this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Technology

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[–] jarfil@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Links on Lemmy are messed up, and both apps and the UI are offering links in a "technically correct", but "practically weird" way.

In this case: a user on lemmy.tf, created a post, and submitted it to !technology@beehaw.org.

The weirdness starts, when you realize the canonical source for the post, is lemmy.tf, while @technology@beehaw.org is just a beehaw.org user who boosts it, beehaw.org caches the post, and marks @technology@beehaw.org as a "special user" that makes the post show in a "community" called !technology@behaw.org, even back on lemmy.tf.

Now, where should an application/UI link to?

According to Mastodon rules, the canonical source (on lemmy.tf) should be the reasonable place to link, then when pasted into your instance you could see that it got boosted by @technology@beehaw.org.

According to Lemmy rules, the post "got submitted to !technology@beehaw.org", so it could make sense to link to the cached copy on beehaw.org... but that's just a boosted cached copy, multiple instance users/communities could boost the same canonical post from lemmy.tf.

Although, each boost links back to the original post, so it could make sense to just link to the canonical post, and have each instance check whether any of its communities has boosted it and redirect you there... the only problem is that the canonical post is referred to by its web url, so if you paste it directly in a browser, it will take you to the instance where it was written.