A long time ago, I had a mstdn.social account and was trying to view a friend’s content on like mastodon.art. I couldn’t see his content via mstdn.social at all, but I could if I just went to mastodon.art. Mastodon.art was not in the list of servers mstdn.social did not federate with. I assumed this was a glitch.

  • sexy_peach@feddit.de
    4·
    3 years ago

    If you would follow the person then all their content that they post afterwards should reach your instance. So each instance only gets the information that is needed to show the content that people have subscribed to. Otherwise each server would have to download and store ALL information which is posted, that would be unpractical.

    So to view a person that you don’t yet follow, go to their original profile. If you follow them you can trust that all their content will reach you from that moment (if they or their server isn’t being blocked by your server, but that’s pretty rare)

    • Blinky@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      3 years ago

      This was precisely what was not working. I could follow them, but no content would appear iirc.

      • sexy_peach@feddit.de
        1·
        3 years ago

        Oh this sounds like a network issue or something with one of the servers. Maybe hit up an admin?

        • Blinky@lemmy.mlOP
          2·
          3 years ago

          Okay so hopefully it was a glitch! I’ve been thinking about joining mastodon again.

          • sexy_peach@feddit.de
            2·
            3 years ago

            you 100% should give it another try. Maybe you can move your old account to another server?

            https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/, “Exporting your information”, import that on the new account, then do “Profile move”. Then do the part under “Account aliases”. This should lead to you having your account on the new server, with the old followers and everything taken with you.