this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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Just realised this, most mastodon users who have had experience with groups think they are just bots that auto-boost any posts they are mentioned in.

This is kinda annoying me.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

In a way it can be seen as a "bot" since how it works is like what feed bots are doing.

Regardless, groups are by nature "boosters" even in silo SNS. Example, FB groups pushes group content to people's personal timeline/feed.

It's similar to how mailinglists work. You send an email to the group's mailinglist address and then it gets boosted/sent to everyone subscribed to that mailinglist group/address.

So, yeah, technically "bots" since its automated forwarding.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

Because that's what's mastodon groups are (e.g. the a.gup.pe). Mastodon doesn't have actual native groups, so bots-as-groups is a work around.

Mastodon doesn't fully federate with Lemmy, so while you can partially interact with Lemmy users and communities, you can't meaningfully partake in conversations here.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Like the @a.gup.pe ones? They are kind of autoboost bots, but they do have communities behind them and it's annoying when people treat them like hashtags.

But I'd not use the term bots. They're more like old-fashioned email reflectors: a message goes in, and it then gets sent to everyone on the list.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

I wouldn't say they are, but its just how they appear to people on mastodon.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

there are groups on mastodon?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago

You can post to them from mastodon. If you mention one (like @[email protected]) in a post.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

That's because from a mastodon perspective, that's what they are!

They're basically the same thing as gup.pe groups to them

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Honestly, I tried to understand them but I failed. I don't see how a group, from the twittoverse perspective is different from the use of a hashtag, be it agupe group or Lemmy community.

But I would love to hear your explanation and pass it on to the next people who will not understand it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hashtags is like search without the noise. (Unless of course someone is abusing it.)

Groups are similar to hashtags but without the restriction on what content is allowed as long as it is within the agreed scope. Groups usually have moderation features as well. And it can also be set to private (if supported).

Even if a group is public, if the feature was well-made, replies to a post posted in a group are usually seen by griup members only. Or, if the thread itself is opened.

Compare that to hashtags, replies will always appear for everyone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

Even if a group is public, if the feature was well-made, replies to a post posted in a group are usually seen by griup members only. Or, if the thread itself is opened.

I did not understood that thank you for the clarification.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hashtags are designed for anyone to post to, with no control over who can post to it.

Communities can be moderated, often have rules and an actual community/culture behind them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Communities can be moderated Good point.

Does moderation action fediverse well from Lemmy to the twittoverse?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Hey, put two spaces at the end of a sentence for a line break.

I'm pretty sure they do, removing a post would be deleting the announce (boost) activity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Edited. Thank you for that and the explanation.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The closest thing to groups we have on mastodon really are just boost bots. It’s pretty annoying that mastodon doesn’t have more. But it’s pretty understandable that mastodon users would assume that.

I’m guessing the issue is with mastodon users at-ing multiple communities on Lemmy/etc creating unnecessary cross posts / duplicates?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

Its not really an issue, since most people aren't aware of the threadiverse, but people do think they are just glorified hashtags.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Yes, when you edit a forumverse post (lemmy, mbin, piefed) it boosts those posts and create several duplicate of the same post. It pollute their timeline.

So it is either a bot or a bug for them. If you are on mastodon, try subscribing to @[email protected] and edit this post on lemmy.

Futhermore, comments aren't grouped in the post. They are separated from their parent element. And you need to crawl back the comment to find its original post.

I hope mastodon will support the forumverse. The iceshrimp devs, currently rewritting iceshimp in C#, are working on it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah that sounds like a bug in how they handle the incoming events.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Futhermore, comments aren’t grouped in the post. They are separated from their parent element. And you need to crawl back the comment to find its original post.

if you use a client like Phanpy things become much better from that point of view. Strongly suggested

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They have groups on their roadmap.
misskey is (slowly) adding federation to their groups.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yes, Mastodon will add it. Currently the closest group mastodon users have is our forumverse and a.gup.pe.

Iceshrimp is a fork of firefish, a misskey fork. But once they finish the rewritting, it won't be a fork anymore.

Here is their roadmap : https://issues/ Iceshrimp.dev/issue/ISH-191/Magazines-support

And we know one of their dev. He is on the matrix group of jlai.lu and he confirmed working on lemmy and PieFed support. So by the end of this year we should see a tremendous increase of activity. 😍

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

This is amazing!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is this not basically true, that that is how group federation works? Not sure what exactly you are trying to say.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

They think they're just bots, not actual groups with a community behind them.