People need to realize you can use alternatives
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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As someone who intentionally joined a different instance, the biggest issue is the “federation” doesn’t allow cross-authentication. Clicking a link to another instance moves me to that instance where I’m not logged in. Authentication should really be cross-instance.
I think this occurs because people haven't gotten used to linking to communities on other instances properly.
They usually post the direct link like beehaw.org/c/technology . Instead they should start using the federated link which is more instance agnostic like this: /c/[email protected] . This link will load the community from your instance.
FWIW, on a browser the /c/technology link you posted isn’t a hyperlink, so I can’t actually interact with it. It doesn’t work in mlem either.
For now, as a workaround, you can manually make it a hyperlink: /c/[email protected]
Just use
[/c/[email protected]](/c/[email protected]). This should open correctly on all instances.Maybe a pull request can be made to change the auto fill behaviour. At least in the browser, start typing
!technologyand it will display a list of the technology communities. Unfortunately, selecting one, [email protected] for example, autofills to[[email protected]](https://beehaw.org/c/technology). This method opens up the Beehaw instance directly.Maybe it should autofill [email protected] to
[[email protected]](/c/[email protected]). This method opens the community through your current instance.Seems like line 703 of https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/blob/main/src/shared/utils.ts#L703 is the relevant code. I'm away for the weekend so can't do much myself at the moment
Yeah. A shorter-term solution might be a browser plugin that recognizes links like that and converts it to a hyperlink to that community on whatever instance you tell it. I'm not a programmer but that does seem like a relatively simple plugin for somebody that actually knows what they're doing.
Yeah, I’m sure we’ll eventually get apps and such that handle it better.
It also doesn't work in the mobile app, I'd love to see it work there soon too
This is something I also find strange. If I click a link to an instance, I want to view their content and not visit their homepage, where I am not logged in and cannot do anything.
assuming the servers are properly federated you should be getting a link that is still on your server. i mean, you got to this lemmy.ml link alright at least
wait, i think i get what you mean, like if you get an external link while not browsing on your instance? you should just be able to paste that link into the search function to find your instance's version of the post
From my instance, I've been crossing to other instances fine to post, upvote, etc.
If I click the link you provided, my browser takes me to Lenny.ml. There I am not logged in and my credentials from feddit.de are not working. So I cannot post there.
I think it only works if the link points to a community on another instance. Like [email protected] . Maybe this is the intended behavior.
The downside is, you can not visit an instance and view the local communities and their post and interact with them. This makes it a lot more attractive to join the instance where the communities are you want to frequent.
Edit: the link to the community does not work either for me. But I am kind of sure, that there are links that work as intended and make you just view the community from your own insurance…
You can subscribe to those communities on your instance, and then interact with them.
Yeah, I can manually search and find communities, but hyperlinks move you to the other instance (on a webpage; browsing within an app like mlem seems to work)
links that you find while browsing on reddthat.com will send you to other instances? that's super odd, I'm not getting that behavior with midwest.social or lemmy.ml, using mobile or desktop firefox. just pasting the links into the search to find your instance's version of the post is a bit of a janky workaround but it should work. you might try posting in https://reddthat.com/c/[email protected]
I agree with you
The devs of kbin and Lemmy have that on their list of things to do, make cross-instance links work nicer. But they have a lot on their plate at a moment, so it could be some time before that comes about.
How would that work?
Can you elaborate on your experience a bit more? I can't say I have had any issues as you've described. If something doesn't look right, or isn't working the way you expect, it might actually be a bug.