Social network Reddit recently began blocking mobile visitors to its website while pushing them to download the official Reddit app, and it's fair to say that the move is not going down well with users. If you visit reddit.com on your iPhone today, you may see a new popup that can't be dismissed, asking you to "get the app to keep using Reddit".
How would that work?
We are all on different instances. With different algorithms, technology, and differing filters. The code doesnt support what your saying.
If an instance has the most people and blocks those people from seeing your post, delays it from posting, or downgrades it as a source, it could easily be done. They have control over their own instance.
Can you elaborate? Arent blocks public via the admin logs in lemmy? In addition that info can be pulled from the api from any instance/fediverse protocol.
I can reproduce of need be since i have my own lemmy and piefed instance and have over 20 years of software development experience.
This called it shadow banning on reddit, but I think of it more as shadow curating. I explain it a little more in other comments itt. Reddit does the curating as well.
IMO, you could do this live pretty easily. When I first started posting, the trolls would complain that I wasn’t consistently online, lol.
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I dont understand. Can you point to where in the code it has this? The algorithm/stack is open to anyone.
You can read the code? I can’t. It wouldn’t even have to be a permanent code. It cold work for say an hour, take the post out of the running for the front page, and then disappear. The effects would be the same.
I know this is happening, I have no idea how.
Yep i can. Ive helped out on both lemmy, piefed, mastodon, gotosocial, peertube and others. Little things mind but yeah its my day job.
Theres a queue that is part of different instances. What can happen is posts/comments get backed up and the queue takes them all in. When an outage or slowdown happens it can bog down certain servers. Threadiverse (piefes/lemmy/mbin/etc…) up/down votes, comments, posts, etc… it gets slower as more instances connect to others. Its unfortunate but its part of the fediverse protocol. Piefed has some advances there, but it can still get bogged down sometimes.
Im not saying thats definitively what it is, but ive been on the other side of this phenomenon a couple of times when my lemmy and then later piefed instance had a new instance sync with it. Lemmy.world has had this issue for a while since its one of the biggest.
The way to test is to sent the instance in quesion a POST request with a comment OR use a known good instance (like piefed) and check the logs. It usually comes back with either a 200 immediately (which is good) or theres a HUGE delay.
Most of these instances are very much volunteer efforts.
So, instead of saying this isn’t happening, why not look into how it could be done? They’re doing it, I have no idea how. Take a look at new and you’ll see that things are being controlled for the all, hot page.
I post almost every work day, I can see the patterns really well from my end. I don’t care about upvotes as well, so I don’t really have any emotion attached to it other than it pisses me off that I’m probably not seeing other things they don’t want me to see. That’s really what I hated about reddit too and why I came here.
They could have someone controlling it real time, yeah? That would explain the inconsistency of when I post out of the norm. I’ve been lightly testing them for years now, which is why I believe I can safely say these things.
It would be VERY difficult. I have no idea what im looking for other than the delay or block. And im not seeing anything today. If you can give me an example, I can check in and reproduce. Otherwise its nettle/haystack.
It might very well be a bug.
I can see it being frustrating. But thats what community software is. The good news is that even just reporting the issue can help us all out!
I would probably agree with this being the issue, if it wasn’t so consistent except when I post out of the norm, I didn’t have a run in with a rogue mod deleting my posts days later, and them seeming to have a shit ton of money when the exodus happened like a corp would have. You may, but most of us don’t know who is behind the curtain for that instance.
With the way it’s happening, it can’t be explained when you really look at the nuances. It’s more like a bug that any of my posts get upvotes. Again, I don’t care about upvotes. This is extremely apparent because I’ve posted for years with only 8 upvotes for most of my posts.