Conceptually, it’s similar to an RSS feed: you can’t give someone a link to a feed that will automatically open in their own feed reeder; they need to go to their own reader first and paste the url there. The only exception is if their browser is configured to recognize feeds and open them in their default reader—and I think that’s going to have to be the solution for fediverse content: browsers will need to be updated, or browser plugins developed.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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There are a few browser plugins that do this sort of thing for mastodon. I imagine some dev work would be needed to adapt them for the Threadiverse, but the concept is certainly out there.
Or maybe a general-purpose ActivityPub plugin, if you prefer to view lemmy content from your mastodon account or vice versa.
I don't think I'm aware of a way to link to a specific post or comment natively in a way that allows every user to see it on their home instance. There are some userscripts that fix this problem, and I think some of the apps do, too. Here is one (requires Violentmonkey or the like)
An instance-neutral link could be nice. No idea if it's doable.
If the link and its OP shares the same instance domain (@[email protected] posting to [email protected]), then the federation link should be the link itself (please confirm if this is actually true).
If not, then the “federation link” has to be obtained.
This is my understanding
If you're given a link to a post, call the CommunityLinkFixer Bot, which should give you the URL of the post from your own instance (so you stay logged in):
[AT] CommunityLinkFixer [AT] lemmings.world
If someone gives you an absolute link to a Community, then the Bot should pop up to fix it itself.
I say that, and I'm actually 100% sure how it works, so lets try:
Hi there! Here are all the fixed links for your instance:
There is a button with fediverse icon that can be used to go to the post's link in the the original instance. Share that link instead. People that want to open it on their own instance can paste the link in their instance's search bar to find the local federated copy. A bit awkward but at least it works.
Is there technical reason it has to be the original instance's link instead of any other server being linked to? Federation and all, I see it as having an additional node before destination, but it's not a broken link regardless.
The original url is basically the real post ID, which can be used to identify the same post regardless the instance you're currently in. AFAIK there are efforts to make deep linking work without copy pasting the original instance's url, so hopefully things are getting better in the coming months.
Matrix tackled this UX issue in the bud relatively early with https://matrix.to/. It still isn't ideal, but much better than expecting users to install browser extensions or OS-specific hacks to properly handle ActivityPub links.