Lemmy interoperability with other Fediverse projects (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by elena@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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Hi everyone!

I'm new here and I wonder if you have any advice/testimonials to share regarding Fediverse interoperability.

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

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[-] aasatru@kbin.earth 18 points 3 months ago

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

@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.

[-] ShittyKopper@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Mastodon's WIP implementation uses the conventions of Smithereen semi-standardized as FEP-400e. It's not something "incompatible with any other platform" (it's not commonly implemented, but it's not bespoke for no reason either). FEP-1b12 used by Lemmy also has it's own quirks (why are we Announceing activities?) and the specific implementation used by Lemmy will likely not interoperate far without breaking changes that will upset one or the other party, mainly the fact that users and communities can use the same webfinger handle.

Either every single other software needs to have specific quirks for Lemmy in order to handle this as most (reasonably) assume the username@domain combo will be globally unique, or Lemmy instances need to go on an account or community deletion spree to make this non-unique. You can easily DoS a user or community's federation outside the threadiverse bubble by setting up one of the other with the same username on the same instance.

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

what? I'd like to remind you Lemmy is the third most largest open AP server software. After Mastodon, and Misskey. (by a not insignificant margin, with Misskey having 8.6% of all known users by FediDB, and Lemmy having 3.8%) Just because they're Japanese doesn't make them any less a part of the network, and they do have their own innovations (MFM, and emoji reactions are just the ones that federate. They also had quotes before many others but I think they're not the first on that one).