No, what was said was that “Groups are for Lemmy and hashtags are for Mastodon”.

That is to say that Groups are not for Mastodon, so Mastodon users should be content with hashtags.

But Mastodon users use Lemmy groups from Mastodon, and better group integration is already being planned by Mastodon themselves.

Ergo, groups are for Mastodon.

Take a look at !fediverse@lemmy.world on Mastodon:

https://mastodon.social/@fediverse@lemmy.world

Nope, not a Piefed photo stream. All those photos (so far) originate either from Akkoma or Pixelfed.

It looks “just” like a Piefed photo stream because I’m sending photos there. 😊

I’m an instance owner too (see atomicpoet.org and akkomane.social). Speaking as an instance owner, it’s our fundamental job to moderate. 

It’s not “throwing the onus onto someone else.” The onus has always been on us.

You don’t need to make a single interface, just a “meta-interface” that allows you to switch UIs on the fly.

That’s entirely doable within a client.

Sure, here’s the URL:

https://piefed.social/c/lumoura

Also, you might want to look at getting a better Lemmy client.

Is deeper integration possible? Sure, check out how I use !lumoura@piefed.social with my Akkoma account.

Not only is it possible, there’s lots of Fediverse software that’s just designed to be a “dumb server” akin to Nginx. For example, appy:

https://appy.cat/

Now the reason this stuff hasn’t caught fire yet is because we’re just now moving away from “Fediverse = Mastodon”. So the idea of federation itself isn’t just a paradigm shift, it’s a complete system shock that disrupts our mental models for how social media is supposed to work.

Mastodon is terrible for topical discussions because people don’t use groups. But they can if they knew how to use them.

You may say the system was not designed for cross-pollination, but the fundamental system is not Mastodon, and it’s not Lemmy: it’s ActivityPub.

Now do all these apps implement ActivityPub imperfectly? Yes. But eventually, some app will get it right—ideally one that will let you choose your preferred UI/UX on the fly.

What if I told you that you can use Lemmy with Mastodon right now—and that many people do?

For real. He replied to my Akkoma post, which tagged this Lemmy group. 😆