My replies via Mastodon to Lemmy posts don’t get distributed as expected. For example:
- Original post: https://lemmy.ml/post/11552444
- A reply via Lemmy: https://ttrpg.network/comment/4965852
- My reply to that: https://hachyderm.io/@otl/111887721960075860
It seems my reply only shows in these Lemmy servers:
- lemmy.ml (the server of the group to which the post was made)
- lemmy.world (the server of the post’s author)
- ttrpg.network (the server of the comment’s author)
From some other lemmy servers, my comment is not present:
- lemmy.sdf.org: https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/8124910
- lemmy.one: https://lemmy.one/comment/6912806
- aussie.zone: https://aussie.zone/comment/6414209
I expected that my reply would show on any other Lemmy server with subscriptions to [email protected]. Does that make sense? I’m hoping to help troubleshoot federation like this as I’m super excited about ActivityPub and what it means for the internet! :)
One way to ensure your comment to federate the way you are expecting is to mention the original group (community) of the thread. This way, Lemmy will receive the comment on the group’s inbox and propagate to all federated servers.
Another behavior I found is that replies to non federated comments (as the one you showed in the op) will be announced to all federated servers. More details I found here: https://seb.jambor.dev/posts/understanding-activitypub-part-2-lemmy/
Ah ha makes sense now! The “Replying to comments” section of that article explains exactly what’s happening. If I understand correctly the community itself ([email protected] in my above example) is not notified of my reply from Mastodon. If the community did know, then it would broadcast a notification of the activity to whoever else is subscribed to [email protected].