this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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I’m not sure if this is the wrong place to post this; my apologies if it’s not.

Anyway, I have an inquiry about Mastodon replies seeming to not post to show up on Lemmy.

Earlier today I made a post on Mastodon and made it post to Lemmy as well, by @ing the community I wanted it to appear in. Here’s a link to the post on Mastodon, and here’s how it showed up on Lemmy. At first, everything seemed to work fine.

But something I noticed is that, though the Lemmy comments were visible to me on Mastodon, the reverse was not true: most of the Mastodon replies were not visible on Lemmy. So there seems to have been some federation issues there.

So my question is, does anyone know what caused this and if so how I can fix it?

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[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

unless somethin new has happened, lemmy doesnt fully federate to mastodon/the twitterverse. interaction is very limited.

its one of the reasons i use mbin instead of lemmy

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

If I had made this post on kbin would the lemmy and mastodon users have been able to interact with one another?

[–] rimu@piefed.social 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

It's more likely that the instance hosting the community would make the most difference. Try a PieFed community if you're interested.

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I always an avid user of piefed.ca but I had to quit because most of my comments weren’t federating anymore due to some corrupted data issue

Edit: misread your comment. You jut mean posting to the community. Gotchu

[–] rimu@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Good to know thank you! Piefed seems to be doing a lot to help the fediverse grow, so thank you for your service 🫡

Now that the issue is fixed I need to make a new account or will it work with the old account too? Also I noticed that my profile photo from my old account isn’t federating haha, but that’s a very minor issue so I’m not too concerned about it haha

[–] rimu@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] ageedizzle@piefed.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

Thanks for all the hard work you put in for making a create social network (Piefed) and helping grow the fediverse 🫡 I appreciate it. Keep fighting the good fight

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago

The federating issues were solved iirc

[–] julian@activitypub.space 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Theoretically yes.

Practically, only sometimes. Mastodon doesn't know to send the reply to the community (or even just a user from that community), so when replies are made that don't include the community, then they don't get make it through to the threadiverse.

Mastodon users (if they're following the community) will get everything, but the UI for reading threadiverse content is abysmal 😝

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

Haha okay. Thanks for the info!

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

lemmy does not federate with mastodon/the twitterverse..

i believe there is a one-way mechanism for twitterverse posts to be used an inbound content stream for lemmy (like rss ) but thats it... one direction.

i dont think theres anything you can do to make that happen short of some janky bridge.

i subscribe to lots of peeps from the twitterverse.. i can reply to/comment on posts, see other comments, upvote/boost, etc.. kbin is dead long live mbin.

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 weeks ago

i believe there is a one-way mechanism for twitterverse posts to be used an inbound content stream for lemmy (like rss ) but thats it... one direction.

The Lemmy posts were showing up as replies to my Mastodon post. And some of the Mastodon replies were showing up in Lemmy. So it does seem to go both ways, its just inconsistent

[–] hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If you use Misskey or whatever it calls itself now, it works well with Mastodon and okay with Lemmy.

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If I had posted this on Miskey would that have allowed Lemmy users and Mastodon users to interact?

[–] hzl@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Eh. Not really very effectively. Misskey does a half decent job of talking to Mastodon and Lemmy, but Lemmy and Mastodon do a pretty poor job of talking to each other and I think Misskey is more compatible with Lemmy than Lemmy is with Misskey, if that makes sense.

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

Okay thanks for the info

[–] julian@activitypub.space 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

> @a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca said in Mastodon not federating to Lemmy?: > > So my question is, does anyone know what caused this and if so how I can fix it?

Mastodon doesn't know to send replies to the community for distribution to the rest of the threadiverse.

Long story short if you're not on the same instance as the community, Mastodon replies to you won't make it to the rest of the threadiverse.

I experimented with a hack to see if I could fix this. NodeBB works around this by including a hidden mention to the community that Mastodon will then pre-fill in the text box, and then the reply will make it in successfully. If you have a Mastodon account try to reply to this comment, the community will be pre-filled as a mention.

Piefed, Lemmy, and Mbin will need to do this.

Does it work? Yes

Are we supposed do it? Technically no, it's easier to blame Mastodon for not doing it right.

Should we do it? Probably, yes.


@rimu@piefed.social @nutomic@lemmy.ml @bentigorlich@gehirneimer.de @melroy@mastodon.melroy.org I tested this. It works perfectly fine. We can implement this today and remove it when Mastodon supports threadiverse conversations better (I'll try to make that happen.)

[–] rimu@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

Sounds good to me!

[–] freamon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Unless the person replying on Mastodon removes it of course (to save themselves some characters and because they don't recognise it).

There doesn't seem any functional difference between your comment (which implicitly Mentions the community), and the original post on thecanadian.social (which explicitly Mentions it). Screenies from activitypub.academy show that replies to both include both Mentions pre-filled.


https://thecanadian.social/@mike/116234121499688717 didn't remove the Mention, and so the comment made it to Lemmy. https://mstdn.ca/@cass_m/116234270845317774 did remove the Mention, and so it didn't.


Specifically for Lemmy btw, the reply at https://mstdn.ca/@cass_m/116234270845317774 demonstrates another problem - that instance requires a signed GET request for its actors, which hasn't been fully implemented AFAIK.

[–] pseudo@jlai.lu 1 points 2 weeks ago

Long story short if you’re not on the same instance as the community, Mastodon replies to you won’t make it to the rest of the threadiverse.

Oh... That explains a lot of. Thank you for sharing the cause and the solution (^_^)

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago

I tested this. It works perfectly fine. We can implement this today and remove it when Mastodon supports threadiverse conversations better (I’ll try to make that happen.)

Wow that’s a really proactive response, thank you! Please keep me posted on how it goes

[–] mat@zelk.space 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 weeks ago
[–] pseudo@jlai.lu 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

though the Lemmy comments were visible to me on Mastodon, the reverse was not true: most of the Mastodon replies were not visible on Lemmy.

Yeah... That's a common federation issue. I haven't properly investigated but a hypothesis might be that the account that commented are on instances not federating with the Lemmy instance.

Here a community for you to do more test : !testfediverse@jlai.lu

[–] a_gee_dizzle@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago

Here a community for you to do more test : !testfediverse@jlai.lu

This is a useful too, thank you