4d ago

Missing comments - how does it work?

Just looking at this post as an example, on lemmy.world show it has 29 comments, but when i open it, there are now only 3 or 4. I replied to one comment, the user i replied to got banned, and the whole comment tree is gone from lemmy.world. Other instances still show all comments, including those from the banned user and my reply. I think it’s very confusing when a single post appears with different comments on different instances, and have no idea how this works.

Edit: why am i forced to upload a photo for a new post?

32 comments

So who is going to be brave and post this to LinkedIn
- As if this hasn't ever been posted there. This isn't even Facebook; this is MySpace/AOL tier.
  
  Not even Myspace AOL. This is chain mail material
  
  I got this via fax machine.
- That site has no truth since people have to use their real names there.

It's so cute that they put Managers above Executives. Man up and call it what it is, instead... The C-Suite
- I've never seen a business where managers are above execs in the pecking order. Is this specific to some industry?
  
  Sorry, maybe because I'm American, so in case our other friends are confused... Managers are below Executives in every capacity and when you 'flatten' your radial grid, they mean firing managers. They are the yessiest of the yes men in corporate america.
  C-Suite = CEO, CTO, CFO, etc.
  Executives = Presidents, Vice Presidents, Directors, etc.
  Managers = The people who manage the workers, ie handle scheduling, duties, metrics, and having to eventually fire someone because the people above tell them to.
  Workers = The people who actually know the job.

Dad printed this photo out and put it up on work paper board many years ago. Glad to see its still acrewing new pixels today.

Forced to upload a picture is because you chose the wrong post type.
I got caught by that when I started using Voyager.

Well, the different "instances" are different websites, each hosting and serving their own copy of the original post and comments. You're interacting with your local copy, and your comments are forwarded along to the original website. The original website then sends out copies of your comment to all the other websites that have requested updates.
If your website has banned someone, it will reject content from that user. That's what being banned means: I refuse to host your posts. Just because your posts are being routed through a 3rd party doesn't mean I want to host them.
Like, if you got banned from Reddit, they wouldn't let you post there, either. If you commented on a mirror of a post, hosted on a different website, you wouldn't expect that comment to show up on Resdit, would you? Well, that's what the fediverse is: a network of content mirrors. Yes, they're mirrors that, generally, tey to synchronize with each other, but they're still mirrors. And independent mirrors at that.
They will never be perfectly synchronized. There's no true Lemmy to reflect. No whole. There is only what is locally hosted.
- Thanks for the explanations. So a single post can have different comments showing up on different instances. So when selecting an instance, not only do we need to consider what other instances they defederated from, we also need to consider their policies on banning users and removing comments. Great. And people wonder why the average person isn’t embracing the fediverse.
  
  And people wonder why the average person isn’t embracing the fediverse
  I find being able to choose my instance based on their moderation and federation policies much less obtuse than the black-box algorithms and shadow-banning of the mainstream corporate platforms.
  IMO, the average person not embracing the fediverse has much less to do with any flaws in the fediverse (these do exist, don't get me wrong) and much more to do with inertia, the network effect, and just lack of knowledge or fucks to give about privacy and open platforms.
  
  You know you can host your own instance, with your rules, and every like-minded individual can join you (either locally or exchanging federated content with your instance).
  That is what I did, btw, not because of “moderation” related issues, but because I don’t want to freeload on someone’s resources.
  To be honest I don’t get what your problem is. This is not criticism; I just have no idea.
  
  Same as before: you have to take that into consideration only if you want. Probably you never cared at all when you signed to a new app in big corporation and just gave away all your data but now that there are options suddenly everyone cares and it's annoying.
  This are important topics, it was time to take them seriously. This is precisely why federation is important - the instances and users can moderate, it's not a single organism that has absolute control over eveything.
  Referencing Matrix when he says "why do my eyes hurt" just after waking from Matrix... It's the same here: we will all get use to have more freedom of choice, now it seems more complicated because we never had that freedom and never worried about a lot of topics that are important.

didnt know gramps was on lemmy!
- Yep!

Edit: why am i forced to upload a photo for a new post?
Which way are you posting? Mobile/web interface? Shouldn't need to add an image to post...
That aside, regarding your main question:
I think it’s very confusing when a single post appears with different comments on different instances, and have no idea how this works.
A basic reason for the difference in which comments are appearing across different instances/sites is because of delays in networking (federation) between the sites due to a variety of reasons. One of the common ones with the fediverse tends to be the software itself, and sometimes differences in versions' federation handling. In this case it's probably because Lemmy World is still running an older version of Lemmy with clunkier federation at Lemmy World's scale, which causes delays in activities on there updating elsewhere (particularly those hosted in Australia).
Edit:
See also Kichae's comment for a more detailed explanation, covers how things operate under more ideal conditions.
- Re photo: posted using voyager on mobile, so maybe that is the issue.
  Re delays: the original post isn’t on world, it’s on another instance. I did comment from world and that whole comment tree disappeared from world but not from the original instance. So it does not seem to be a delay in federation from the original instance to world.
  And correct me if i am wrong, but banning a user just stops them from posting, but i thought it did not delete their post history without additional mod action - which i cant see in the modlog
  
  And correct me if i am wrong, but banning a user just stops them from posting, but i thought it did not delete their post history without additional mod action - which i cant see in the modlog
  There's an option when banning a user to also remove their content, albeit unless it's an admin action I don't think it would affect their whole post history beyond the specific community.
  I'm kind of getting the sense as I look into this that it may be related to how Voyager is rendering the thread, as I'm not able to observe what's being described from the web interface. That's another catch in all this, the other apps and interfaces have their own quirks in how they handle rendering things, which itself is typically related to how they work off the base software (Lemmy in this case).

I tried looking at the post you linked on the Lemmy.world instance however I used an app. I was able to see each individual post. What this tells me is this is a purely frontend issue as the back end is capable of serving the entire comment section.
See the screenshot below (taken while in the Lemmy.world instance)
- Thank you for checking. That is weird. Your screen shot is exactly what I would expect / like to see when a user is blocked and has their comments removed. Neither voyager nor the web interface for world shows that. What app are you using?
  
  I'm using Summit for Lemmy. (I'm also the dev)
  
  Hmm I just checked the lemmy.world website and I can see the entire comment chain there as well. Link: https://lemmy.world/post/24942544

Yet the top level is the one shitting down.

Back when Boomer humor was at least a little anti rich/elite

32 comments