Follower-only posts are always going to be hidden to most people becuse it's a restricted post visibility, people are deliberately hiding their replies if they use it.

It's the public/unlisted replies that most people are missing when a public conversation is incomplete.

@Weirdaholic Follower-only replies will already be fetched by your server if somebody on your server is following or tagged in the post.

If you're not following or tagged in the post, you would not be able to see it anyway, so there's no point in fetching the data.

At the moment, if there's a reply from an account that your server has not "noticed" then it may not be visible in the thread.

There's a whole list of scenarios where a server might notice an account or post:

fedi.tips/which-posts-and-acco…

TL:DR - To preserve resources, servers only show accounts and posts they have noticed. This keeps server costs low enough that anyone can start and run their own server, but has the side-effect of not showing everything from every server.

I guess, that "further reasons" are the crucial point. I almost remember that there was something... I cannot get a grip of it. What am I missing?

@rolle

@Voka Replies will only be fetched if somebody on your server follows the account that has written the reply, or if it is fetched via relay.

What this change does is if you click on a post (rather than looking at it on your timeline), it will try to fetch all the public and unlisted replies.

@nafcom

You can already move accounts (fedi.tips/transferring-your-ma…).

If you mean moving posts, the posts remain on your old server and redirect people to your new account.

Moving Mastodon posts was attempted by Firefish but the moved posts were clones of the originals and they broke all of the discussion threads on the originals. Also the moving process overwhelmed the server as it involved potentially thousands of posts being added to the server at once from a single account.

I wouldn't call it useless 🙂

Without follower transfer, people would be scared to ever move. They'd be starting from zero every time.

As far as I know the Fediverse is the only social network where you can move to different fully independent infrastructure while keeping your followers.

Bluesky "solved" moving posts by not allowing independent infrastructure, so you're never properly transferring.

Firefish's "solution" was by overwhelming the server.

I'm not sure that's an accurate analogy?

Transferring your followers doesn't just mean messages being forwarded, it means your connections stay intact. It's like moving house and still keeping the same circle of friends no matter where you live.

Also, you can save your Mastodon post archive, the posts don't just disappear:

fedi.tips/how-to-download-your…

By the way, Mastodon post archives can be uploaded to GoToSocial accounts using a tool currently in testing: github.com/VyrCossont/slurp

@renchap

Oh right, thanks for the info!

From the merge thread I thought it was ready to go but just needed a front end to avoid the need for manual page refreshes?

Will it appear in the updates/nightlys?

@renchap For what it's worth we've had #FetchAllReplies activated on our server for many months now and have not noticed any problems. It is a small server though (~250 active users), not sure if it makes a difference.

The benefits are noticeable though! I took the habit of checking replies before adding my own, which is probably nice for the OPs, and can spot a lot more spam to report 😁. Perhaps more importantly, the Fediverse feels a lot more alive with it!
Looking forward to the feature being available to all 😀

@FediTips @rolle

@andypiper

Must be an amazing feeling to see the devs finally closing your issue today! 😀

@dannotdaniel

I am trying to manage people's expectations, as updates have sometimes taken months to appear 😅

Also, there's an additional thing that one of the devs @renchap has just pointed out, there may be tweaks needed before actual general release as its real world performance still needs to be checked.

@yetzt

The scene you're using the image from is exactly what I was doing, putting quotes around a potentially unfamiliar technical term:

youtube.com/watch?v=voSpOrimkM…

You might be seeing a lot of replies but perhaps not all of them. It will also vary a lot depending on whether your server has noticed the people in the replies. There might be some threads where you don't see so many of the replies.

The idea of this feature is to take away the randomness of it, and let everyone see the same thread regardless of where they are or which accounts their server has noticed.

@tarmil

As far as I know, it would only need to be enabled on your server.

@maschinentraum

It should show you the entire thread when you click on it, you may need to reload the page.

By the way, I think you can already do this if you just want to see the post being replied to? If you click on a reply to focus on it and then reload the page, you should see the post its replying to appear above?

@europlus

😆