Where are all the videos and gifs?
I’ve noticed that on Lemmy there aren’t really any videos/gifs as I scroll. I just see post titles, links, or images.
Is there a reason videos and gifs aren’t showing up on my feed?
GIFs work. At least in the comments they do. Videos can be (somewhat) embedded if you use an external host (i.e. catbox).
GIF sample:
I'm a bitter old man who dislikes inline gifs in the comments, is there a way to block it like I did with RES on Reddit?
Using wefwef at the moment (Apollo inspired) you can use it on android desktop and iPhone as it is a webapp and they show up as a link for me that I can then click and doesn’t embed it or inline it.
I'm not aware of an option like that but that sounds like a good feature.
I’m a bitter old man who dislikes inline gifs in the comments
I've waffled on this issue over the last 25 years, but agree that the option to show/block should still exist.
First I was against it.
Then I enjoyed it.
Then I was against it again.
It's not a gif for me, just a still image.
It's not a gif for me, just a still image.
I dunno what it is with catbox but nothing from there ever loads for me.
Catbox has a FAQ and lists connectivity issues in certain countries like Australia, Ireland/UK, Iran, Afghanistan or users of Comcast and Quad9.
They block some countries. I'm in Indonesia and I can't open catbox too without using VPN.
When people say "gifs" nowadays they don't mean actual .gif files, .gif files are very outdated and barely used at this point.
Gif has just become the term for short videos without sound
I think actual .GIF files are still used but oftentimes they're just converted to .WEBM's without sound.
It's not a gif for me, just a still image.
What Lemmy client did you make these double posts from?
It's not a gif for me, just a still image.
I'm waiting for
Or some funny fail videos
Yes I want all those on Lemmy!
It will. Reddit only added video hosting in the past couple years. Before that, everyone just linked imgur and other hosting sites.
I bet the largest servers will eventually have their own hosting platform too, but for now it’s one of the growing pains.
Q: why do we need native hosting?
IMO, adding native video support was a huge blunder on Reddit's part, and the expense of it is likely a factor in how desperate they are to squeeze money from their users now.
Let Lemmy and Kbin do what they are good at: aggregating links. Let others be good at hosting videos.
If the Web client can eventually be improved to properly embed Vimeo/YouTube/etc links so they can be played inline, that seems like a good enough experience to me. Making a good video player is hard. Reddit's native player sucks and Lemmy/Kbin are open source with even less resources.
One downside of using a 3rd party to host media is when it shuts down like gyfcat will in September, it will result in a lot of broken links with media forever lost.
Self hosting has less chance of losing the media at the cost of having to pay for media storage.
As a new website, I'd definitely prefer kbin or Lemmy to just focus on the core product and not self host media yet.
Lemmy can already follow PeerTube channels. I'm sure proper support for this will hit kbin soon, too. People can utilize existing PeerTube instances, or set up their own if they'd like to publish videos to the fedi.
100% agree, I think adding native video was the first step in what felt like a progressive "TikTokification" of Reddit
Video centric subs existed before Reddit added their own hosting service. Just use a 3rd party service like YouTube. Or setup your own instance and pay for the hosting costs.
Reddit adding video hosting was probably the beginning of the downfall of Reddit. Hosting videos is expensive. So the focus shifted to milking more money out of the users
If those video-heavy communities want to host their own instances and cover the cost of hosting those videos, then that would be cool.
The thing with individual- and community-based hosting, though, is that the hidden costs of the social web become visible very quickly. Those were externalized to the VC backed vultures, and now those vultures are clamping down on us and demanding their fill.
We paid a price for things like free video hosting. Now we're aware of the costs and need to make conscious decisions around it, not friction free ones.
What I would do is upload videos to peertube instance (the peertube servers are better equipped for storing videos and most of them are free + offer more or less unlimited storage) and for pictures use plethora or pixelfied. Lemmy and mastodon are just one aspect of the whole fediverse, there's all sorts of instanced equipped to be all sorts of things https://fediverse.info/
Didn't one of the larger gif sites announce their discontinuation?
Yeah, Gfycat is going away
That’s gonna suck when all those gifs disappear
You can go to/c/kidsbeingderps to see some gifs in action. It’s a new community so there’s not much, but hope it grows. Using Memmy app, I can see the gifs in action as I scroll, similar to Apollo.
Why isn't that a link... Is that a Lemmy thing or an instance thing or an app thing? These tiny UX friction points are important for retention.
Sorry, I made a typo in the link. It should work now.
Because they left out the instance.
Remember to include the instance. Using /c/kidsbeingderps@instance.com will render as a link.
If you include the instance that will show as a link.
Remember to include the instance. Using /c/kidsbeingderps@instance.com will make a link.
I've always hated reddit hosted videos, the performance was terrible. A link to youtube was always so much faster. I guess it made sense for subreddits that focused on video content, but I never cared about any of those.
Doesn't need to be hosted on the server. Just need the client's to support smooth embedding from other video hosts like peertube.
I've always hated reddit hosted videos, the performance was terrible.
Me too! And they never had any sound when I maximized them. It was awful!
This is why I prefer kbin over Lemmy. -- I'm posting this on kbin.social right now.
Kbin honestly looks like a drop replacement for Reddit. If you were not paying attention and had given Kbin the Reddit logo, you could easily mistake this for Reddit. Plus it is further developed along.
Except for the ability to sort by top.
It's because the Top is judged by the amount of boosts, not the favorites or upvotes.
Lemmy doesn't really support embedding videos yet. It's a highly requested feature so i think we can be assured it'll be here within a future update.
Quite possibly not. Remember that the admins running lemmy instances have very limited revenue so paying for servers is an issue. Some instances even encourage posting links instead of images to save on cost.
Videos are in a league of their own when it comes to size and therefore the server power needed. Lemmy probably can't afford it. Its the prive we pay for no ads. You have to link videos.
Embedding videos doesn’t require local storage of videos. When you embed a YouTube video, you’re just linking a container which loads and displays the video from YouTube’s servers.
Yeah, my instance has a 100kb file size limit on images and recommends posting links as well. Not sure how that’s gonna play out long term. With sites like gfycat shutting down and nuking their content, I wonder if we’re exiting the era of free hosting and sharing as well.
I'm not sure if Lemmy already does it or not but I wouldn't mind if it also compressed attached pictures to save on storage and bandwidth like some other forums does (eg compress picture to <1mb).
Huh. Good point. I kinda assumed differently. I have no doubt it's heavily requested tho. Guess things just wont be as convenient.
Glad to hear it’s a requested feature. It kinda just hit me that it seems empty with no videos or gifs as you scroll. They definitely need to implement an embedded video player instead of links to videos/gifs.
But why not even links to videos or gifs