Communities are for Lemmy and hashtags are for Mastodon.
They each make sense in their proper context.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Fediverse
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A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
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What if I told you that you can use Lemmy with Mastodon right now—and that many people do?
I have heard of the opposite. Mastodon users can see and comment on lemmy posts, but i have yet to discover how to view mastodon post from lemmy.
If it is indeed possible can you or anyone elaborate how to?
The post you're commenting on was made on a selfhosted instance of akkoma.social, so federation across softwares definitely works.
The mastadon user posting the thing needs to tag the Lemmy community in their post and then it will show up like any other post on Lemmy. You wouldn't even know it's from Mastodon unless they said so in the post.
You can usually tell it's from Mastodon because it's got a couple dozen hashtags scattered throughout the post and a dozen more users and communities tagged.
You have misread their comment and understood it backwards. AP's saying people on Mastodon are engaging in Lemmy discussions.
There is no way to follow Mastodon users from Lemmy. Lemmy simply does not work that way.
Hrmmm... at a (strong) guess, PieFed does. You can follow anything, like a community, post, comment (even ones you do not own), or a user account. You would get Notifications triggered every time they post something, I believe. Including comments as well as posts, but again just a guess.
It's a great way to follow a low-volume something or other! At higher volumes... it can get a bit much, but at least the tools are available, and you can always wipe all Notifications at once if need be.
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You're not the first to suggest it, but I still haven't seen anyone do more than linking one from the other. This feels as inconsequential as posting a Twitter screenshot on Reddit. Is there a deeper integration possible?
I saw this discussion on Lemmy, searched for it with my Mastodon client and, wow, it works! (I guess, we'll see after I hit SEND)
I guess it’s cool that you can if you want, but if I’m searching Mastodon I want content on Mastodon, not Lemmy and vice versa.
I still don’t see the point.
Is deeper integration possible? Sure, check out how I use !lumoura@piefed.social with my Akkoma account.
Can you be more specific? I don’t see anything.
Sure, here’s the URL:
https://piefed.social/c/lumoura
Also, you might want to look at getting a better Lemmy client.
Isn’t that just a Piefed photo stream?
I still don’t see any cross-app integration except simple linking.
Nope, not a Piefed photo stream. All those photos (so far) originate either from Akkoma or Pixelfed.
It looks “just” like a Piefed photo stream because I’m sending photos there. 😊
@deegeese @atomicpoet hi, this thread literally popped into my mastodon timeline. Only noticed this is not originally from mastodon because you mentioned it and because you don't mention on replies by default. Hope it works as an answer for deeper integration
Could you please explain how a Lemmy thread is showing up in Mastodon? I use it too but never see Lemmy there.
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Someone on Mastadon could reply to a comment here directly from there and you may not notice unless you look at their instance.
Usually, you notice it, as Mastodon automatically adds an @username@instance for everybody the commment replies to, Lemmy doesn't.
True, good point
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The tricky part is, the group-supporting fediverse software and the microblogging software need to improve how they interact for this to be as good as it could be.
Right now Mastodon barely supports group users/actors/accounts, however they're called, translating stuff from Lemmy's format in a rather clunky way. Meanwhile Lemmy also has to roughly translate Mastodon's format to its own, working pretty well all things considering, but leaving clear artifacts (subject line/first line repeating, community mention remaining shown, etc.).
@ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world With time, that stuff will be ironed out. Group support is in Mastodon’s road map. Now Mastodon develops very slowly, so take that with a grain of salt. But the point is that groups are coming to Mastodon… eventually.
I’m all for it as long as people know that posting on something like mastodon and tagging a lemmy community will then make a post in that community. Could make for great discussions, but could also lead to a lot of posts/spam in the communities.
@BenDoubleU@lemmy.radio But again, a big reason I recommend groups over hashtags is because you can remove spam from a group, whereas with a hashtag, you cannot.
So… will that increase spam? Not if moderators actually do their jobs.
As an instance owner and moderator: that’s a horrible way to look at things. Just throwing the onus onto someone else is irresponsible.
I’m an instance owner too (see atomicpoet.org and akkomane.social). Speaking as an instance owner, it’s our fundamental job to moderate.
It’s not “throwing the onus onto someone else.” The onus has always been on us.
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@atomicpoet @fediverse TBH I think a lot of people (including me) have a very sketchy idea of how the different bits of the Fediverse link together... I'm still a bit vague about how my #Mastodon and #Pixelfed accounts could work better together.
