Reddit exodus - Using Lemmy from my existing Mastodon

By Vijay Prema 
vijayprema.com
3 min
June 12, 2023
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    Many are turning to Lemmy as a viable Reddit alternative. Here is now to use your existing Mastodon account with Lemmy.

    By now most of you have probably heard about Reddit blackout/exodus and you may also have heard about Lemmy, a Fediverse alternative to Reddit, which many have flocked to.

    So like many people right now, I wanted to check out Lemmy as a viable alternative to Reddit, and also like many existing Mastodon users I'm thinking:

    Do I need to create a new Lemmy account on another instance, or can I just use my existing Mastodon account to do everything on Lemmy?

    As an avid Fediverse user, my primary identity is on a Mastodon server.  Since Lemmy uses ActivityPub, I thought that maybe I can just cross post into Lemmy (just like I would cross post into another Mastodon instance) despite it being a quite different type of app (basically like Fediverse Twitter vs Fediverse Reddit).

    It turns out... It works!!

    Yes, it's possible to upvote, post, reply and follow anything on Lemmy, through my existing Mastodon account, using the same cross posting method you would between different Mastodon instances, with a few notes:

    • Mastodon Favorites are counted Lemmy Upvotes.
    • Creating a Mastodon post while mentioning a Lemmy community/topic will create a discussion post within the Lemmy Community, with the first line of the Mastodon post becoming the discussion post's title.

    Performing Actions on Lemmy via Mastodon

    Here are some longer instructions for various actions:

    • Browsing Lemmy groups: works without logging in.
    • Replying to a Lemmy post/comment: Get the direct link to the Lemmy post/comment using the link button in Lemmy, paste it into your logged in Mastodon instance search bar, and then press Reply and post your reply.
    • Upvote a post or comment: I again get the direct link to the Lemmy discussion or comment and paste into my Mastodon instance search bar, then I click the Mastodon favorite button (note that this might not be as private as using an actual Lemmy account to upvote).
    • Follow a Lemmy account, post or group: again just get its Lemmy link, paste into your Mastodon search field and follow.
    • Post a new discussion to a community: you simply create a new post in Mastodon, and @ mention the Lemmy group you want to post into, where the first line will become the title of the post. An example. The easiest way is to again paste the link to the group in Mastodon, and go to that groups profile and click the 3 dots menu and click Mention.
    A Mastodon post I made on the left, and how it shows up in the Lemmy instance on the right. Note my Favorite shows up as an Upvote in Lemmy.

    A bit Clunky? This should improve soon...

    Currently it requires copy and pasting links, the same as manually cross-posting between Mastodon instances when you don't have a browser extension like FediAct installed.  Extensions like FediAct embed buttons into foreign Mastodon pages which invisibly automates the copy/pasting for a completely seemless experience across instances.

    Rest assured, given the latest spike in interest in Lemmy, it is likely the community will respond with a similar browser extension which will eliminate the manual copy/paste steps by embedding buttons into Lemmy pages.  Stay tuned, as I will update this post once I find an extension to simply things.

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