I know it’s possible to subscribe to a Mastodon user on a Lemmy instance, but it seems to me like this is of limited utility since the more standard use case on Mastodon is following tags rather than users. So, is it possible to somehow follow a Mastodon tag using Lemmy and get posts with that tag integrated into your Lemmy feed?

Edit: Never post before fully woken up. It is not possible to subscribe to another user directly on Lemmy, whether they’re on Lemmy or Mastodon. That’s how things work on Mastodon, not on Lemmy. It is possible to find Mastodon users by using the instance search feature, though, as I’ve described in a reply to @Malgas@beehaw.org below, but you so far can’t really use this to achieve anything very useful, as far as I can tell.

Edit 2: It seems like something like this theoretically could be set up, but it’s way more complicated than what I initially asked for. You would need:

  • A dedicated Lemmy instance for Mastodon tag-based crossposting (probably)
  • Some kind of form on a site where users who want to follow a Mastodon tag that is not already set up as a Lemmy community could submit the tag they want added, which would automatically set up:
  • A Lemmy community for that tag on the aforementioned instance, and
  • A Mastodon hastag bot that automatically crossposts all Mastodon posts with that tag to that community

Whether something like this already exists, I have no idea, but I get the feeling it could actually be useful.

  • MalgasEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    I know it’s possible to subscribe to a Mastodon user on a Lemmy instance

    Wait, it is? How do you do that?

    I was under the impression that it was possible to follow a lemmy from mastodon but not the other way around.

    • @Anbalsilfer@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      When you search on a mastodon instance, some of the hits will be users. You can narrow down the search to show only those by explicitly specifying so. A segment of those users often look weird because they have no name at all and always share the standard lemmy default icon as profile picture. Like this:

      Those are (usually) non-Lemmy Fediverse users, most of which are on Mastodon. You can click on them to see the profile and from that you should be able to follow them.

      Edit: While it’s true that you can find Mastodon users on Lemmy using the method described here, you can’t actually subscribe directly to another user to get their posts in your feed, whether they’re on Lemmy or Mastodon. This notion of users directly following users is very much more in line with Mastodon’s design philosophy than Lemmy’s, so you’re probably right that you can follow a Lemmy instance from Mastodon but not the other way around. Please excuse my brain fart.

      The only way I can see to make anything similar work would be to have hashtag bots like those described by @RxBrad@lemmings.world automatically post into relevant (or separate specialized) Lemmy communities, which admittedly seems like it might be interesting. Whether something like that already exists, though, I have no idea.