Hi all,

This is a continuation of this thread around Mastodon/Lemmy integration.

I am trying to understand the formatting rules around Mastodon to Mastodon/Lemmy posts. My Mastodon instance is www.mstdn.games.

I was able to get this point:

Mastodon input:

Lemmy crosspost:

Let me walk through the key points.

1. Thumbnail

This works really well. You attach an image on Mastodon and it outputs the correct thumbnail on Lemmy (it even works across instances, I know there are issues with LW vs other instances in custom thumbnail attach).

2. Markdown Formatting

Doesn’t seem to work on the Mastodon side. Not a big deal, the only somewhat relevant piece is the markdown URL syntax, but I can just use [Text - URL] style formatting.

I read that Mastodon is supposed to support markdown, but it seems to not be the case. Doesn’t matter, but if someone has anyone info on this, I would appreciate it.

3. Mastodon to multiple Lemmy communities

I tried adding both [email protected] and [email protected]. It seems only the first Lemmy community URL gets crossposted (I was able to post to [email protected] when it was the first Lemmy URL).

Again, this is manageable. I can crosspost (within Lemmy) from my Lemmy account.

4. Direct URL Lemmy link with Text Heading

This doesn’t seem to work. This is really annoying.

I can get text heading working on the Lemmy side, but the Lemmy URL always points to the Mastodon post URL:

Is there a way to define the URL on the Mastodon side so that Lemmy understands that the post must point to a specific URL (while having a separate Lemmy text heading and not having the post look like shit on the Mastodon side).

The last piece is critical for me. I don’t want to post links to Mastodon in the [email protected] community.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    3·
    14 days ago

    Lemmy and Mastodon have somewhat different purposes and integration between them is never going to be perfect. :/ Ultimately you’ll always get better results if you post to the platform you mainly want to target; posts sometimes being visible on the other one too is a side effect.

    What would probably be useful for purposes like yours is to have some kind of software that allows the creation of arbitrary or near-arbitrary ActivityPub objects with arbitrary audiences which can include one’s followers or any number of groups. I don’t know how feasible this is or whether someone has already done it.

    A few months ago I saw a post on a relatively large Lemmy community that had clearly been intended for the author’s Mastodon followers, but they tagged that Lemmy community (it had a name relevant to the content) apparently not knowing this would publish it to Lemmy. As I recall, this got >100 upvotes on Lemmy, but the Lemmy community’s mods deleted that post after a few hours. (Maybe some readers of this saw it too, it was to a “Europe” community and its content was something like “musKKK get the fuck out of EU politics”.)

    • Agent Karyo@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      I get that. I would argue the use case I described is basically the bread and butter of Mastodon <> Lemmy integration (if you don’t want your posts to look like shit on either Mastodon or Lemmy).

      The critical drawback for me is that you can’t have hardcoded URLs/images/headings across both Mastodon and Lemmy posts.

      If you can’t do that, you severely restrict the scope of integration between the two platforms. This is a net loss because the content I post on [email protected] is arguably relevant for both forum style discussions and micro-blogging.