I'm working on a post about it for my blog series The Future is Federated. I’d like to do a show & tell, demonstrating what interoperability looks like between #Lemmy and #Friendica, #Mastodon + a federated blog to start with.

There’s a superb post by @informapirata@mastodon.uno about Lemmy and Friendica communities: https://www.informapirata.it/2024/01/02/mastodon-tips-how-to-use-friendica-groups-forums-and-lemmy-communities/ and I wonder if you have ever tried further integrations.

I know this sounds crazy, but does #Phanpy work with Lemmy? I’m asking because I use it with not only #Mastodon but also #Pixelfed and Friendica.

Anyway, any testimonials and tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

@_elena@mastodon.social

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 18 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Hi, and welcome!

Lemmy does not, as of now, interoperate very well with Fediverse services such as Mastodon and Pixelfed. Sure, you can follow Lemmy communities from Mastodon, but it's not a pleasant experience. The group just boosts everything that is ever posted to it.

Likewise, Lemmy does not work with Phanphy - it has its own API, and separate apps. It's too different from Pixelfed/Mastodon for it to make sense to share an API.

If you search for @elena@lemmy.world at mastodon.social you will, however, be able to see your user from there; you can view this post, and if you have an account you can comment on it and contribute to the discussion like anyone else. You can also boost the post or comments to it, making it possible for content from Lemmy to reach far and wide. We sometimes do get comments from Mastodon users, so it clear that this happens every now and then, but mostly it's kept separate.

Mastodon users can also post to Lemmy by tagging a community (like they would tag an a.gup.pe group), but it's not very intuitive.

We commonly refer to Lemmy as part of the Threadiverse - a subset of the Fediverse which revolves around threaded discussions around shared content (Reddit like). The main platforms are Lemmy, Mbin (which is what I'm currently posting from), and PieFed.

Mbin and PieFed go further in the direction of interoperability than Lemmy does. Mbin supports Mastodon-like microblogging; if you check out the search for the hashtag Lemmy, you'll see not only this post, but also microblogs from Mastodon and all kinds of content. Limited, of course, by what is federated with that instance (Kbin.earth doesn't have too many users).

In Piefed, users can follow Mastodon groups made with a.gup.pe, such as the knitting group. Often Mastodon users start their posts by tagging each other, so it doesn't look completely native, but it can be neat. You can also follow PeerTube channels directly in Piefed.

In short, it's quite complicated - there are different platforms, and they all solve interoperability differently and prioritize it to different degrees. There's always the possibility that Mastodon users will stop by and say hello, but how easy it is made for them to do so varies quite a lot.

[–] informapirata@mastodon.uno 12 points 3 months ago (2 children)

@aasatru @_elena @elena Unfortunately, Mastodon staff has no interest in decently managing Activitypub groups. They are probably working on an implementation that is incompatible with any other platform and could take away visibility from Mastodon...

PS: Lemmy is the only platform that has had an exploit that overshadows Mastodon's success

[–] aasatru@kbin.earth 4 points 3 months ago

"probably" is a nice word here. I have seen no indication that Mastodon plans to make their groups difficult to work with for other platforms. There is, however, many interests to take into account to ensure a good user experience, and not one solution is guaranteed to work well for everyone. What works in the Threadiverse might very well be terrible in Mastodon. They follow very different network dynamics.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (4 replies)