this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023

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HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world

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So I did figure out that yes, #Mastodon can federate #Lemmy and #Kbin content. The problem (cdn.masto.host)

submitted 2 years ago by mike@jammer.social to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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So I did figure out that yes, #Mastodon can federate #Lemmy and #Kbin content. The problem is that Mastodon doesn't know what to do with it, so it (the group) looks like a user that boosts all posts and comments.

I found myself browsing the "federated group" @selfhosted over on https://kbin.social, as I think Kbin has a nicer UX for it.

I didn't really want to create a separate account for group stuff, but that might be what we do in the short term. 🤔

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[–] DoubleCore@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I wrote this in another thread, so copy pasting it here:

I believe that the limitation is part of the Mastodon app, and not related to the Fediverse. There might be a character limit but I don’t think it’s as limited as Mastodon’s.

Btw, Mastodon isn’t really fit for this type of conversation. Mastodon aims to replace tweeter - microblogging interaction, where Lemmy aims to replace Reddit - thread interactions.

Each comment on Lemmy will be treated as microblog on mastodon which isn’t really practical.

[–] 3laws@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Except that that sounds like a Mastodon lack of features. Cuz Twitter had threads. As long as you were replying to someone each conversation was a sub thread and so on.

[–] Eddie@lucitt.social 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I tried my best to use mastodon as a platform to post to lemmy/kbin but ran into a major problem: nested comments get lost to the ether, and there's no way for you to reply to them using the same account.

Because of this, and basically this alone, I decided to forfeit mastodon all together and opt for a self hosted lemmy instance. I just got it set up and running this evening and so far, I'm not looking back.

Might set up another mastodon instance later, but that's if I start to miss it.

[–] lemmy@lemmy.captainapathetic.cfd 0 points 2 years ago

I haven't really used kbin but I'm wondering if that could bridge the gap since it has features from both.

[–] mike@jammer.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@Eddie If you include the group name (@selfhosted) it seems to work, but this isn't really practical.

[–] Eddie@lucitt.social 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Hm, that's very interesting. I wonder if the platforms will build upon each other with future updates or if they'll continue to remain "seperate" in terms of formatting and QoL. Very interested in the future of cross platform federation accounts.

[–] mike@jammer.social 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@Eddie I would love more interoperability. 😉

It makes me wonder if the "thing" to dethrone #Mastodon will be an alternative server/client/app that speaks multiple #Fediverse application protocols? I'm jealous that a #Lemmy server requires a _fraction_ of the RAM that a #KBin or Mastodon server does.

(Obligitory @selfhosted for Lemmy to notice me)

[–] Eddie@lucitt.social 1 points 2 years ago

That sounds to be the most attractive way to fit into the fediverse the way it's set up right now. I really like how kbin has support for microblogging and link aggregation however I find it hard to interoperate between different platforms like you can on lemmy/mastodon.

Once a platform nails all of this, I feel like that will be the thing to use in terms of a "master account to rule them all" type deal. That's what I want anyway >:)

[–] ThorrJo 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

a #Lemmy server requires a fraction of the RAM that a #KBin or Mastodon server does.

If you want a personal microblogging server, run Pleroma or Akkoma, they are waaaAAAAAY less resource-intensive than Mastodon. Especially after some truly god-awful database queries were fixed in the last few months. (Load on my database server dropped by approximately a factor of 25x!!)

[–] mike@jammer.social 1 points 2 years ago

@ThorrJo @selfhosted lol, I can relate to thay 😆. I run an event & website that was notorious for its poor performance at the beginning and end of events. A few years ago, with our servers ready to fall over, I noticed a certain query was hogging the database server's CPU. I made the tiniest fix to correctly use indexes, and we instantly went from 400% CPU usage to at most 20% (across 4 cores). 😅

Though it's been fixed for ~3 years, I still see folks warning others about the slowness. 😅

[–] the_thunder_god@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@Eddie I know the kbin dev has been adjusting the federated backend to work better with mastodon. So I think it will all get better, it'll just take time.

[–] Eddie@lucitt.social 0 points 2 years ago

Oh yes definitely. The exiting part isn't when it happens, but how it happens ;)

[–] NumbersCanBeFun@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@mike Interesting, I haven't really messed around too much with Mastodon. I've been primarily been using kbin and I've been happy with just this so far.

[–] mike@jammer.social 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

@NumbersCanBeFun Okay that was unexpected. I managed to post a new topic and reply to Lemmy.world using my Mastodon client. That was supposed to be a "thinking out loud" toot. 😅

I attached some images to my first reply, but they were ignored. I wonder if my server strips out markdown? 🤔

* _Test_

image test

[–] NumbersCanBeFun@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@mike It's formatted well but whenever I click the link it 404's on me for kbin. I know the server is getting some big upgrades and is under a lot of strain right now, so that might be a factor to consider, at least as far as kbin is concerned.

[–] mike@jammer.social 1 points 2 years ago

Ha, honestly I'm impressed that any of this is working at all. 😆

By the way, to anyone reading this, in my previous reply I omitted the mention of @selfhosted. The reply didn't show up on #Lemmy until @NumbersCanBeFun replied to it.

[–] ThorrJo 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Most versions of Mastodon strip all formatting after its developer Gargron made an Executive Decision™.

[–] mike@jammer.social 0 points 2 years ago

@ThorrJo @selfhosted That's what I thought too. Seeing some of the discrepancies across Lemmy and KBin made me curious to try it. Many instances run the Mastodon Glitch branch for this reason (I don't, as I'm treating my server as a research project, and IMO the stock experience is more important).

