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?

  • wildchandelure@midwest.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • MajesticFlame@lemmy.one
      3·
      1 year 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 price we pay for freedom and no ads. You have to link videos.

      • 312@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • trifictional@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 year 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@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            1 year 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.

  • hitagi@ani.socialEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    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:

    • sorenant@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      1 year ago

      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?

      • dismalnow@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year 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.
      • hitagi@ani.socialEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m not aware of an option like that but that sounds like a good feature.

      • ThatGirlKylie@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year 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.

    • NotAPenguin@kbin.social
      014·
      1 year 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

  • myxi@feddit.nl
    0·
    1 year ago

    I have seen couple videos, one was a drone killing Russian soldiers, other ones were for porn. So it may just be lack of interest, or lack of convenience to share videos.