this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Fediverse
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This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.
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You can only use your account to log in to your instance. And the mastodon app only supports mastodon instances and jerboa is only for lemmy.
You can use the fediverse to interact with content from mastodon and lemmy from your home instance on kbin. For example I am writing this comment from lemmy.
sure, but I thought ActivityPub is a common protocol they all use to allow interoperability.
Like an API, where there are users, posts, images that can be created, liked and boosted.
I.e logging in to a mastodon app would allow me to create /browse madtodon-specific posts (microblogs), and logging in to pixelfed app, would allow me to only upload/browse images, etc...
ActivityPub has 2 parts: The Server to Server API (S2S), which is how instances communicate and is the backbone of federation. and the Client to Server (C2S) API, which is a way for instances to communicate with an app/website. Unfortunately, mastodon made the decision early on to go the proprietary API route instead of using the C2S for app development. The rest of the microblogging fediverse had to implement the mastoapi so that they could share app support. Lemmy and kbin don't use the mastoapi, which is why they aren't compatible with mastodon apps and they don't even implement the same API so their apps won't be compatible either.
Ideally, lemmy and kbin will migrate to a common API so their apps can be compatible. Even more ideally (and the original goal of the protocol), lemmy and kbin would use the C2S so that they could work with standard AP apps that also work with any compliant AP service.
That’s interesting. I’m not a huge supporter of it, but wasn’t account portability one of the reasons that Bluesky created their own AT protocol?
I don't know anything about Bluesky, but this has nothing to do with account portability. ActivityPub doesn't easily support account portability; your account is always on a single server. There are mechanisms to move your account to another server, but they're incomplete (you can't migrate your existing posts, etc).
The C2S is about allowing native apps that can work with any ActivityPub implementation. So in an ideal world, you could use a single app to access lemmy, kbin, calckey, pleroma, hubzilla, mastodon, wordpress, etc.