this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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Don't know
That is a flaw in activitypub. The federation makes it look like you are the only one following that account because that's the only information your home instance can gather from the network. As they post new stuff you will see them. Give it some time for your server to federate with their server and you will probably see more details like their profile picture
That sound like a bug in the app
Hmm ok ... the servers are both pretty large so I assume they should be well-federated (if that's the right term).
But that flaw kinda means that effectively, information trickles through unpredictably and what you see is quite dependent on which instance you're on ... is that understanding correct?
Yes, that is correct. Although, calling it a flaw was a bit wrong on my part. It us by design. Paraphrasing someone on the internet: activitypub federation is pull rather than push. The downside of this is, some info will never reach you. The upside is: self hosting activitypub software is possible even with limited resources.
I guess whether it's a flaw or not depends on your expectations ... definitely feels like a big drawback to me ...
After the point in time where you made the connection, you will see activity start coming in from their connections. So you should gradually see their followers populate as those people make new posts, which get federated to your instance through your connection to them.
Especially if the connection you made is the first time the remote instance has been interacted with, it's going to look barren at first because there is basically no capability to sync history. You can think of it like an RSS feed.
(This is oversimplified - it's possible that ActivityPub might allow for historical items to be synced just like RSS publishers can choose to include older data. I would speculate that it's not commonly done for bandwidth reasons if it is possible.)
A downside to this is that if you're trying to read through historical posts (from before you made the connection) you will have to click through to the hosting instance to get a complete view.
An upside to this is that because you only see content posted after the connection is established, you are guaranteed to be seeing new posts from active users.