Ron Gilbert (GrumpyGamer)I hate that you can't link to a Mastodon post without it taking you a different server. It's nuts that those links aren't swizzed on the sever. Always taking me to a different server that I'm not logged into is the Achilles heal of Mastodon. Non-tech users are completely confused by this. It's not their fault, it's Mastodon's fault. I know it's not easy to fix, but if Mastodon wanted to fix one thing keep new users, this is it.
Tom Casavant@grumpygamer they're in the process of fixing this! There's an effort from the mastodon team to fix it as well as ActivityPub devs on other software, hopefully that means it'll be fixed soon
@grumpygamer here's the relevant discussion for reference https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-html-discovery/issues/20
And a mastodon dev's comment on it: https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-html-discovery/issues/20#issuecomment-2358581146
Follow a link without leaving my ActivityPub API client · Issue #20 · swicg/activitypub-html-discovery
"As an ActivityPub API client user, when I'm reading some HTML content of an ActivityPub object and I click a link, I want to pull the linked ActivityPub object directly into my client, so I don't ...
Jøn Ghùll@grumpygamer There are other Fediverse platforms that support quotes and it's really convenient.
@jonGhull How did you paste my user name it. It's a long url that will take a user off server. I just start typing @grumpygamer and it fills in the rest and keeps it short. This works for people not on my server.
@grumpygamer I guess this is the way the platform we use (Firefish), automatically handles user mentions!
Max Lee@jonGhull Kind of unrelated (sorry) but you might want to look into migrating to a different *key-fork to keep your instance safe. Firefish seems dead for good now: https://info.firefish.dev/notes/9xsukr38m3komd63 :S (I personally will probably move to Sharkey)
Firefish (@firefish)
**Announcement: Firefish will enter maintenance mode** For those who have been supporting Firefish and me, I can’t thank you enough. But today, I have to make an announcement of my very difficult decision: As of today’s release, Firefish will enter maintenance mode and reach end-of-support at the end of the year. The main reasons for this are as follows. In February, Kainoa suddenly transferred the ownership of Firefish to me. This transition came without prior notice, which took me aback. I still wish Kainoa had consulted with me in advance. At that time, some people were already saying that “Firefish is coming back”, making it challenging to address the situation. Also, since there were several hundred active Firefish servers at that point, I could not suddenly discontinue the project, so I took over the project unwillingly. Over the past seven months, I have been maintaining Firefish alone. All other former maintainers have left, leaving me solely responsible for managing issues, reviewing merge requests, testing, and releasing new versions. This situation has had a significant impact on my personal life. Frankly speaking, there are numerous bugs and questionable logic in the current Firefish codebase. While I attempted to fix them, balancing this work with my personal life made it clear that it would take ages, and I’ve started thinking that I can’t manage this project in the long run. Additionally, vulnerabilities have been reported approximately once a month. Addressing vulnerabilities, communicating privately with reporters, and testing fixes have proven overwhelming and unsustainable. Moreover, a certain percentage of users have made insulting comments, which have severely affected my mental well-being and made me fearful of opening social media apps. I will do my best to refund the donations made to Firefish via OpenCollective, but that’s not guaranteed. `firefish.dev` and `info.firefish.dev` will remain operational until the end of February 2025, after which they will return a 410 Gone status. Server admins may downgrade Firefish to version `20240206`/`1.0.5-rc` and migrate to another *key variant, or may fork Firefish to maintain. Downgrade instructions: https://firefish.dev/firefish/firefish/-/blob/downgrade/docs/downgrade.md Thanks, naskya
@the_moep Yes, we know, thanks! We will probably migrate soon to Iceshrimp (or Sharkey) as well!
FediThing 
It does parse the links on some apps to keep them within the app without sending people off to a website, but not all apps do this. I'm not sure how the parsing takes place, but it seems to work better for some domains, so I'm wondering if they just have a public domain list they look up from to check if a link is a Fediverse one.
Jeff Bridges@grumpygamer To me this feels like a gimme. Yet I liked their initial choice of things only being searchable to hashtags, not post text, and they flipped on that. Interesting choices.
Dave Gilbert/Wadjet Eye Games@grumpygamer Honestly it's the main reason I don't use it as often as I'd like.
Schicke Schicke Schweine@wadjeteyegames @grumpygamer did history just happen?!?! The two most famous adventure gaming Gilberts just had a mastadon moment. This is history. I was there.
NOTxNSANE@Gargron some harsh but good feedback. I also concur on this, perhaps you can illuminate a little more?
