Recently, I’ve set up my own Mastodon server and immediately run into the infamous issue of not being able to see my posts from other instances. As it turned out, posts from other servers are cached to be displayed, but caching only happens after somebody starts to follow the profile in question. Because my instance is small, this basically means nobody will see my posts, which ruins the whole point of running my own server.
Is this a Mastodon only issue or is it just the way Fediverse works? Are there any alternatives to Mastodon that allow seeing the entire timeline without following? Does Lemmy share the same issue?
It’s just how the fediverse works in general. Content is sent to recipients, similar to email. Which includes your followers. But if you’re not a recipient, you never receive the content.
On Lemmy it’s less of an issue for individual users because communities act as relays. They take posts and comments made to them and forward them to all their followers. It is however a problem for communities themselves.
Lemmy does have Lemmy Federate however, which helps improve the reach of its communities. You just enter your community and it’ll use puppet accounts on various instances, both big and small, to subscribe to it, allowing you to reach the world even from a self-hosted instance. I don’t think the Mastodon side has something like that for users.
Oh wow, Lemmy Federate ezplains how I could see posts on small communities, thanks for the info!