this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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Hello.

I'm extremely tired, so it very well could be that this is extremely simple and I'm just not getting it. However, what I would like to know is how to open a post from a community on one instance on another instance.

For example, here's a recent post from [email protected]. I know that to open that community in the instance lemmy.blahaj.zone, I would merely type into the address bar

lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/[email protected]

However, how would I open that particular post in that community on the latter instance? Is it even possible?

Cheers.

 

P.S.

I did do some searching on both this community as well as the Reddit Lemmy FAQ page but I didn't find anything. However, I could've missed something. If it's something obvious, I apologize in advance.


Edit: Assuming I understand what people are saying, well, evidently, it seems to be a current limitation of the ActivityPub protocol. Perhaps that will change one day. Hopefully soon. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Most apps handle it internally, but if you're on the web browser you can use the Instance Assistant extension to do it for you. It adds a little "open post in home instance" button

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Instance Assistant

Nice! Installed!

Thanks. :) Kind of makes me think of a Reddit Enhancement Suite–type app but for ActivityPub. Haha.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The short answer is that you have to ask blahaj.zone to resolve it. lemmy.ml has it as post id 11470168, but it'll be different for other instances - whatever the next number was in their database when the post was announced.

You get different answers depending on whether you're logged in or not though.
From endlesstalk.org, I can search for that post in the web-ui: Communities -> paste the post url into Search -> Change the Type from 'communities' to 'posts'
Alternatively, using the API, I can resolve it with
curl --header 'accept: application/json' --header 'authorization: Bearer MY_LOGIN_TOKEN' https://endlesstalk.org/api/v3/resolve_object?q=https://lemmy.ml/post/11470168

I'm not logged into blahaj.zone though, so it won't resolve it. The web-ui only gives me this post as one that mentions the thing I'm searching for, and the API returns 'not found'

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I understand. I wasn't sure if it was something that was already possible and I just didn't get it (again, because I'm tired as balls), or if it was a problem with my instance, or hell even a limitation of the ActivityPub protocol itself. If I knew it was the instance, I would have posted for sure there instead. Although judging from others' comments here, it seems the issue really is an ActivityPub limitation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Drop the permaurl/fedilink into your own instance's search box. Note that you have to be logged in when searching for remote content otherwise it'll silently find nothing, probably to avoid abuse of server resources.

Related minor issue https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2160

And pull request with the fix https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/pull/2344 (give a thumbs up or comment if you want to see this fix accepted)

Basically if the colorful fedilink icon is not there then you can just copy the URL from your address bar cause you're already on the local post. Posts are local to the instance of the poster, not the instance of the community.

Here's a couple of feature requests filed for improving the core issue: (give them thumbs ups)

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2318

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2987

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

This was all genuinely very fascinating, but now I'm embarrassed because I don't know what a fedilink is. xD

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

@EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted @Die4Ever I think of a "fedilink" as the canonical URL where the post/comment/toot/video/etc. can be found.
From Lemmy server lemmy.sdf.org: https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/8082033
From hachyderm.io (running Mastodon): https://hachyderm.io/statuses/111886790514615908
Each of those servers loaded your comment from https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/6238380 (this is the fedilink!)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So the fedilink is the link to the original post on the original instance?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Thanks for explaining that!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

this colorful icon is the fedilink, the original URL of the post/comment