Why is Pixelfed an extra network and not just a Mastodon client? (leminal.space)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by SebZuen@leminal.space to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey group,

Why is there not a Mastodon client to only utilize the media grid and pack it into an Instagram layout?

When I was exploring Bluesky and its clients a while ago, I actually liked the approach of having one central protocol and then having clients strip different masks over it. The Flashes app, for example, packed the media posts from your regular Microblog-profile into a Instagram-layout, while still keeping all your regular followings.

The federation between Pixelfed instances and Masto instances doesn't seem to be 100% working to my eyes. Likewise, when I look at my Pixelfed account via Masto client, it doesnt show me the pictures in the media grid.

I know this touches the very core of ActivityPub federation, but during the last years I couldn't figure out why fedi-networks never interacted completely.

Please correct me if I got something wrong or you know about obvious alternatives that I haven't stumbled upon yet.

Cheers! Enjoy the sun today!

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

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago

It’s an old conversation and it’s not you.

I don’t have links to anything on hand, but you’re not the first and won’t be the last to wonder about this and (maybe) start criticising it.

I also can’t give you the technical details (I’ve even forgotten a lot since I last cared about this), but basically, IIRC, it’s as you intuit … The platforms can be in the fediverse and still do kinda their own thing such that platform interop is not well guaranteed, arguably at all.

In the end, I convinced my self it’s a core problem of federated social media and failing at it was a huge missed opportunity to have an awesome feature that the commercial platforms lacked. “Federation happened in the client” was my way of trying to capture this perspective.

BlueSky probably doesn’t do any better but they architecture and protocol might point in the right direction.