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Browser extension that lets you follow accounts on foreign Mastodon instances

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21–30 of 35 posts

Re: Browser extension that lets you follow accounts on foreign Mastodon instances

#21
post #19

Not sure if I am missing something, but this is something I can do without any extra extensions installed? Out of the 27 accounts I am currently following, 20 are accounts from other Mastodon instances... I do have to search for the account on my local instance to start following them instead of being able to click follow right there, but that is a minor annoyance

It will never gain significant popularity with UX failures like this.

Does Hacker News have 'significant popularity'?

Re: Browser extension that lets you follow accounts on foreign Mastodon instances

#22
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be an oauth flow for interacting with your home instance. I dont know when they got rid of it, maybe 4.0?

You'd still need to type in (or select in some other way) your home instance. The instance you're browsing on has no way of knowing otherwise.

A one-ish off login with other big instances is a tolerable solution for me.

Re: Browser extension that lets you follow accounts on foreign Mastodon instances

#23
post #15

For anyone on iOS, you can use this in the new Orion webbrowser: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/orion-browser-by-kagi/id148449...

Does this relate to the OP?

Quoting OP: "There is only one way to use FediAct on iOS: Orion Browser." https://github.com/Lartsch/FediAct#:~:text=There%20is%20only....

Re: Browser extension that lets you follow accounts on foreign Mastodon instances

#24
post #19

Not sure if I am missing something, but this is something I can do without any extra extensions installed? Out of the 27 accounts I am currently following, 20 are accounts from other Mastodon instances... I do have to search for the account on my local instance to start following them instead of being able to click follow right there, but that is a minor annoyance

It will never gain significant popularity with UX failures like this.

This seems reductionist & rejectionist to me. If people have a reason to care, little impedances like this are not going to stop things.

In general this high judgementalism really should have a tiny smidge of humility & respect in it. That lacks. You could improve.

Re: Browser extension that lets you follow accounts on foreign Mastodon instances

#27
post #24
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will never gain significant popularity with UX failures like this.

This seems reductionist & rejectionist to me. If people have a reason to care, little impedances like this are not going to stop things. In general this high judgementalism really should have a tiny smidge of humility & respect in it. That lacks. You could improve.

I disagree, it's little frictions like this that make it hard for newcomers to take the stage even when on paper they're better than established competitors. This is hackernews so obviously our population is going to be less likely to be significantly hampered by this, but I'm telling you for a fact that everyone in my family that checked out mastodon struggled to follow people that were on different instances, texted/emailed me about why they couldn't login on that instance, and have since stopped using it. Now I'm not sure if that's the only reason, but they all reached out to me about it and few about anything else, so it's definitely harmful for the ecosystem.

Re: Browser extension that lets you follow accounts on foreign Mastodon instances

#28
For those that don't want to install a browser extension (or use an app), I wrote a bookmarklet that lets you toggle between viewing things in your Mastodon instance and a foreign one.

https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/imurray2/code/mastodon.html

Re: Browser extension that lets you follow accounts on foreign Mastodon instances

#30
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will never gain significant popularity with UX failures like this.

Does Hacker News have 'significant popularity'?

No, but it doesn't need one. Or looking at it in at other way - as long as it is better than Slashdot and Reddit people will keep coming anyway - and that bar is freaking low.
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