ELI5: Would it be possible for a "fediverse" app to exist?
By this I mean: something that can view and fully interact with multiple different services like Lemmy, Mastodon, etc.
Does it exist already?
You are viewing a single comment
By this I mean: something that can view and fully interact with multiple different services like Lemmy, Mastodon, etc.
Does it exist already?
As ActivityPub is just an underlying protocol, the question is similar to asking something like "Is it possible to make an Internet app for everything?".
There will be new ways to use the #fediverse in the future and new applications will be developed and adopted and it makes little sense in trying to provide every possible way to view the fediverse in an ever playing catch-up implementation of a view into it.
Try to look at it as the Internet itself.
It's an attempt at providing a finite and limited answer to an open ended question. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
An internet app for everything is literally a fucking web browser.
Which is all most apps are.
There's nothing technically keeping a unified Fediverse app from happening outside of any account conflation limitations that exist. But even then it should be possible to handle multiple logins on the same app.
Exactly. There's no reason you couldn't create a mastodon/kbin/lemmy/+ app which lets you log in and switch personalities on the fly, either aggregating all feeds into one or showing you individual feeds (like the Gmail All Inboxes). You could even have custom aggregation, like having it show you all of the c/+m/ [!foo@*.ext] threads in one combined feed so that you can see everything related to foo in one place no matter what instance its hosted on.
All it takes is someone who wants to create it and the programming to make it and maintain it. Which is kind of like saying all I need is a desire to retire and five million dollars; no matter how unlikely to happen, it's still a true statement.