Stood up my PixelFed server yesterday. Federation seems to just…not be happening. I manually added a bunch of servers in the “instances” tab but they all say 0 users. If I search for exact profile names, I can find them but they’re completely empty. Pictured is my server on the left and .social on the right. The weird part is that a handful of posts do come through. Like, maybe a dozen in the last 24 hours in my global feed.

I made a test post and someone on .social followed me, so they can obviously see me, but when I went to follow them back, their profile was also completely empty.

Is there something I need to do to “kickstart” this into gear? Do I need to just continue waiting? It’s been ~16 hours at this point.

  • flamingos-cantEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    And you can see in my photo that I’ve followed Dansup but his profile is still not showing any posts or even a profile picture.

    His last post was 4 days ago so there hasn’t been anything new enough to send to you. Try following his Mastodon account, he uses it a lot more.

    I also have several posts that predate my server in the global feed from accounts I have not followed.

    Someone you followed may have boosted them, old posts will show up if the boost happens after you follow them.

    • Ulrich@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      51·
      2 days ago

      So it won’t even send me any of his profile info until after he posts something?

      • flamingos-cantEnglish
        3·
        2 days ago

        IDK, how software fetches profile info is implementation dependent, so you’d have to dive into the source code or wait for him to post and see if you get it.

        • Ulrich@feddit.orgOPEnglish
          31·
          2 days ago

          Okay, thanks for your help. Honestly, it’s a bit of a relief as I didn’t want a bunch of data I’m not using filling up my server.