this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2025
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Did something change recently with how Mastodon displays content from Lemmy / the threadiverse? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by otter@lemmy.ca to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Twice in the past fews days, I've gotten a reply from a Mastodon user complaining that I should have put the direct link to an article.

  • On Lemmy I posted the direct link to the article as usual
  • On their Mastodon feed, I appear as a Mastodon user that posted a link to a Lemmy thread

It seems that threadiverse posts are being seen by more mastodon users now, which is great, but maybe the formatting could use some improvements?

Example 1:

Example 2:

I know Mastodon got "quote posts" recently, is that related to this change?

Is Mastodon also getting a "group" view? That might be the best solution to the problem

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[–] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I looked at the two complaints you linked to and at how those threads seem to be displayed on these users' instances:

(edit: I don't know why they aren't displaying as links, but changing them to have a link text doesn't help either, so I'm keeping them like this)

That looks the same as it has always looked, to the best of my knowledge. I've gotten at least one similar complaint before, from a Mastodon user who didn't understand what they were looking at when they got a Lemmy post in their timeline. So I think the answer to your question is no, nothing changed, either it is a coincidence that you got two such complaints within a few days, or what actually changed is that your posts have (for whatever reason) become more visible on Mastodon.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 6 points 1 week ago

Linked Mastodon posts redirect back to lemmy.ca so can't check, but going by the intro, it's something I've been noticing, when I boost a post on Mbin, Mastodon displays as you described, at most including the image as attachment, and that despite of the original post's instance (for the thread-based ones).

Now, maybe something like what Misskey instances do would be a good solution? For example:
https://nijimiss.moe/notes/01K5T7RE2G147ZRBSZ4GDHS3NR
(For https://thebrainbin.org/m/auster_info_dumps/t/1095421)
(Just don't like the links appearing again as attachments at the bottom)

[–] mkmusic@torishiro.com 4 points 1 week ago

@otter@lemmy.ca

on misskey it displays it properly.

But yeah, on mastodon, you only see the title and the link to the post, with an image attached if there are images...​:BlobCat_Cry:​

[–] julian@activitypub.space 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

otter@lemmy.ca perhaps the quote posts are not related but some other changes bundled in that version release are?

Can you share the instance that user was on? It's worth checking out how their instance sees your post.

Mastodon did improve some non-Note handling characteristics, so it could be related!

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

How they see it: https://sfba.social/@otters_raft@lemmy.ca/115267196743748430

Do note that Mastodon forces a redirect to the original instance for non-local posts, here's a direct link to the comment: https://sfba.social/@karlauerbach/115267230182946226

It seems that threadiverse posts are being seen by more mastodon users now, which is great, but maybe the formatting could use some improvements?

There's actually some related (yet-to-be-merged) changes to this on the Mastodon side, add support for links in Attachments (this is how Lemmy and the like federate links).

I don't think anything's changed, just two users finding a post in a hashtag (Lemmy adds the community name as a hastag for posts). I've seen some masto users complain about this in the past on the #lemmy tag.

[–] julian@activitypub.space 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thanks. Yes, this is just how Mastodon renders content from Lemmy and Piefed at the moment.

Mastodon sees something that is not a Note, and says "I will treat it using a fallback mechanism. If it has a title, it is added to the top, I will add the URL back to the site at the bottom. If it has a summary, I will use that as the content"

Note that it does not use content, that's why there's no actual content. This is why the link preview also links back to Lemmy, not to the article itself.

nutomic@lemmy.ml and rimu@piefed.social can add this to their software, respectively, by populating summary. It can just be a copy of content, or it can be a summarization... or it could be the link to the article... anything goes really.

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If it has a summary, I will use that as the content

But isn't that how Mastodon handles content warnings? Baffling that they'd do it like that frankly given that it prevents long-form content (when masto actually starts supporting that) from being CW'd.

[–] julian@activitypub.space 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not necessarily, no. Content warnings were implemented in Mastodon specifically as summary plus sensitive=true. Perhaps not originally, but that is enforced now (all CW'd posts from Mastodon are marked sensitive). Might be Mastodon will CW notes that don't have sensitive, out of caution, but this doesn't apply to non-Notes.

So a summary included in a non-Note is not CW'd by Mastodon currently.

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

So a summary included in a non-Note is not CW’d by Mastodon currently.

I know, I was just saying that it prevents a non-Note from being CW'd, as the summery is used as the post's content.

[–] julian@activitypub.space 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I suppose, although in that scenario theoretically one could add as:sensitive to mark the status as CW'd? I don't think CW logic is even run for non-Notes at the moment, though I could be mistaken.

[–] flamingos@feddit.uk 2 points 1 week ago

Masto interprets a Note set as as:sensitive without a summary to mean 'blur any media attached, but don't collapse the text content'. I believe the same is true for non-Notes, but obviously without the summary = CW logic.

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

Lemmy devs have been ass about which "link" they should link to.

Their rss even points to the thread link in both link and comment tags, afaik.