@julian I think that there have been a couple Lemmy servers go down or be retired. That might affect your ability to traverse the reply tree,

@projectmoon I am not sure how NodePHP does it currently, but one option is to navigate the reply tree if you can't get the entire thread via FEP-f228: Backfilling Conversations or FEP-171b: Conversation Containers. This is what we did in Hubzilla and Streams before these new FEPs were created.

Hello from Hubzilla!

This is part of the balancing act that happens when federating with different types of social media. I think that it is a really good thing that you are taking into account that some posts will be more image-centric than others.

That's because most fediverse platforms have no privacy features. You'd have to use something like Hubzilla or Friendica if you want access control, privacy, and groups with limited membership. They also allow users to control what they see and don't see.

There are solutions in the fediverse out there. They're just not widely known.

It depends on how your platform handles unsolicited posts and whether it supports threads and the concept of conversation containers.

For example, let's compare Mastodon and Hubzilla.

Mastodon does not notify you of replies to your posts, but does notify you if someone mentions you. It does not support threaded conversations, which means that anyone can comment on your post without your permission. You can block people, but that does not remove their posts or mentions.

Hubzilla takes a different approach. Conversations are organized in threads, and the thread has a conversation owner. It is similar to how Facebook works in that regard. If you create a top level post on your own wall, you own that conversation. Similarly, if you post in a forum/group, the forum/group owns that conversation.

As such, they can control who comments on it and even delete comments. You can even make private or group conversations that only certain people can participate in. Unsolicited comments are either discarded or accepted for moderation. They only appear if approved by the owner of the thread.

And there are additional filtering and notification settings available.

Because of this difference, undesired posts are more like to appear on Mastodon than on Hubzilla. And even if they do appear, they are easier to remove.

The more tools you have to control notifications and what appears as replies to your posts, the better. But it also makes the system slightly more complicated. Think Facebook vs. Twitter. Both are social media, but how they handle things are very different.

I am guessing that some platforms will fare better than others, and many platforms will have to adjust how they handle incoming posts as more people arrive in the fediverse.

@compostgoblin Some of the earliest platforms included StatusNet, Diaspora, Friendica, Red Matrix/Hubzilla, etc. All are much older than Mastodon.

@compostgoblin There were several other protocols such as OStatus, Diaspora, and Zot prior to ActivityPub. Mastodon originally used OStatus, and switched to ActivityPub later. A lot of platforms are older than Mastodon too.

@underscores

In some cases it could also be people that genuinely want to follow you. People often talk about one topic but still care about other stuff.

Many people fall into that category. I follow a lot of interesting accounts that have nothing to do with what I talk about on my channel. Sometimes you follow people because they know more about a subject than you do, or are just interesting.

This is one of the many reasons why I think decentralized social media, nomadic identity, and federated single sign on are the answer.

One of the causes of enshitification is that the platforms are between two competing interests, and are themselves a third competing interest. Typically, business, consumers, and the owners of the social media network.

Decentralized social media solves this by allowing consumers and businesses to be on their own websites, or a provider of their choice. No one in the middle controlling everything, and providers have to compete with each other.

Another cause of enshitification is monopolies and lock in. They can treat you like crap because they know that you need them. And even if you can download your data, you can't transfer it anywhere.

Decentralized social media, nomadic identity, and federated single sign on solve this by giving people a choice of where their account is. They can self-host or choose a provider, and then move if they don't like how they are being treated.

I know a lot of people loath the idea of commercial entities coming to decentralized social media, but it would prevent entification, and give users the choice to follow or block commercial websites. The power would be transferred back to the people (users, consumers, members, etc.), which is where it should be.

I remember when Google Ads limited websites to three ads per page. That was tolerable for most users, and did not distract from the content. But then they made a huge change, and their default mode (which they wanted you to use) would automatically place dozens of ads or more throughout your content. And if your website had infinite scroll, there were infinite ads.

This change, plus the realization that Google was tracking you and building a profile, lead to the the popularity of ad blockers.

The popularity of ad blockers reduced revenue to websites, including news outlets. Content websites started putting up paywalls and selling premium content instead of giving it away for free.

Google is basically killing the very thing that makes them money and it is affecting the entire internet. A perfect example of greed killing the golden goose.

@julian I just reported the issue over on the @Hubzilla Support Forum and created an issue in our repository.

#^https://hubzilla.org/channel/adminsforum?mid=7296e345-0ba9-51f9-b376-8e29368f3a07

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