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Seeking Community Insights on a Federated Communication Model with Friendica


!Friendica Support
Subject: Seeking Community Insights on a Federated Communication Model with Friendica

Hello Friendica Community,
I’m working on a federated communication model involving a Friendica group and several accounts across other platforms like Mastodon, PeerTube, and Pixelfed.
Here’s the setup:
Mothership (Group):
@Classical Music and Beyond (parent account @PARLA)

Test Users:
@Via Artis Konsort – Mastodon
@Poul Udbye Pock-Steen – Mastodon
@Ballhaus – PeerTube
@Via Artis Konsort – Pixelfed
@Marko Petersen – Pixelfed
@PARLA – Friendica

The idea is simple:
1. Fediverse users following the group @Classical Music and Beyond should be able to post to it from accounts on other platforms.
2. Followers of the group should receive re-shared posts (text, graphics, and links to videos) from other group participants on their platform of choice.
3. Basic interactions like posting, receiving, and commenting should work seamlessly, respecting the nuances of each platform's format.

In theory, this aligns with the core concept of the Fediverse. However, achieving this seemingly straightforward goal has proven challenging.
After rigorous testing with the latest stable versions of Friendica, Mastodon, Pixelfed, and PeerTube, I’ve found that federation doesn’t work as smoothly as one might expect. While some issues may stem from configuration errors, I suspect others arise from varying interpretations of the ActivityPub protocol. It feels like platform-specific user experience is prioritized over seamless cross-platform federation.

In upcoming posts, I’ll detail the issues I’ve encountered, hoping to collaborate with the community to identify solutions and share insights. This particular group is about classical music. But my ultimate goal is to make this model functional—not only for classical music enthusiasts but for any community that benefits from rich, multimedia conversations in the Fediverse.

I’d greatly appreciate your feedback and any experiences you can share about similar federation challenges.

Please feel free to follow the group @Classical Music and Beyond and participate directly.

Best regards,
Poul Pock-Steen

in reply to PARLA

@Friendica Support
So, to clarify:
1) Is the forum (now group) feature, where a post in the group gets automatically reshared to other group members, designed exclusively for use within Friendica?

2) If so, does this mean that the functionality does not depend on the ActivityPub protocol and is therefore not expected to work across other federated platforms?

Understanding this distinction would help me determine whether my goal of using a Friendica group as a hub for cross-platform communication is feasible with the current implementation or if it requires additional workarounds or features.

Thank you for your clarification.

Best regards,
Poul Pock-Steen

Friendica Support reshared this.

in reply to PARLA

@PARLA to clarify

1. A forum or group account can be followed from every other account in the fediverse
2. The functionality sending with the Bang notation "!" does only work in Friendica - sending as different account to the group account without sending it to the contacts of the "different account" and the group sending it then to its contacts on all platforms.
3. Maybe it could work as "different platform account" to use the @ notation to send it to the Friendica group. But I don't know. On the other platform it would look like a standard mention. You need to check.

This feature is working inside the ActivityPub protocol. But as I wrote, other platforms didn't implement this suggestion.



Now with a title


Test 01.12 20.38


@PARLA sharing a photo and a link to a Peertube video to @Classical Music and Beyond


historien om en cigar teaser low


Test 30.11 klokken 20.17
Uploading a video
@[url=https://friendica.world/profile/classical]Classical Music and Beyond[/url]