VernissageMar 16, 2025

In the coming weeks, I’m planning to split the user-facing API from the background processes that fetch data from other Fediverse instances. This will require extra resources but should boost Vernissage’s performance! 🚀

If you’d like to support the project: https://www.patreon.com/Vernissage - every amount counts and means a lot! 🙏 #Vernissage #Fediverse

Show threadeobetMar 16, 2025
@vernissage will this also do something about how Fediverse instances fetches data from Vernissage? My profile on vernissage.photos still shows zero posts, and again, I don’t remember that being an issue when I created a Pixelfed account, but I could be wrong…
Show threadVernissageMar 16, 2025
@eobet No, this won’t affect data fetching from Vernissage in any way. Could you describe in more detail which accounts you mean and on which instances? Generally, I don’t see any option in ActivityPub for a user’s profile (https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#actors) to include information about the number of statuses on a given instance, but I’m not sure if I fully understand the issue.
ActivityPub

The ActivityPub protocol is a decentralized social networking protocol based upon the [ActivityStreams] 2.0 data format. It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and content.

Show threadeobetMar 16, 2025
@vernissage it was my own account on vernissage.photos which I pasted the URL of from this Glitchsoc server account… but I just sabotaged/fixed it because I now instead directly pasted the link of my first and only post, and now it shows up even if I go directly to the account, so I guess this caused the server to federate the post finally.
Show threadVernissage
@eobet Okay, I think I understand. Vernissage only receives statuses from people who are followed by users on the instance (as well as posts that are boosted by those followed, etc.). When fetching a user’s profile, we don’t retrieve all of their statuses. In fact, most platforms don’t do this (at least not by default). The statuses that are fetched are used to calculate the number of photos/statuses shown on the user’s profile - along with a note that some statuses may be missing.
Mar 16, 2025 at 9:27pmIvory for iOS
Show threadeobetMar 16, 2025
@vernissage Thank you for the information. I hope, like with Mastodon finally giving all users all replies in a thread, similar Fediverse issues like this (favourite count is another that comes to mind) will slowly improve in the future.
Show threadVernissageMar 17, 2025
@eobet Yes, this is something I didn’t fully understand before. But now, after many months of working with the ActivityPub protocol, I see why it’s so difficult. On vernissage.photos we have around 200 registered users and 24,000 remote accounts - from about 1,200 different instances (and that’s likely just a fraction). To make a comment appear everywhere, I’d have to send it everywhere. It would take minutes. And what about instances I don’t even know about? It’s a tricky problem 🫣.