That said, I've heard folks parroting that some form of markdown is coming to mainline Mastodon, though I haven't seen an announcement. I'm assuming Rocko simply said he wasn't against it anymore.

[–] mike@jammer.social 1 points 2 years ago

@NumbersCanBeFun @selfhosted Oh wow, I didn't realize this would actually cross post to Lemmy.world. 😅

[–] mike@jammer.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh wow, I didn't realize I actually cross posted to #Lemmy by @'ing the group. 😅

[–] 73ms@fosstodon.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@mike That is interesting, I was curious about whether it is possible to post to lemmy from mastodon... Seems like part of your message ended up becoming the title so I wonder if there is a way to format the message in a way that won't look out of place on lemmy

[–] sab@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@73ms @selfhosted @mike

The problem is of course that microblogs don't have a title, so Lemmy just resorts to using the first words of the post. Kbin solves it differently, with microblogs being treated as entirely separate from the "threadiverse". They are not given a headline, and downvotes are disabled.

If you want to make sure a microblog looks good in Lemmy I guess the best you can do is to use a descriptive first sentence, ideally followed by starting a new paragraph. As there's no title field in microblogs, there's really nothing else to do, and as kbin handles microblogs differently there will probably always be some weird headlines popping up in Lemmy unless something changes on the technical side.

[–] 73ms@fosstodon.org 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

@sab @selfhosted @mike Do you know if there is a way to make it a link post from masto or is that also just a limitation for microblogs? It seems like attaching media is at least possible.

[–] sab@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

@73ms @selfhosted @mike

I'm not sure how Lemmy handles microblogs with linked media, but at least in kbin it's not possible to post a "thread" from a microblog service. In Lemmy the distinction matters less as they are all presented in the same feed. In kbin I expect microblog integration to get better in the future, but I think there will always be a distinction between "posts" and "threads".

[–] SJ_Zero@lemmy.fbxl.net 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I consider the video part of the fediverse, the lemmy/lotide/kbin part of the fediverse, and the mastodon/pleroma/so on part of the fediverse to be interoperable but their UIs are quite mutually exclusive, so I run sites for all 3.

[–] ThorrJo 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There's got to be a way to subscribe only to posts. The fact that Lemmy communities currently boost every single comment to the microblogging side of the Fediverse makes them effectively unusable from that side.

[–] mike@jammer.social 0 points 2 years ago

@ThorrJo @selfhosted I suspect its a fluke this works at all 😆. ActivityPub objects are all kind-of the same, and it's on the developer to decide how to use them. "Reddiverse" (?) software organizes posts into threads, and microblogers sort them into streams.

[–] cnx@slrpnk.net 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think group is to be implemented in Mastodon soon™. Qoto's fork already did, and some other microblogging implementations like GNU Social and Frendica had supported such feature since before Mastodon (the software) even existed.

[–] devfuuu@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Decades ago on status net one could just write an hashtag with an exclamation mark instead of a hash and it would go to anyone that followed it. It was kinda crazy but also so cool.

[–] mike@jammer.social 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oops! I didn't expect this to start a thread on @selfhosted (I posted this from Mastodon). Hello other Fediverse friends. 😅

[–] ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Lmao, the best part of this goof is that you accidentally demonstrated a way to sort of post with separate title/body text.

It looks like a title may only be 90 characters on Lemmy, so I guess you could make the title text then pad out with spaces (or whatever) to then separate out into distinct body text.

[–] mike@jammer.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

@ElectroVagrant I wonder if this will work too?

(I'm using the "content warning" feature of Mastodon, and replying directly to a lemmy.world user)

EDIT: Okay the content warning didn't work, but it appears that so long as I @ someone on the server that owns the group (it doesn't have to be the group),my messages will federate correctly. Also if you can read this, Mastodon's edit federation works too. 😋

[–] ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Speaking of edits, Lemmy's edit federation works as well!

[–] mike@jammer.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

@ElectroVagrant 🎉

EDIT: Ah interesting. I see the pencil icon on Lemmy for your edit, but my edits aren't marked with an icon. That feels like cheating. 😆

EDIT2: I stand corrected, the pencil appeared later. I wonder if this one will change too?

EDIT3: Yes it does. Another curiosity, but I swear that the comment count for this thread goes up every time I edit. 🤔

EDIT4: Confirmed (for Lemmy at least). After I push send the comment count should say 31.

[–] the_thunder_god@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

@mike Same boat. I established an account over on Fosstodon during one of the Twitter exoduses. I like the UI more for kbin.social over Lemmy, so I think I'm here to stay. I tried out the federation between the two accounts, and figured out that mastodon really does twitter-like stuff really well. Kbin/Lemmy do reddit-like stuff really well. So I'm planning on just treating them like I treated Twitter and Reddit....as two separate services for different purposes with different UI's.

My only issue is that I chose a different name when I signed up on kbin.social/Lemmy to match other accounts I have (one of which I recently changed to be in line with the rest), and it's not what I have on Fosstodon, but I already moved once to a different instance (used to be on mastodon.social), I don't really want to change usernames on Fosstodon. Frustrating a bit for me, but I'll deal.

[–] roosmaa 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thanks for doing this experiment! I was really curious if it was technically possible (but not using Mastodon so wasn't able to test it myself), and now I know 😊

[–] mike@jammer.social 0 points 2 years ago

@roosmaa @selfhosted Ha, I'm happy to have helped answer the question. 😆

This was supposed to just be a toot to my feed sharing that I figured out how to follow groups from Mastodon. I was not expecting to stumble across how to post to groups using Mastodon too. 😅

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