this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Fediverse

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Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

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Seeing old posts from other instances that were published before you followed (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 day ago by myszka@lemmy.ml to c/fediverse@lemmy.ml
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Recently, I've set up my own Mastodon server and immediately run into the infamous issue of not being able to see my posts from other instances. As it turned out, posts from other servers are cached to be displayed, but caching only happens after somebody starts to follow the profile in question. Because my instance is small, this basically means nobody will see my posts, which ruins the whole point of running my own server.

Is this a Mastodon only issue or is it just the way Fediverse works? Are there any alternatives to Mastodon that allow seeing the entire timeline without following? Does Lemmy share the same issue?

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[โ€“] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's not "caching". Fediverse instances mirror the content. It doesn't get uncached as it gets old. If it did, pulling up a feed of all content on the fediverse for a given date or search, would require your server firing off an http request to every other server on the whole network, waiting for a reply, and then parsing those replies.

That's not workable. So instead servers mirror, and only sync updates, and only for stuff that the other server has followers/subscribers.

To see "all" content without someone on an instance following said content, every instance would have to mirror the content of every other instance. Again, that's not workable.

You don't want to have to download the entire fediverse just get your small single-user istance working.

[โ€“] myszka@lemmy.ml 1 points 23 hours ago

Oh okay, thanks, I think I understand it better now