instances the instance you have the account on is federated with.

[–] varsock 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

gotcha. Forgive my ignorance but isn't an instance federated with every other instance (using activityPub)? Or is communication != federation.

I havent digested the docs but it appears the admins choose which instance they federate with? or how does this work.

[–] Ategon 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

In addition to what was said in the other comment. If nobody in the instance has subscribed to a certain community it wont show up in the all sort as well. Its technically federated with it but its not pulling data since nobody is interested in said data

[–] varsock 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

wow it finally clicked! like the whole concept of federated services! thank you and @[email protected]

[–] oessessnex 5 points 1 year ago

Every instance is federated with every other instance by default. However the admins can defederate from selected instances, which means the users cannot interact with that instance in any way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

All is all communities that the instance knows about, so any community that any user on that instance has interacted with.

[–] o_o 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not sure what the “via programming.dev” text means— I think the app you’re using should make that clearer.

But when you browse on your instance (assuming it’s programming.dev— mine too btw! Welcome!), then:

  1. Subscribed means you see posts on all the communities you’re subscribed to, on your instance and otherwise.

  2. Local means you see posts from communities on your instance, if you’re subscribed to them or no.

  3. All means you see posts from all communities that your instance is aware of. Federation doesn’t mean that your instance is aware of all posts on all other instances. Your instance is only aware of communities if at least one person on your instance has subscribed to that community. Make sense?

This leads to some weirdness with using Lemmy if you’re trying to subscribe to a community that no one on your instance has subscribed to yet, because it’ll show a “community not found” error unless you do something specific to trigger your instance to actively look for that instance in the federation universe. I think there’s some improvement in the works for that. Anyways that’s a tangent. Hope this helps!

[–] varsock 1 points 1 year ago

yes that makes sense. Thanks for being thorough. After reading all the comments I'm pretty sure "via programming.dev" should read in the context of the post as !community@instance is known via programming.dev instance. I guess it makes it explicit which "all" I am browsing if I pick up browsing where I left off and forget I am not in the "all local"