I think PieFed has only recently got an API for apps to connect to, hence the surge.

Hmm, how does that one work ?

Instances report the latest activity ID through a public API endpoint. This compares the latest across instances. I can’t remember the details, but one thing to remember is that not every instance gets every activity so it’s not 100% accurate.

The way federation works is that you subscribe to a community, then that community starts sending your instance new content from the community posted after you subscribe.

If you have no subscribers, then you have no federation.

Check out https://lemmy-federate.com/ for getting federation started. This lets you enter a community and instances that have signed up will have a special account subscribe which causes your community to start sending content to their instance.

You can also post in special lemmy communities for letting people know about your new community.

Hopefully this is all the issue is! Have you tried using your account on your instance for commenting on other instances, e.g. replying to me here?

Looks like it is!

But whatever issue you are having with federation is most likely not related to Lemmy itself. Piefed is a solid choice though, so if it helps you get it sorted then great!

For federation issues, I would check various things like where are you hosted (if at home, do you have a public IP?)? Are you hosting in Singapore, China, or other areas that commonly host AI scrapers as many Lemmy instances block IP ranges from those areas? Was your instance set up with a domain name that you have been using since the beginning (if you change your domain name or move to a subdomain then federation won’t work). Are you using Cloudflare or similar - if so, be aware that federation is bot traffic, any settings around blocking bots or AI will break federation. Remember your instance has to be publicly accessible to receive anything!

Also see this showing the federation state of instances (enter your own if you are having trouble with outbound, enter a remote one if you are having trouble with inbound then check where your site is): https://phiresky.github.io/lemmy-federation-state/site?domain=lemmy.world

Also see this for showing which instances are having trouble with federation. Set targets along the top: https://grafana.lem.rocks/d/edf3gjrxxnocgd/federation-health-activities-behind?orgId=1&var-instance=All&var-remote_instance=lemmy.world&var-remote_software=All

Piefed uses the same technology to federate, so does Piefed have tools to determine federation problems?

No that’s expected, as part of your profile info. But if the original authors delete the comments, then they will also be deleted in your saved items.

Yes with ActivityPub there’s always failed federation. But Lemmy will send the delete request out when you delete your account. Other software or instances might not honour it, but the intent is there.

As opposed to reddit who do not remove comments when an account is deleted, only mark it as a comment from a deleted account.

I’m not against Lemmy’s implementation, but it does require you to collect information you need at the time not assume it will always be there.

Bookmarks won’t help if the content gets removed. You’ve got to copy the important information elsewhere.

I tend to use either a note app (Joplin) or a self-hosted wiki for that.

Deleting your account deletes your content, unlike deleting your Reddit account. Hence the linkrot.

I learnt pretty early on that saving posts using the save button was not a good way to save the information 😮‍💨

I am not aware on any on device ones that aren’t tied to a service (e.g. Ente does it on device because of E2E encryption meaning they can’t do it on the server) but I think you need an account or to self-host the service.

There are options (other than ente) if you can self host, but (other than ente) the server will be doing the processing.

Many of the .ee communities are in the process of migrating, so hopefully the list can be updated with their new homes.

2 years for me as well!

It’s not that Lemmy couldn’t allow you to follow Mastodon users, the technology allows it. It’s just not high on the priority list to actually develop.

Only a single person on the instance needs to subscribe, then the instance with the community knows about it and will start pushing the content to that instance.

You’re on Lemmy.world, so it wouldn’t take long for someone to subscribe (if you’re the first person, just looking also pulls a handful of posts, but no further updates until someone subscribes).

Might be talking about https://lemmy-federate.com/?

You can add the community, and the other instances that have signed up will have their follower account subscribe to your new community. Communities are only federated to instances that have at least one subscriber to the community, so it won’t show in All on instances with no subscribers to your community. That website is a way to help get around that.

Logins aren’t federated, so for counting active users in a community votes, comments, posts is about all you have.

Yes, back then you had to comment or post. These days it also counts users who vote within the timeframe as active users.

Huh, we have had users signing up at a higher rate than usual, but we go through bursts and we are generally pretty low volume so I thought nothing of it. Amazing to see you make the front page!

My biggest issue with Friendica is that the very top thing I want social media for is to share photos and videos in a private way with friends and family. Of you have to upload your video to YouTube before posting the URLthen that is a terrible experience.

Facebook lets you just grab your photos and vidros and upload them to your post. It automatically converts them from the 200MB+ per minute file your phone made into a 40MB per minute file, so people watching on their phones don’t chew through their data allowance or be unable to play it due to slow internet. It shows the photos in a seamless galley.

I would be willing to put up with almost any other issues if this part was a seamless and user friendly experience, of which no self-hosted Facebook replacement (federated or not) that I have seen can do.

Regardless of the team dynamics, what I was getting at is simply that a CEO runs the company, and is generally not involved in minor decisions. But he is moving into a product strategy role, one that by definition is focused on what the product (mastodon) does.

He is stepping away from the CEO role to focus on the product. That means you are not getting anything he doesn’t want, if anything he has more control over the functionality of Mastodon.