Could not upvote on another instance
I've joined Lemmy.ml. Someone sent me a link to a video posted on Feddit.nl - I thought I could log in and upvote/comment using my Lemmy.ml credentials. Wrong!
Why is this? Sorry for my ignorance, I'm relatively new to the fediverse. But I thought that they were all federated so you can interact with all instances??!
Your specific problem is solved, but just for people reading this thread who may be confused about some concepts:
Your instance of Lemmy or Mastodon, whichever it may be, is just one website that serves as a Reddit or Twitter clone respectively. There isn't a lot of difference between one single instance of Lemmy or Mastodon on the one hand, and Reddit or Twitter on the other. Just like you need to register and log in on Reddit or Twitter if you want to interact there, you need to do the same on any instance of Lemmy or Mastodon you want to interact on.
So what is the concept of federation then? It doesn't mean you can log into one website with the credentials of another website. All that federation means is that the website downloads some of its data (posts, comments, status updates, whatever) from other websites running the same or compatible software, instead of getting all of it from its own users (like Reddit and Twitter do).
Thank you that is useful to have that explanation here. I had no idea it works like that!
I've not seen this type of logging in issue within the Mastodon 'world' because no one's ever 'sent me a link from another instance and then I tried to log on from that link' 😂. I just tried it on an inprivate browser window and of course it's the same as what I found here with Lemmy - as you described. With Mastodon I'm on the .social instance and I can see and interact with posts from any other instance - but after your explanation I realise that's because the content was alwasy served up from within the instance.
[I agree that with ActivityPub we certainly cannot expect to log in with the same handle *between *services (i.e. use your Mastodon handle to log in to Lemmy). Although that would be cool. Persistent IDs across the fediverse would be the dream imho (like Nostr does it).]
There is an open standard for logging into websites with other websites' credentials, it is called OpenID and long predates ActivityPub (and is independent of it).
While your particular issues is solved, you should be aware that lemmy.ml is one instance of the Tankie Triad, which many other instances have blocked. Unless you like living in tankieland, I would suggest you make an account somewhere else.
Heaven forbid you encounter any opinions you disagree with.
I'm fine with differing opinions, if done in good faith. I'm not fine with people being nasty (personal attacks, name-calling) and mods being extremely biased (e.g. banning people for criticising Russia, China, North-Korea). I don't need such toxicity in my life.
you can log in to your 'home' instance and should be able to view/upvote the local version of the feddit.nl article.
im not sure about lemmy, but I can just enter the full url into the home instance search box to locate that local version you want to upvote
Ooooooooh I see! right.... yes that works.
I wasn't familiar with the idea of the instance 'fetching' a post. Thank you!
Happy to help!
Are you blocked by that instance? I believe that stops you from up or down voting also.
Same reason you can't use your Gmail credentials to log into Outlook.
If you see yourself facing this often, you can also use a browser extension to make it easier to see the post you are at in your instance.
For Firefox and derivatives, the simplest one is Lemmy Link, which places a Lemmy icon next to links such as the sibebar's !community link in the instructions for logged out users to find the community in their own instance. It has not been updated in two years, but still works.
Another option is Kbin Link, which does the same thing and has seen recent updates but tends to trigger "this extension is slowing down..." notifications.
A third one I found is Instance Assistant, which instead adds a "Find in my home instance" button to the sidebar. It does have some additional features, but I couldn't get them to work. This one is also available for Chromium-based browsers.
https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469273-lemmy-universal-link-switcher
Switches all lemmy links to your instance.
related feature request: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2318
more technical discussion here: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-3b86-activity-intents/4120/12
Thank you all for explaining.
The behaviour I was expecting was to click 'login' on the feddit.nl page, and that login page to recognise that I was logging in with the credentials used by lemmy.ml, and to log me into lemmy.ml instead, and then to be redirected to the 'local' version of the link on the lemmy.ml instance.
Rather than it just be a feddit.nl login page only, and be told 'log in not recognised'. That's where my confusion came from. I'm like "wait, I can't log into Lemmy here? why?!"
Yes, that makes sense. I might create a post on !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca to make other new joiners aware of that issue
You may wish to use a script to change all Lemmy links to point to your home instance https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/469273-lemmy-universal-link-switcher
You need to view the post from .ml I think you add the .nl link after lemmy.ml/ do not remember the exact syntax. You could also go to the community from .ml and look for the post.
You're looking for https://lemmyverse.link/
oh right. Well here's the post I was talking about: https://lemmyverse.link/feddit.nl/post/31396342 😊 Thanks!
I'm guessing in the upcoming month this function will be integrated in lemmy, mbin and piefed in a way or amother to kill off those links problem.
Copy the post link into the search on lemmy.ml and you should find it.
The whole linking to other instances and services like lemsha.re or lemmyverse.link within Lemmy should become obsolete in the next release of Lemmy. It will include rewriting remote instance URLs to the local instance equivalent.
Instances don't have to be federated and instances federate and defederate from each other often enough. The goals of instances may not align, and to keep conflict low(er) it's better if some instances cut ties.
TBH, this sounds like a technical issue between ml and nl or just a typo in the way you are posting.
While I thought it was basically an on/off switch for defederation, I suppose there could be a way to block updates from instances without fully defederating.
I am not going to get into the drama, but ml is defederated at a little higher frequency, but it's not as high as some others. It's because reasons, and is not relevant to this particular thread.