Two Approaches to Solving the "Quiet Fediverse" Problem: Conversation Backfilling Mechanisms
hackers.pub
This post addresses the "quiet fediverse" problem, where users encounter fragmented conversations with missing replies in decentralized social networks. It explores the underlying causes related to the distributed nature of the ActivityPub protocol, which scatters conversations across different servers. The author delves into two primary approaches to solve this issue: reply tree crawling and the context owner-based method. Reply tree crawling involves fetching all replies to reconstruct the conversation, while the context owner method relies on a designated owner to manage and provide the complete conversation. The post examines the technical mechanisms, advantages, and disadvantages of each approach, including real-world implementations and ongoing debates within the fediverse community. It also touches on additional backfill mechanisms like periodic crawling, user-triggered backfills, and mention-based discovery. Ultimately, the author advocates for a hybrid approach that combines multiple strategies to enhance conversation completeness and user experience, highlighting the importance of ongoing standardization efforts and collaborative implementations within the fediverse. This article provides valuable insights into the challenges and potential solutions for creating a more connected and coherent social networking experience in decentralized environments.
  • INeedMana@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 days ago

    I think that the problem is not with propagation, but that we don’t get notifications about other comments under a post we commented on.

    What’s more, if this comment gets an answer, and then someone will comment that answer, I will not be informed of that branch of discussion

  • Avatar of Vengeance@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    21 days ago

    I have heard the reasons why, but I still can’t wrap my head around Mastodon’s decisions regarding the ability of reactions to carry between instances & profile search. The solution to a problem should never be “scroll for 7 minutes”. All of the instances still doing that should move on, because the whole “dopamine loop” neuroscience meme is nothing confirmed or worth breaking core site features over.