Linking Mastodon and Micro.blog

I was actually about to ask about a similar issue- and I wonder if the answer is related?

If I follow micro.blog accounts from a mastodon account, I can see replies to micro.blog posts from mastodon accounts, but not from micro.blog.

For example, take this post by @manton :
On mastodon I can only see replies from mastodon only, while on micro.blog I can see replies via mastodon and micro.blog.

Is there a way round this limitation? It is a pretty major issue for me, as I would ideally post from micro.blog but use mastodon for replies etc.

Thank you.

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Micro.blog users in Micro.blog responding don’t generate an ActivityPub response because that’s not what they are.

Just go over how this works/the options:

  1. Micro.blog with an ActivityPub “feed” – replies can come via micro.blog to the post in micro.blog nothing to do with ActivityPub or people following the ActivityPub feed from Mastodon can reply, they’re replying to an ActivityPub post, it will show up in Micro.blog from their Mastodon account. All of the replies to a Micro.blog post this way is seen within Micro.blog and can be replied from there.

  2. Cross posting to a Mastodon account, replies to the Mastodon account will be in Mastodon as ActivityPub replies over there. But the original post in Micro.blog is disconnected and in Micro.blog as it’s own thing. Replies to that post from Micro.blog won’t show up in Mastodon because it has nothing to do with the cross posting account.

The core “problem” is if you post on Micro.blog from a Micro.blog account, there’s a representation of your blog post on your Micro.blog timeline that is totally separate from any notion of ActivityPub. If someone follows you on Micro.blog, it’s not an ActivityPub / mastodon situation. Micro.blog itself is fundamentally not a Mastodon instance.

You can unify all replies to a Micro.blog post to being viewable in Micro.blog using an ActivityPub compatible Micro.blog user name. But you can’t unify to only have things exist on Mastodon without turning off having any Micro.blog feed.

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I’m going to jump on the wagon. I wanted to ask this: Is there a way to customize the Micro.blog posts for blog posts?

That is, say I have a long post. Title and all. On MB’s feed I will see the post’s title with a link, but nothing else. I’d like to intercept that somehow. This way, over at Mastodon, I can boost my MB account’s post, which I can customize for Mastodon.

So instead of “here is what I think about mastodon: https://…” I can customize it (on MB) to say “I have a few things to say about #mastodon here is what I think about mastodon: https://” and this will show both on MB and Mastodon.

I could also do without hashtags and use emojis.

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There is no way to customize automatically cross posted content. It is either a full content post or a title + link.

The closest thing would be to customize your RSS feed to use the summary template for a post and then use the RSS feed as your input into Micro.blog — maybe. Even then, summary has limited use because micro.blog does not allow setting summary in the front matter so it has to be processable from the main content of the blog.

Just wanted to add something to the part of the discussion about some Micro.blog replies not appearing on Mastodon… Thanks @jsonbecker for the detailed answer! We are slowly enabling ActivityPub for more accounts, so over time most replies will be able to appear on both Micro.blog and Mastodon. But even then, someone on Micro.blog could choose to disable it for their account, so their replies would stay Micro.blog-only.

And again, cross-posting is a different thing, because it’s making a Mastodon copy of the post, which disconnects it from the thread of replies on Micro.blog. It’s good to have the flexibility (cross-posting or ActivityPub) but personally I use ActivityPub for my blog because it keeps everything nicely together.

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I understand that when I create a post on MB, it automatically copied and sent to Mastodon, and there’s no way to customize this automation - but that’s not what I mean exactly.

I’m looking for a way to customize blog posts to the timeline.
Currently, if I have a long post on MB, the post is a single line (the title with the link). I want to change that, on MB, add my own text, a sentence or two.

A manual way to do that would be to disable the automatic posting of my blog posts to the timeline in MB. Then I could copy the link to the MB post in my own words. But this goes against what MB is about to me, the idea is that you just micro-blog, it’s all on the timeline.

I just want to have the option to say a few words about what I’m posting beyond just a title. Does this make sense…? Or maybe I didn’t understand what you said originally.

Totally makes sense. I was replying to a different comment previously in the thread… We are mixing a few different things in this topic. :slightly_smiling_face:

@jsonbecker is right that currently it might be possible by creating a plug-in that provides a custom feed to Micro.blog, replacing the default feed. That is a lot of work and requires development experience, so maybe it should be a plug-in that we provide for people who want that kind of control. There’s no concept of a “summary” for blog posts in Micro.blog right now.

Got it. Well, I don’t want to go on about this topic (which is a tangent anyway) - just want to say that if this is looked into in the future, perhaps Hugo’s feature can be used, so that would be the default summary that will also show on MB. Just a thought.

Anyway. I got the answer to my question. Thanks!

So how to get it to post full content to the Mastodon account? :joy::wave::smiley:

We probably aren’t going to support that unless Mastodon moves away from the 500-character limit that most servers use. I don’t think it’s a very good reading experience to have longer blog posts on Mastodon… Better to link to your blog for that.

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Well to the account on MB servers should have limit unlocked? I would be ok with it working anywhere and seemed like was possible but didn’t figure it out from settings how to do it?

Thank you for @manton and @jsonbecker for your replies.

Two ideas on that plugin.

  • Cut it off at like 480, add something like “…” + the link.
  • Stop at the first paragraph (newline) after 400 characters is reached. Add a "Read More: " + the link.

I like either of these suggestions, with the added note that if the post is 500 characters or under, just send it to Mastodon without any modification at all. To the Mastodon follower, it should just look like any Masto post.

This thread has a lot of overlapping topics in it, so let me try to clarify what we’re planning on doing in the near-term:

  • Slightly increasing Micro.blog’s post limit and better handling quoted text when truncating. I’ll be blogging about the change details later.
  • Preserving the first 500 characters when sending the post to Mastodon.

Personally, I still find 500 characters a little too long. 500+ characters is a good full blog post, but a lot to read in the timeline when skimming through posts, especially on small screens. So it’s important to me that we find the right balance that works in Micro.blog while still acknowledging that Mastodon exists and needs something different when cross-posting.

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These changes sound like a good compromise. I, too, wouldn’t want to see 500 characters in the Mb timeline.

I’m fine with preserving the 280-character limit in the micro.blog timeline, if we can go up to 500 characters in masto.

We’re all still figuring out the fediverse, and one of the big issues is how to handle cross-platform integration. I appreciate the careful work you and your team are doing here, Manton.

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to chime in with a potential workaround for the OP. Instead of cross-posting to your mastodon account, you could enable ActivityPub on your Micro account, then follow it from Masto.

Once you’ve followed it, enable notifications for new posts. Then when you publish new posts on Micro, you will get a notification on Masto (so you don’t have to go hunting for the new post on Masto).

All you need do then, is boost the Micro post with your Masto account. Then, if anyone replies to your post, they will be replying to your Micro post and you should (I think) get webmentions back to your Micro account.

That’s what I’m doing, at least. :man_shrugging:

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That’s actually a very good idea, @kq. Thank you very much, I’ll try it right away. Thanks!

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Good idea. But for now at least, cross-posts to Mastodon are formatted much nicer than the native ActivityPub view of the blog. Cross-posts are 500 characters with paragraph breaks, while the native ActivityPub view is 300 characters, with paragraph breaks stripped out.

So I have cross-posting to Mastodon switched on. But now I’m thinking maybe I’ll try your suggestion.

UPDATE: That’s done. I’ve switched off mastodon cross-posting and will boost instead.

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