ELI5: Would it be possible for a "fediverse" app to exist?

No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 21 points – 1 years ago

By this I mean: something that can view and fully interact with multiple different services like Lemmy, Mastodon, etc.

Does it exist already?

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You would have to support each service separately, because they all work differently.

What connects Lemmy, Mastodon and other fediverse services is the ActivityPub protocol, that's the standardized communication protocol that makes everything run. The individual instances run different software that offer entirely different APIs (application programming interface; basically the language that defines how an app talks to a service) so in order to support Mastodon, Lemmy and Kbin, an app must explicitly implement the APIs for those three services.

So an app that generally just supports every service that will be added to the fediverse in the future can't be made unless we agree on some form of standard API, which we haven't (yet) and which may not even be feasable, because different services have much different capabilities.

A fediverse discord clone would offer completely different data structures and functionality than Lemmy, so an app that magically just works with both isn't possible to make.

I wouldn’t say it’s not possible it’s just too hard for the reward. The app would not be user-friendly because of the very different kinds of services that exists. OP just imagine you had an one app that basically lets you access discord, twitter, instagram, Facebook, Reddit and others. It would be possible but it’s a lot of work for a really crappy app. That app would be messy and cluttered and not a good experience.

Well, technically there are apps that let you access all those services. They're called browsers.

…and I find that Lemmy/kbin/Mastodon (and the rest?) work really well in a browser, obviating the need for dedicated apps. Dedicated apps are nice though.