It’s easy to discover communities on my instance via the dedicated page in the hamburger menu. But let’s say I want to follow a community on another instance, such as [email protected] . I might have found its name mentioned in a post or comment. When I click on the provided link, I’m thrown on that instances web page, from which I of course can’t subscribe.
So what I instead have to do is to copy the description of the link and paste it in my instance’s search bar. Which isn’t easy, since it’s a link, so there isn’t even a straightforward way to select the link text without clicking the link. This seems very unintuitive and makes the process of joining a whole bunch of communities tedious. Is there a better way?
Mastodon for all its sophistication has exactly the same limitations though. Linking to a post is a full URL which takes me to a remote instance where I can no longer interact. And boosted posts are missing replies if they have not been previously pushed to my instance. I realize there’s some problems with a fetch model (extra server load) but it would be so nice if I could browse the entirety of Fedi from the comfort of my own instance without having to paste URLs in search bars.
You’re right, but Mastodon already has lifted some of those problems (because they had funding and energies).
Also if you need it, I know of this extension that’s being developed that could the exact problem you’re referring to: FediFetcher. It’s still being developed but I think it’s going to be very useful
Edit: I also heard about this one, it looks cool: Simplified Federation