Did something change recently with how Mastodon displays content from Lemmy / the threadiverse? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by otter@lemmy.ca to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Twice in the past fews days, I've gotten a reply from a Mastodon user complaining that I should have put the direct link to an article.

On Lemmy I posted the direct link to the article as usual
On their Mastodon feed, I appear as a Mastodon user that posted a link to a Lemmy thread

It seems that threadiverse posts are being seen by more mastodon users now, which is great, but maybe the formatting could use some improvements?

Example 1:

My post: https://lemmy.ca/comment/19153240
How they see it: https://sfba.social/@otters_raft@lemmy.ca/115267196743748430

Example 2:

My post: https://lemmy.ca/comment/19202083
How they see it: https://mas.to/@otters_raft@lemmy.ca/115283224174559468

I know Mastodon got "quote posts" recently, is that related to this change?

Is Mastodon also getting a "group" view? That might be the best solution to the problem

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

How they see it: https://sfba.social/@otters_raft@lemmy.ca/115267196743748430

Do note that Mastodon forces a redirect to the original instance for non-local posts, here's a direct link to the comment: https://sfba.social/@karlauerbach/115267230182946226

It seems that threadiverse posts are being seen by more mastodon users now, which is great, but maybe the formatting could use some improvements?

There's actually some related (yet-to-be-merged) changes to this on the Mastodon side, add support for links in Attachments (this is how Lemmy and the like federate links).

I don't think anything's changed, just two users finding a post in a hashtag (Lemmy adds the community name as a hastag for posts). I've seen some masto users complain about this in the past on the #lemmy tag.

[-] julian@activitypub.space 2 points 4 days ago

Thanks. Yes, this is just how Mastodon renders content from Lemmy and Piefed at the moment.

Mastodon sees something that is not a Note, and says "I will treat it using a fallback mechanism. If it has a title, it is added to the top, I will add the URL back to the site at the bottom. If it has a summary, I will use that as the content"

Note that it does not use content, that's why there's no actual content. This is why the link preview also links back to Lemmy, not to the article itself.

nutomic@lemmy.ml and rimu@piefed.social can add this to their software, respectively, by populating summary. It can just be a copy of content, or it can be a summarization... or it could be the link to the article... anything goes really.

[-] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 4 days ago

If it has a summary, I will use that as the content

But isn't that how Mastodon handles content warnings? Baffling that they'd do it like that frankly given that it prevents long-form content (when masto actually starts supporting that) from being CW'd.

[-] julian@activitypub.space 2 points 4 days ago

Not necessarily, no. Content warnings were implemented in Mastodon specifically as summary plus sensitive=true. Perhaps not originally, but that is enforced now (all CW'd posts from Mastodon are marked sensitive). Might be Mastodon will CW notes that don't have sensitive, out of caution, but this doesn't apply to non-Notes.

So a summary included in a non-Note is not CW'd by Mastodon currently.

[-] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

So a summary included in a non-Note is not CW’d by Mastodon currently.

I know, I was just saying that it prevents a non-Note from being CW'd, as the summery is used as the post's content.

[-] julian@activitypub.space 2 points 4 days ago

I suppose, although in that scenario theoretically one could add as:sensitive to mark the status as CW'd? I don't think CW logic is even run for non-Notes at the moment, though I could be mistaken.

[-] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 4 days ago

Masto interprets a Note set as as:sensitive without a summary to mean 'blur any media attached, but don't collapse the text content'. I believe the same is true for non-Notes, but obviously without the summary = CW logic.