[Federation]: Remote account has no content

[arnobnq]

Description

I've tested federation using two accounts from two different instances and was unable to make it work. This test was done using the WebUI, if that matters.

I have read that loops had enabled federation last year, so this is confusing.

Steps to reproduce

• Choose an account at random from loops.video, one that has some videos and followers.
• From another account hosted on another instance (mine was at loops.one), search for the remote account using its fully qualified name or the remote URL.
• The account is found, the thumbnail and description even show up. BUT, the account shows 0 video and 0 follower, which means the content cannot be accessed. (I thought it might take some time to retrieve the content from the remote server, but no change after 30 minutes)

(I also then did the same test the other way around, trying to watch content of loops.one from loops.video and saw the same result)

Loops version

Can't find the version in the webui.

Acknowledgements

Yes

[grossermensch]

1. Loops is at the moment set up in a way that instance admins have to accept federation with every single server. So if you want to see content from your loops.one account on loops.video, Dan (as admin) has to specifically enable federation with loops.one
2. An issue of the Fediverse in general is that past content is not fetched from accounts. So if you follow a loops.video account from your loops.one account (and federation is enabled, see 1.) posts posted after you followed will show up. Mastodon implemented a first version of fetching old content (and comments from other servers) a month ago and I think Dan has this on the agenda at some point in the future, but for the moment you only see content from accounts posted after you followed, so for the beginning their profile looks empty.

[grossermensch]

@dansup I think this would be one of the biggest UX improvements for the federated loops service: fetching at least the past 24 posted videos when visiting an account from a federated server.

[shleeable]

Backfill is always a pain.

[grossermensch]

@shleeable maybe old content could be fetched not by processing all old videos and then showing it, but by separating the profile view into already fetched content, and then the rest similar to an iframe in html? I really think seeing empty profiles when I want to follow someone from another server is a major roadblock in federation.

[arnobnq]

Thanks for clarifying @grossermensch.

1. Loops is at the moment set up in a way that instance admins have to accept federation with every single server. So if you want to see content from your loops.one account on loops.video, Dan (as admin) has to specifically enable federation with loops.one

Understood! But I'd argue that makes no sense at all. For context, I host a personal peertube instance for just my account. It's a great experience, it can reach every content I want to follow across dozen of instances. So what you're saying is that if I were to do the same with Loops, I would need every remote instance to allow communication with mine, which is totally unrealistic and doesn't promote the spread of users across several instances imo. I was very interested in hosting an instance for my account, but now I understand it would not be very practical.

2. An issue of the Fediverse in general is that past content is not fetched from accounts. So if you follow a loops.video account from your loops.one account (and federation is enabled, see 1.) posts posted after you followed will show up. Mastodon implemented a first version of fetching old content (and comments from other servers) a month ago and I think Dan has this on the agenda at some point in the future, but for the moment you only see content from accounts posted after you followed, so for the beginning their profile looks empty.

I see. On peertube the old content is fetched (or some of it? I'm not sure) so I thought it was plain broken with loops.

With such hard limitations with federation, no wonder 99%+ of loops user are on loops.video. It's the only instance you can use today if you actually wanna see some content.