There's a lot of *assumed knowledge* about the #Fediverse ... and people don't want to ask 'stupid' questions because they don't want to 'look stupid'. There needs to be easily accessible and explicit step by step instructions *to get people started*.
Where could I find a group about #ux or #humancentredesign for example? Or #photography ?
@Coolmccool@mastodon.au @fediverse@lemmy.world The best way to explain #Pixelfed is that it’s an Instagram-like front-end for the Fediverse. But practically speaking, it’s Mastodon if pictures were a requirement on Mastodon. You interact with a Pixelfed account from Mastodon in much the same way you interact with another Mastodon account, or how you’re interacting with my Akkoma account right now. It really is just like email.
Regarding group topics, the best way to find them is to do a search on a place like lemmy.world or lemmy.ca. For example, uiux@programming.dev is one. And you can find the URL here:
@atomicpoet @fediverse @Coolmccool I think you're missing the point - it's not "what is PF/Masto/whatever", it's "how do they relate to each other, exactly, in a way I can understand & benefit from?" I've been in fedi for a few years & have, in fact, been asking the stupid questions, but I still don't quite understand either...
@jwcph @fediverse @Coolmccool The best way to understand the Fediverse is not as a collection of servers but instead as actors that implement activities.
You are an actor. A Lemmy community is an actor. A bot is an actor. An app is an actor.
All these things do certain activities. One activity is to like a post. Another activity is to repost.
And all these apps like Mastodon are just presenting these actors/activities in a certain format.
Hope that explains things.
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I have literally zero interest in cross pollination between social media types.
They each have their own interfaces that work best for their communities and content types. You're always missing something trying to access one from another.
If you have zero interest in the fundamental architecture of the fediverse, why are you in this community? You're probably interacting with "cross pollination" way more than you realize.
I follow topics and have discussions on Lemmy, keep up with individuals and announcements on Mastodon, and look at cool photos on Pixelfed.
None of my accounts are following anything on other systems.
The reason I'm in this community is for discussions like this. We disagree on the nature of using he fundamental architecture of the Fediverse.
I think using Mastodon to engage in Lemmy discussions is extremely awkward without the threading to keep it all organized. Equally, Lemmy is designed specifically around following communities. Following individuals on Mastodon breaks the pattern of the feed. And good luck following either Mastodon accounts or Lemmy groups in Pixelfed.
However, having multiple decentralized servers within each system, is plenty of reason for the Fediverse to be better than a centralized platform. They don't Need to interoperate with each other.
@Steve @shnizmuffin I follow one Lemmy community through my Mastodon account because it is mainly a casual chatty daily thread group. It +is+ weird, and not ideal as it doesn't show images for some reason, but I still kindof like that way of reading. I've got a separate Lemmy account for a bunch of Lemmy communities, and that works better generally. But I do like that they interoperate to some degree.
I also follow a bunch of hashtags and like them too. I find it all brilliant tbh, and love that it exists and isn't controlled by fucking billionaires.
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For real. He replied to my Akkoma post, which tagged this Lemmy group. 😆
Which I would never respond to on Mastodon, as it's terrible for discussions.
Mastodon is terrible for topical discussions because people don’t use groups. But they can if they knew how to use them.
You may say the system was not designed for cross-pollination, but the fundamental system is not Mastodon, and it’s not Lemmy: it’s ActivityPub.
Now do all these apps implement ActivityPub imperfectly? Yes. But eventually, some app will get it right—ideally one that will let you choose your preferred UI/UX on the fly.
That would be cool. Might be useful. Not sure it's really possible.
Not only is it possible, there’s lots of Fediverse software that’s just designed to be a “dumb server” akin to Nginx. For example, appy:
Now the reason this stuff hasn’t caught fire yet is because we’re just now moving away from “Fediverse = Mastodon”. So the idea of federation itself isn’t just a paradigm shift, it’s a complete system shock that disrupts our mental models for how social media is supposed to work.
That's entirely dependent on the interface switching, or some kind of universal interface. That's the part I have serous doubts about. Keep in mind you have to make a single interface that work better than all the others on their respective native systems. I'm not sure that's possible.
You don’t need to make a single interface, just a “meta-interface” that allows you to switch UIs on the fly.
That’s entirely doable within a client.
@atomicpoet @fediverse
Tag spammers get muted.
@m3t00 @fediverse Give me more context and what you specifically mean.
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