Jef Poskanzer@grumpygamer I think Pinafore does fix it? Proof of concept that it wouldn't be that hard to fix?
Herr Irrtum! 🔊@jef @grumpygamer
Careful, Pinafore isn't in development since >1y now (https://nolanlawson.com/2023/01/09/retiring-pinafore/),
however it's fork Semaphore is (https://semaphore.social/settings/about).
Both are alternative (web) clients for Mastodon.
I'd be careful to use 3rd party web clients with my credentials for whatever service. Note, that the Pinafore developer did know and explicitly address this (but it's not touched since > 1 year, I wouldn't consider this "safe" anymore) – no idea if the developers of Semaphore think the same.
Careful, Pinafore isn't in development since >1y now (https://nolanlawson.com/2023/01/09/retiring-pinafore/),
however it's fork Semaphore is (https://semaphore.social/settings/about).
Both are alternative (web) clients for Mastodon.
I'd be careful to use 3rd party web clients with my credentials for whatever service. Note, that the Pinafore developer did know and explicitly address this (but it's not touched since > 1 year, I wouldn't consider this "safe" anymore) – no idea if the developers of Semaphore think the same.
cholling@jef @grumpygamer Writing code is easy. Convincing Gargron to put it in Mastodon is impossible. He seems to think that quote posts will bring on the apocalypse or something.
@cholling @grumpygamer Yeah but displaying a Mastodon URL as a quote toot is different from displaying a Mastodon URL on the local server.
sbszine@grumpygamer On the web client there are browser plugins that mitigate much of the pain
Paul Nicholas 
@grumpygamer Agreed, this is a pain and should be fixed. But I'd honestly forgotten this wasn't already a thing, coz it seems the client I use, @phanpy, kinda takes care of this transparently. It shows the quoted post embedded, but if I click it, it seems to keep it to my instance so I can easily interact. 😅
Erik MoellerYup, I echo the recommendation to give https://phanpy.social/ a try -- it's a static web app, and solves a lot of chronic Mastodon UX issues, or at least points in the right direction.
Benjamin@grumpygamer Your post on mstdn.games without leaving mstdn.games: https://mstdn.games/deck/@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place/113189402257183700
You can click on the three-dots menu on a post in the Mastodon webinterface, and click "Copy URL". It becomes the link above.
Works for sharing with others only if they are on the same instance, otherwise still the same issue you mentioned.
Ron Gilbert #KamalaHarris (@[email protected])
I hate that you can't link to a Mastodon post without it taking you a different server. It's nuts that those links aren't swizzed on the sever. Always taking me to a different server that I'm not logged into is the Achilles heal of Mastodon. Non-tech users are completely confused by this. It's not their fault, it's Mastodon's fault. I know it's not easy to fix, but if Mastodon wanted to fix one thing keep new users, this is it.
Ian K Tindale@grumpygamer when I first started using mastodon years ago that’s probably why I ended up with somewhere over fifteen accounts I didn’t realise I then had (probably more like over twenty actually maybe even more, I’ve no idea) – all with the same login and password, thinking I’m logging into my own account again for some reason
Zoidberg For President@grumpygamer Isn't it the point of Mastodon to be distributed ?
Kōtare 
@ZoidbergForPresident @grumpygamer I read that as 'disturbed', and my initial thought was "yes, yes it is".
Winnie 🏳️🌈@grumpygamer I'm sorry if I misunderstand what you mean but I think I can:
if I go to https://mastodon.de/@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place/113189402225733317, I see your post on my instance (mastodon.de) being logged in.
if I go to https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@grumpygamer/113189402043320068, I see it on your instance where I'm not logged in
still I agree with you that the UI should by default link to the former, not the latter.
Ron Gilbert #KamalaHarris (@[email protected])
I hate that you can't link to a Mastodon post without it taking you a different server. It's nuts that those links aren't swizzed on the sever. Always taking me to a different server that I'm not logged into is the Achilles heal of Mastodon. Non-tech users are completely confused by this. It's not their fault, it's Mastodon's fault. I know it's not easy to fix, but if Mastodon wanted to fix one thing keep new users, this is it.
@winniehell @grumpygamer That's exactly the point. You can't just link to my-instance/some-post because "my instance" is different for everyone who views it. You can link to the original, but newcomers aren't going to know how to rewrite the URL to get a version they can like, share, follow, etc., and the rest of us aren't going to want to jump through those hoops every time.
