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?
Where are all the videos and gifs?
3 years ago by sneezelord to c/nostupidquestions
MajesticFlame 107 points 3 years ago
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.
trifictional 23 points 3 years ago
But that’s not really a feature of Lemmy itself, but the program reading it.
For example, if I’m using a Lemmy app on my iPhone and I see a post with a YouTube link, the app is the one that needs to implement this embedded view feature.
312 33 points 3 years ago
Yes, but I assume the OP is referring to lemmy-ui, which is the built-in frontend for desktop and mobile in the browser, which does not at this point support dynamic conversion of youtube links to embed cards AFAIK. App support of embeds will obviously be on a app-to-app basis.
masterspace 15 points 3 years ago
Lemmy does serve up its own UI which reads itself and that UI doesn't support embedding videos.
kiddblur 12 points 3 years ago
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.
sorenant 10 points 3 years ago
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).
hitagi 10 points 3 years ago
I wouldn’t mind if it also compressed attached pictures to save on storage and bandwidth
It already does depending on the instance configuration. In my instance, all images are converted to WEBP and downscaled to 1000 pixels max either side.
wildchandelure 1 point 3 years ago
Huh. Good point. I kinda assumed differently. I have no doubt it's heavily requested tho. Guess things just wont be as convenient.
sneezelord 5 points 3 years ago
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.
sneezelord 2 points 3 years ago path: 0 733799 737918, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0
sneezelord 1 point 3 years ago path: 0 733799 737985, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
sneezelord 1 point 3 years ago path: 0 733799 738092, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
igorlogius 10 points 3 years ago path: 0 734294 735097 740905, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
ThatGirlKylie 6 points 3 years ago
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.
dismalnow 3 points 3 years ago
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.
- Mostly because it was change - cluttering my once pristine BBSs
Then I enjoyed it.
- Because it added some liveliness to the threads I read, and because I was in a smaller collective of folks that knew how to do it without being annoying.
Then I was against it again.
- Because the forums/boards because overstuffed with people shitposting ONLY animated gifs.
newthrowaway20 2 points 3 years ago
I dunno what it is with catbox but nothing from there ever loads for me.
NotAPenguin -14 points 3 years ago
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
Silviecat44 4 points 3 years ago
Be the change you want to see
sneezelord 2 points 3 years ago
Yes I want all those on Lemmy!
trifictional 28 points 3 years ago
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.
Generator 7 points 3 years ago
Hosting videos requires a lot of storage, before reddit hosting images/videos most used services where imgur, streamable, gifycat...
On small instances hosting videos could be an issue with storage and bandwidth, hosting externally is always a best option
sab 3 points 3 years ago
The whole thing is really a bit ironic. Market analysis shows that video content makes users stay longer, so Reddit pushes for more video content. Hosting video content is expensive, so Reddit pushes to make more money off users. Users get fed up and leave.
I guess peertube is the example to look at now for video hosting in the Fediverse. It's a complicated challenge for sure.
ShittyKopper 4 points 3 years ago
Who says Lemmy should/must/has to be a "serious Reddit replacement?"
Who decides on what features it needs to be a "serious Reddit replacement?"
It has already replaced Reddit for me with it's current feature set (I'm just waiting for my GDPR export to go through to bail out from there),
troyunrau 3 points 3 years ago
I suspect certain video oriented communities will go elsewhere. /r/combatfootage was my only Reddit video community, so it hasn't impacted me much.
I'm running !spacemusic@lemmy.ca now which occasionally links to YouTube videos when other sources aren't easy to find. We will see how that goes.
Probably features will get added over time. Maybe the federated video hosting stuff will take off some day. But from a bandwidth perspective, that might be hard for these volunteer run servers to handle.
zalack 10 points 3 years ago
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.
mehble 2 points 3 years ago
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.
Kichae 1 point 3 years ago
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.
strangematter 1 point 3 years ago
100% agree, I think adding native video was the first step in what felt like a progressive "TikTokification" of Reddit
trifictional 5 points 3 years ago path: 0 735065 735672, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0
Kichae 4 points 3 years ago
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.
Xeelee 1 point 3 years ago
As far as peoples' reputation points are concerned, yes. But of course we're mature, sophisticated kbin users who don't care about such trivial things. Only the unwashed masses on Reddit do that.
AshLassay 3 points 3 years ago
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
UntouchedWagons 10 points 3 years ago
Cat videos?
Smokeydope 11 points 3 years ago
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/
sneezelord 5 points 3 years ago
That’s gonna suck when all those gifs disappear
nieceandtows 9 points 3 years ago
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.
nieceandtows 2 points 3 years ago
Sorry, I made a typo in the link. It should work now.
DoucheAsaurus 1 point 3 years ago
Gifs in the comments? Nice.
whatsuphotdog 1 point 3 years ago
Is there a setting to disable gifs and other images in comments? Or at least minimize them so I have to click before they appear?
RemembertheApollo 1 point 3 years ago
Still pretty raw and there’s a lot of things that would need to change if people want a more reddit-app like experience. Reporting posts, collapsing comment chains, nsfw designation, automatic image display opt out, etc.
The platform is gaining users and people are implementing changes frequently, so if it continues to grow I’d expect to see a more familiar set of tools appear.
Linux-Is-Best 1 point 3 years ago
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.
whatsuphotdog 1 point 3 years ago
Except for the ability to sort by top.
TheDeadGuy 1 point 3 years ago
It's harder to make apps for kbin right now, but that will change in hopefully a month or so
Kbin is newer and the dev, Ernest, is getting more help from the community now that its growth has exploded
inverimus -1 points 3 years ago
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.
BrerChicken 4 points 3 years ago
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!
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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.
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