If I understand correctly, users of other fediverse things like Mastodon can follow lemmy communities (and users?) but the reverse is not currently possible. Would it not make sense for lemmy users to be able to subscribe to a hashtag or user on a mastodon instance?
I’d like to suggest editing this post title to match the post, about subscribing to Mastodon hashtags or instances.
There is already some “interop with other fediverse platforms” possible, such as Friendica conversations and post rating and what appears to be an early work-in-progress channel viewing/subscription for PeerTube.
I think this idea makes sense for a link aggregator site such as Lemmy and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were already a future goal for the project.
It takes time because, even though the ActivityPub standard is just one standard, every platform adds their own spin on it and the data doesn’t match up exactly. It’s unfortunate but the flexibility of AP allows us to have youtube and instagram equivalents on the fedi.
There is no previous work on Peertube compatibility, it just happens to use Groups for its channels, which Lemmy also uses for communities. Lemmy cant handle videos, but i might look into that.
…and less than a month later, the new lemmy release allows following peertube channels!
thanks, @nutomic@lemmy.ml et al!