this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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Piefed uses the same technology to federate, so does Piefed have tools to determine federation problems?
It's not the same code, so maybe the admin UI is more helpful ?
Looks like it is!
But whatever issue you are having with federation is most likely not related to Lemmy itself. Piefed is a solid choice though, so if it helps you get it sorted then great!
For federation issues, I would check various things like where are you hosted (if at home, do you have a public IP?)? Are you hosting in Singapore, China, or other areas that commonly host AI scrapers as many Lemmy instances block IP ranges from those areas? Was your instance set up with a domain name that you have been using since the beginning (if you change your domain name or move to a subdomain then federation won't work). Are you using Cloudflare or similar - if so, be aware that federation is bot traffic, any settings around blocking bots or AI will break federation. Remember your instance has to be publicly accessible to receive anything!
Also see this showing the federation state of instances (enter your own if you are having trouble with outbound, enter a remote one if you are having trouble with inbound then check where your site is): https://phiresky.github.io/lemmy-federation-state/site?domain=lemmy.world
Also see this for showing which instances are having trouble with federation. Set targets along the top: https://grafana.lem.rocks/d/edf3gjrxxnocgd/federation-health-activities-behind?orgId=1&var-instance=All&var-remote_instance=lemmy.world&var-remote_software=All
At Netcup, in Germany.
Yes, and it's very fresh.
No and never.
Yes.
All numbers are at zero : https://phiresky.github.io/lemmy-federation-state/site?domain=blog.kaki87.net
Hmm, how does that one work ?
Instances report the latest activity ID through a public API endpoint. This compares the latest across instances. I can't remember the details, but one thing to remember is that not every instance gets every activity so it's not 100% accurate.
The way federation works is that you subscribe to a community, then that community starts sending your instance new content from the community posted after you subscribe.
If you have no subscribers, then you have no federation.
Check out https://lemmy-federate.com/ for getting federation started. This lets you enter a community and instances that have signed up will have a special account subscribe which causes your community to start sending content to their instance.
You can also post in special lemmy communities for letting people know about your new community.
Hopefully this is all the issue is! Have you tried using your account on your instance for commenting on other instances, e.g. replying to me here?
But if one uses search to fetch my article from their instance and comment on it, shouldn't my instance still receive the comment ?
Because I don't really want to send content to instances, I just want the abovementioned scenario to work, basically the purpose I see in Lemmy as a blog is to enable readers to interact with me from their own instance, which solves the issue with CMS-powered blogs which whom people never interact with because of not wanting to create an account there.
Thanks
Yes, but if you don't pass it on to subscribers then other users can't see each other's comments on their instance (unless they are on the same instance as each other).
With ActivityPub, people need to interact from their own instance, which means the content needs to be sent there.
A related concept is being able to use your account in one instance to be able to log in to a different site - effectively some sort of OAuth implementation (similar to "Log in with Google", "Log in with facebook").
The Canvas event set something up for this, where you could log in to their site by using a fediverse account from another instance. You entered your user, it then messaged you a code, and you would enter it in order to log in. Then you could participate. Their code is here: https://sc07.dev/sc07/fediverse-auth
However, this relies on the backend site implementing this custom setup.
Long story short, I don't think what you want actually exists (people come to your Lemmy instance, log in with their existing lemmy account, and comment directly on your site).
To use Lemmy as a blog, you'd have to fit into the existing structure (create posts to your blog community, people would subscribe from their own instance, view comments and add their own from their own instance). This would be like any other Lemmy post. Here is an example: https://no.lastname.nz/c/OurCamper (though this one isn't marked as moderator posts only, which it probably should be)
Interestingly, if I try to comment on a post my instance reports the federated activity was accepted by your instance, but it doesn't show if I look at your instance. It seems to be getting silently dropped (or some error is happening). Have you done anything special or is this the federation issue you see? If you want to push forward with using Lemmy I can try to help you troubleshoot.