I’ve recently started using the Boost for Lemmy app on my phone and it’s amazing. I was using Liftoff before but I’m switching over. However, I’ve noticed an issue. When I browse through communities using Liftoff I see a lot more posts and comments than when I use Boost.
I figured this was an issue with Boost at first, but when I used my computer to edit these screenshots I noticed the same thing happens in my browser!
Opening up https://lemmy.world/c/boostforlemmy I see all the posts that Liftoff shows. Of course I’m not logged in since my account is on Lemmy.ca.
When I log into Lemmy.ca and view the community though: https://lemmy.ca/c/[email protected] I only see the posts that Boost shows! Many posts are now missing!
I figured this is an issue with Lemmy.ca blocking stuff. But wait! The most recent post (titled “Bug: Hiding all read posts also hides…”) has the URL https://lemmy.world/post/6954944 which, of course, does not allow me to comment on since I’m not logged in. If I search for that post through Lemmy.ca I find the equivalent post with the URL: https://lemmy.ca/post/7377534 which now allows me to comment on it through my Lemmy.ca account.
Does any one know what’s going on here? Clearly Lemmy.ca can “see” all the posts in the BoostForLemmy community on Lemmy.world. Even Liftoff manages to show all of them! So why does my browser and Boost for Lemmy not show everything unless I specifically search it out?
It looks like federation issues. Lemmy.world is under semi-constant DDOS attacks, and between that and the mitigations that LW are putting in place, the entire instance is not reliable.
In general, I think communities (or groups of related communities) should maintain their own instances to protect from some of the issues prominent with user-focused instances.
Definitely something with federation. I did some more testing and Liftoff is the only app showing me all posts and comments. Boost for Lemmy, Jerboa, Thunder, and web browser all have missing comments and posts.
When I check to see what instances aren’t coming through, it does seem to be a lot of Lemmy.World content (although some content from that instance comes through fine). A few smaller instances also seem to be having issues only showing up in Liftoff.
So while this certainly isn’t a Boost issue, how the heck does Liftoff get around it?? It doesn’t seem affected at all by these federation issues. Perhaps Boost could incorporate that into its own code? Liftoff crashes on me a lot and doesn’t have all the features Boost does, but right now it’s the only way I can see all the content.
There shouldn’t be any difference between apps on the same instance. Are you sure you are always using the same login on the same server?
The only other possibility is that the app has the instance hard coded somewhere or accessing remote instances directly, but that seems unlikely - it would cause all kinds of problems because URLs aren’t portable.
My suggestion when troubleshooting would be to compare what is showing up on the login instance and the app. If those are different, then there is an app bug. If there is a difference between the login instance and the host instance, that’s a federation issue. Comparing the app to the host instance (instead of the login instance) isn’t helpful to the app developer. The app shouldn’t know the host instance even exists.