147
submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by jet@hackertalks.com to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world

Lemmy.world is very popular, and one of the largest instances. They do a great job with moderation. There's a lot of positives with lemmy.world

Recently, over the last month, federation issues have become more and more drastic. Some comments from lemmy.world take days, or never, synchronize with other instances.

The current incarnation of activity pub as implemented in Lemmy has rate issues with a very popular instance. So now lemmy.world is becoming a island. This is bad because it fractures the discussion, and encourages more centralization on Lemmy.world which actually weakens the ability of the federated universe to survive a single instance failing or just turning off.

For the time being, I encourage everyone to post to communities hosted on other instances so that the conversation can be consistently access by people across the entire Fediverse. I don't think it's necessary to move your user account, because your client will post to the host instance of a community when you make a comment in that community I believe.

Update: other threads about the delays Great writeup https://lemmy.world/post/13967373

Other people having the same issue: https://lemmy.world/post/15668306 https://aussie.zone/comment/9155614 https://lemmy.world/post/15654553 https://lemmy.world/post/15634599 https://aussie.zone/comment/9103641

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] jet@hackertalks.com 14 points 7 months ago

Good point, here is a post I made today, you can see I don't get the comments on my lemmy instance. https://lemmy.world/post/15702974 vs https://hackertalks.com/post/3065575

I also updated the main post with general links to the issue. My one example just demonstrates it's happening to other instances not just Australian instances, but the Australians have done the best documentation of it so far.

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 8 points 7 months ago

For that example, there may be something else going on. The time behind graph for Lemmy World- > Hacker Talks seems to only average about 90 seconds. Some of the comments that show up on LW were made hours ago. If it were just federation delay, they should have arrived already.

Assuming those are going straight to your Lemmy server and not to a proxy that buffers them? If you've got a federation proxy buffering those, then the graph would be off since it wouldn't show what's sitting queued in your buffer.

You still definitely have a point. Every couple of weeks, my instance seems to start lagging behind by several hours and then goes back to normal after a few days. Still not sure why unless there's just a huge uptick in activities being sent out from LW. I made a post about it yesterday, but it doesn't dive too deep into the technical details; basically just an info post to let people on my instance know I'm aware and trying to do what I can about it.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 3 points 7 months ago

Good point. And thank you for the graph. It could be that the activity pub protocol is best effort, and if lemmyworld is overloaded, or just dropping packets, whatever activity was supposed to be sent at that moment gets lost forever. That would explain me divergence, and lack of eventual consistency

But I only have data for missing posts from lemmy world, and only some communities.

I don't know the actual cause of the issue, but I think it is definitely related to the size of the instance. So from an empirical perspective the advice is still promote communities on non-mega instances

[-] MrKaplan@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago

There is a very simple explanation for this specific case: nobody on hackertalks.com is subscribed to !goodoffmychest@lemmy.world!

Most community related activities on Lemmy will only be sent to instances that have at least one subscriber for the community.

this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
147 points (89.3% liked)

Unpopular Opinion

6216 readers
316 users here now

Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!


How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.


If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.



Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)


  • If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
  • If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].


Rules:

1. NO POLITICS


Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.


2. Be civil.


Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...


Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.


5. No trolling.


This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.



Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS