And it also seems that mastodon can also be “syndicated” to these other communities, and vice versa? Is that true?
Are there limitations to any of this?
Apologies if this is not the perfect place to ask this question. I’m a lost old man. :-)
And it also seems that mastodon can also be “syndicated” to these other communities, and vice versa? Is that true?
Are there limitations to any of this?
Apologies if this is not the perfect place to ask this question. I’m a lost old man. :-)
Yes, that is one of the features of being federated. Kbin and Lemmy and Mastadon (and others) can all federate with each other, so posts and comments are all shared. It doesn’t really matter if you’re on Kbin or Lemmy, you can see the same communities/magazines and comments for the most part, and interact regardless of which one you are currently logged in to.
Well, my understanding is that email is federated, and SMS text messages are federated, but it isn’t easy to email a phone number, or send a text to someone’s email. So I’m surprised that Kbin and Lemmy can talk to each other.
But I see someone else answered that Lemmy, Kbin, and Mastodon all speak the same underlying protocol, ActivityPub. Now it’s starting to make sense.
Mildly off topic, and showing my age a bit on this one but it 100% is easy, as long as the telco in question supports it.
I used to be with Koodo up here in Canada (albeit this was years ago) and the ability to send/receive emails via your phone number was trivial. Literally could email 5555555555[AT]msg.koodomobile.com and it would be received, and when you reply the other side gets the email reply.
Whether companies still do this on the other hand, is the question (that no one asked lol).
It’s still a thing. At least with Gmail accounts:
https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6356597?hl=en
And you need to use the google messaging app on your phone. It probably bypasses texting and goes straight to the internet.
I remember seeing that as well in the US, but I think it was just too early in the internet phase and too odd to catch on. Then once smartphones became a thing it was pointless.
Yeah, however I think this doesn’t mean email and sms share the same protocol like kbin and Lemmy. I am guessing that the service provider (koodo in this case) is serving as a relay, basically people email koodo, and koodo forward that email to your phone.
This is how I got ringtones I made onto my phone. I’d just attach the .wav file to my email and it would show up as an MMS.
I think text to email is pretty universally supported. I work with clients who text my email address, and as far as I can recall I’ve always received the messages and been able to reply.
I think your example of email and SMS messages is a good analogy… Just because they can talk to each other doesn’t mean the presentation is always correct. For example I’m on Lemmy, and I have seen replies by people on Mastodon in these threads. However the Mastodon replies have a different formatting so you will see the leading @user1 @user2 types stuff on those replies which really stands out when you’re reading from a threaded interface. And I can’t imagine how you would navigate through a lemmy/kbin post while using Mastodon.
So yes, you could get to everything from a single user account, but I find it better to still have different accounts on Lemmy and Mastodon just to make it easier to view things in the intended presentation method. Maybe some day there will be flags embedded in each post so that one interface knows how to properly format what you are reading, we’re just not there yet.
Great take, and honestly I’m so excited to see what the future holds for development of new features, UX, and new paradigms on ActivityPub
Hard to imagine what this will all look like five years from now, but after seeing how it’s grown over the last year alone I’m very excited
(Also a plug for a growing community: kbin/m/genart for generative art of all kinds at all levels, if you like genart come hang out!)
Glad it’s starting to make sense. And notice here that instead of replying on Lemmy, from my lemmy.ca account I am replying from Kbin, on my kbin.social account.
It’s easier if you imagine that kbin and Lemmy are simply the underlying email servers in this analogy and the email itself (content) is what’s happening across the ActivityPub protocol.