You can thank the "Gargron bottleneck": Mastodon is an absolute monarchy and nothing happens unless the chief developer decrees it. Or you could use one of the many other ActivityPub servers that do allow quote posts.
You can thank the "Gargron bottleneck": Mastodon is an absolute monarchy and nothing happens unless the chief developer decrees it. Or you could use one of the many other ActivityPub servers that do allow quote posts.
Robert Anderberg 🕹️@grumpygamer 100% agree. It's impossible to explain and a lot of it could be solved if they would drop a cookie with your home server and use that to redirect stuff. I suggested that and it seems they didn't like it because it was "tracking".
Trinsec@grumpygamer
An easy solution is to be able to quote posts, but for some reason Mastodon devs don't really like it. While almost any non-Mastodon server can do it and some Mastodon flavors can do it too.
The Mastodon devs deem this feature 'toxic', and yes it can be used in a negative way. But just linking to a post is even more toxic because you don't know if it's linked to a post you had muted/blocked. If it's quoted, at least the server can hide the contents if you've blocked the user of the quoted post.
Oh well, I haven't been using Mastodon for over a year now, and I'm not longing back because of dumb decisions like this.
An easy solution is to be able to quote posts, but for some reason Mastodon devs don't really like it. While almost any non-Mastodon server can do it and some Mastodon flavors can do it too.
The Mastodon devs deem this feature 'toxic', and yes it can be used in a negative way. But just linking to a post is even more toxic because you don't know if it's linked to a post you had muted/blocked. If it's quoted, at least the server can hide the contents if you've blocked the user of the quoted post.
Oh well, I haven't been using Mastodon for over a year now, and I'm not longing back because of dumb decisions like this.
@grumpygamer
Also I think this problem is getting bigger and bigger. Lately I see way more posts with links to individual posts which easily could've been a quote post instead. The demand for the quote feature is obviously huge.
Also I think this problem is getting bigger and bigger. Lately I see way more posts with links to individual posts which easily could've been a quote post instead. The demand for the quote feature is obviously huge.
araly@grumpygamer Sharkey just loads a page for the post, with a warning that it may not look like what the original did, and a link to actually go to the original instance if needed.
phampy also does something like that
honestly I think mastodon is so ugly, but has good apps, front ends. Sharkey is great, but has no mature apps. Tusky for mastodon is one of the only things that remembers where I left off, so it's basically all I use
JWcph, Radicalized By Decency@grumpygamer Word. And the next one after that might be the related "copy-paste into search" rigamarole for following certain accounts - after two years or so on Mastodon I'm not even sure myself which ones this applies to or why.
Boab@jwcph @grumpygamer if I could look at an account, examine the followers/following and just there choose to also follow, I would recommend the service to everybody. Now with all the server mess. Only to dedicated people
@boab @grumpygamer Very much agree - I also don't recommend this to anyone who isn't already pretty deeply nerdy & might appreciate the idea enough to accept the more cumbersome aspects, but I'd recommend it to everyone if I could be pretty sure not to be hated for it 😝
Emil Jacobs - Collectifission@grumpygamer It is confusing at first, but if you want to reply it "takes you home" after you enter your instance url. I agree this could be done better / automated, but after the first few times you get used to it.
People just expect Mastodon to work like a central service, like twitter, and it isn't. UX can be done better, but people should also just be open to the fact that it behaves differently.
Woefdram@grumpygamer Not sure why that would be an Achilles heel...
Linking to other places is the foundation of the Web, it's what started (almost) all of it.
It's the fact that people nowadays are used to referring to whatever is on the server they know that may be such a heel: people tend to see their small environment as "the world".
The "fix" you suggest would mean admins would need *huge* amounts of disk space to store incredible quantities of data that's already available elsewhere.
What's the problem with linking to another server?
David JONES
Frost, wolf of winter 🐺🎄
@grumpygamer Counterpoint: Gargron TRIED to "fix" this in Masto 4 and it's horrendous.
The fediverse is decentralized, gotta get used to it.
It's important to have the /actual canonical link/ to a post, which yeah, of course that's gonna be on a different server.
Trying to switcheroo links around and hide the existence of other servers just pushes your own server as the One True Server and it's not okay *waves paw at mastodon.social*.
Now, if you don't try to do those horrendous proxy links, and instead just have JS onclick fuckery to keep you in the client, that'd be alright. But if you're sharing a link offsite? Of COURSE it's the canonical link. That's how it should be.
@grumpygamer Oh, and if you receive a postlink, pop it into your client's searchbar. It'll find and load it on your server. :3