I am a mod/curator at !tycoon@lemmy.world. We cover tycoon game (Project Highrise, Transport Fever) etc.
I also have a Mastodon account:
https://mstdn.games/@Landgraab_Industries
I typically only post releases or major stuff (not demos, or smaller early access titles) on the Mastodon account. I also add screenshots and tags for visibility/UX.
Today I clicked on the #tycoon hashtag on Mastodon and to my surprise it turns out my posts on !tycoon@lemmy.world are being automatically propagated on Mastodon:
When I started !tycoon@lemmy.world, I was actually considering creating an automated Mastodon account, but it turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated (or I don't know what I am doing).
I am curious how this automated propagation got enabled. It wasn't there a week ago. Is this tied to my mstdn.games Mastodon instance? What's going on here?
I am also not sure I like the current automated propagation method because:
- It links only to the Lemmy URL, it doesn't include the post URL (e.g. steam/gog page) which is IMO more important.
- Does not include a screenshot of the game (critical for micro-blogging IMO).
- Does not include additional tags.
Is there a way to "control" the parameters of this automatic propagation on Mastodon? E.g. by manually adding a "Thumbnail URL" on the Lemmy side, adding an additional post URL and hashtags in the Lemmy body post?
At this point, it almost looks like I am spamming the #tycoon tag. I would much prefer if there was a way to propagate my Lemmy posts on Mastodon using my manual Mastodon template (e.g. https://mstdn.games/@Landgraab_Industries/114221630323024773).
I see. I had a suspicion that this was somehow tied to my specific instance on Mastodon.
Correct me if I am wrong, but theoretically the Lemmy (Agent Karyo) posts could have already been federated on larger Mastodon instances, but I didn't see them because someone on mstdn.games needed to have first followed !tycoon@lemmy.world for me to see them on my mstdn.games feed?
And Lemmy content on Mastodon always follows the community = hashtag model?
The lack of ability to customize the appearance of Lemmy posts on Mastodon is really annoying. The default method is not suitable for micro-blogging.
I guess I will just continue doing what I did before and wait till there is a better system of managing Lemmy <> Mastodon interactions.
lemmy.world recently updated from version 0.19.3 to 0.19.10. This change - for Lemmy communities to federate out posts with the community name as a hashtag - was introduced in 0.19.4, so that might be the other reason why this has only just become an issue for you.
That explains in my older experiment the community fediverse as a user and I could get my posts properly tied to a hashtag. I need to try again!
Lemmy posts that are federated to Mastodon appear there with the community name as a hashtag. You can view your Lemmy profile from your Mastodon instance and see what got federated to that instance and how it appears there.
The Mastodon <> Lemmy problem has two sides. Lemmy devs are very busy and it's hard to know where should particular change be fixed. Should mastodon implement better group and page support or Lemmy more customization.