Have you ever browsed the website of another Fediverse server, and it tells you to log in again even if you're already logged in? Or asked you to give your server name?
You can avoid fuss by doing the following:
Log in on your own server's website or your app
Copy the web address of the post or profile from the other server's site
Paste the address into the search box on your own server or app. This will make the other server's post or profile appear within your own server.
Yes, but that mostly happens within your own server's interface, even if the interaction is between different servers.
For example, you and I are having this conversation right now and neither of us have had to do any copy-pasting, it has worked entirely within our own servers' interfaces even though we are on different servers.
The steps in the original post are only needed if someone wants to browse another server's website (not just interact with another server).
I'm saying it needs to become more streamlined. When I share links with my friends, we're not in the same servers. I'll probably share a link to a post either from tech.lgbt or from the original server. In either case my friends, who are on different servers, can't just click the link and immediately interact with the post like on other social networks.
"In either case my friends, who are on different servers, can't just click the link and immediately interact with the post like on other social networks."
They can do this in many of the mobile apps, a lot of them will automatically do the copy-paste thing behind the scenes. (For example Toot! does this, as do official apps.)
But this feature doesn't work all the time, and not everyone uses mobile apps, so the copy-paste thing is needed as a fallback.
@FediTips Honestly the most annoying things about mastodon. Especially when people are boosting threads posts. I click on the original in tusky, it brings it up in firefox, i can see it, but i cannot boost it because it wants me to sign into threads, which i do not have
p.p.s. There's been some misunderstanding of what this post means.
You don't need to do copy-pasting just to interact with other servers. The fact you're reading this post even though you're on another server shows that cross-server interaction happens seamlessly and automatically.
The copy-pasting thing is a niche option in very specific circumstances, usually if someone is looking directly at the website interface of another server (which most people don't do).
@FediTips It doesn't feel niche for browser mastodon - if someone puts a link to a different post as a kind of quote toot, on web you click the link and it opens on the remote servers page rather than your server's copy. It'd be nice to have the server direct you to it's own copy same as even the official Mastodon app does now (at least on Android)
Yeah, agreed, the apps' automatic copy-pasting thing ought to be on the web interface if possible.
On quote tooting though, I think the idea is to actively discourage quoting as it (in the opinion of the Mastodon developers) leads to toxicity. They seem to be softening on this stance now though, as some form of quoting is on the official roadmap.
@FediTips Honestly when the app looks up the remote post and displays it natively anyway I don't miss QTs - but the fact the web interface doesn't do this isn't a great experience. Still, it's a quirk not a disaster!
@FediTips The Fediverse will never work for civilians as long as anyone needs to do this. (I’m ok with it as it is, but I can’t suggest it to anyone else)
@jgordon@FediTips Yeah, I really really wish people could think of a way to make this seamless. It's so much friction. So often I'm making the calculation of whether I want to fuss with URLs or just not bother, especially on mobile.
@FediTips@jgordon I find it quite common to end up at other Fediverse site (like when somebody shares a list by link, or you look at somebody's profile). I wish there was some setting to automatically forward you home, but I realize that's totally a technical limitation
There are add-ons for browsers which will do this, but they tend not to work on all platforms and the ones I've previously recommended have not been updated :(
By the way, a lot of Fedi apps nowadays will automatically show the link's post within the app itself (doing the copy-pasting for you seamlessly), but it doesn't always work.
@FediTips@iagox86@jgordon literally every time someone links to a toot my browser leaves my server. Why can't I automatically get the behavior you describe on paste when my server is serving me the link to the other toot? Is this just deliberate to break quote toots?
People like to first boost the post but then also want to comment on it to their followers (rather than a reply), so they copy the toot link and paste it into a new toot of their own.
When someone else sees this 'quote' toot and clicks the link to the original they'll end up on the originating server for that toot.
Another thing to add is that Fedi apps nowadays do often automatically do the copy-pasting for you without asking, but apps don't always recognise Fedi links and that's when you end up seeing the other server's website.
@FediTips@iagox86@jgordon I run into this a lot on enafore/pinafore, if for instance someone posts a link to someone else's post, if I follow it it wil open in another window on the original server, and then if I want to boost it or follow them or whatever I have to copy the URL and go back which is massively inconvenient and time-wasty.
That's interesting to hear, I guess Pinafore just doesn't have any automated detection of Fediverse links. Sorry to hear about this, I know a lot of people use it!
Pinafore is no longer maintained, but hopefully Enafore could integrate something in the future?
For what it's worth, a lot of apps now do detect Fedi links and automatically do all the copy-pasting behind the scenes, but it doesn't always work so the manual option still has to be there as a fallback.
@FediTips@iagox86@jgordon no I think this is a big drawback to Mastodon, people can come across tweets directly all the time for example from a new article. If people link to Mastodon posts in the same way then this happens, and you have to do this very technical workaround that most people arent going to know or bother to do
Non-techy people are probably using mobile apps to view Mastodon.
Modern Mastodon mobile apps (both official and third party) will try to recognise links and do this workaround automatically behind the scenes, so from the user's point of view the post appears just like any other.
The manual copy-pasting method is only needed if the apps don't recognise the link as being from Mastodon/Fediverse.
@FediTips@iagox86@jgordon but thats the point I was making? "people can come across tweets directly all the time for example from a news article." You don't have to come across tweets within the twitter app for it to work (be able to reply, like, etc)
Ah, okay, fair enough, but that's a slightly different issue to clicking on a Mastodon link from quoting etc.
Also, in this particular case, if you click on a Mastodon link anyone can view all of the public posts and replies even if they've never used Mastodon. It's very well suited to sharing with non-users.
On Twitter, you can only view the post, all the other replies etc are hidden if you don't have an account. This is centralisation causing bad governance.