Title. I have seen this issue in the past, but I just stumbled across a post where the difference is massive (as of today, 14 January 2024):
316 upvotes and 173 comments on lemmy.sh.itjust.works
vs
-13 upvotes and 7 comments on lemmy.zip
for no apparent reason (i.e. lemmy.zip doesn’t seem to be blocking the instances the missing comments are coming from and those instances aren’t blocking lemmy.zip either). What’s going on here?
Is the issue solved as of today?
P.S. Here’s how the post appears on other instances
AFAIK its “by design” meaning an inherent property of the fediverse.
If I dont follow someone or my instance isnt federated with those of other followers we cant see each others comments or likes etc
The first link is post from [email protected], the second link is post from [email protected], it’s a same post crossposted to communities under different instance.
This. It’s not the same post, it’s two different posts in two different communities.
I have no expertise in how ActivityPub works, but my guess is it works something like this:
You make a post on instance A, you can view it on instance B. People all over the fediverse, instances C through Z are voting on your post.
The venn diagram of other instances with which instance A and instance B federate overlap but are not exactly the same. There are instances federated with instance A not visible to instance B, there are instances federated with instance B not visible to instance A.
The vote count for a post is counted by instance A and B based on which instances with which they federate. That means instance A is counting votes from instances that B cannot see, and instance B is counting votes from instances that A cannot see.
Where the Venn diagrams overlap, both instances will agree on the vote count. But the vote counts coming from instances that they don’t both federate with will cause a difference in vote count.
A locked thread from 3 months ago that has been crossposted in to half a dozen groups isn’t the best example of how replies and comments federate across the fediverse.