Microsoft DevBlogs has just been federated and can be followed at @msftdevblogs@dotnet.social.
Thanks to @mapache@hachyderm.io!
If you actually go to the account description of @msftdevblogs@dotnet.social, it says it’s an unofficial parrot bot of Microsoft dev blogs. Title seems misleading.
That’s because Microsoft isn’t officially in the Fediverse (yet), and this is a project Maho - who is a Microsoft employee - did in his spare time. There’s also a note there about where to give feedback if you’d like Microsoft to officially have a Fediverse presence.
I’m not sure if Maho is on here himself, but Nick Cosentino - another Microsoft employee, and the 2nd person to follow the bot - is, and I’m sure he’d be happy to clear up anything. :-)
That makes sense, but doesn’t explain at all why did you post a title you clearly know is untrue.
But it is true. In what way do you think it’s not true? You can demonstrably follow it from anywhere in the Fediverse - what more do you want?
The blog does not talk to Lemmy instances, nor Lemmy instances talk to the blog. The blog does not implement ActivityPub. Lemmy comments of the articles do not show up on the blog. You can follow the bot, and it definitely makes the content available, but it doesn’t fit most people’s understanding of “federated”. Twitter doesn’t federate with Mastodon, even if there are bots that copy Twitter content onto Mastodon.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great initiative. But I think calling it federation is misleading.
The blog does not talk to Lemmy instances
Does anything? I’m genuinely asking. I know how to follow other accounts from Mastodon or Pixelfed - I don’t think there’s any way to follow another account from my Lemmy account? As far as I’m aware that functionality doesn’t exist in the first place anywhere, but happy to be told otherwise.
The blog does not implement ActivityPub
It does - I can follow it from Mastodon (or Pixelfed, or…). It’s using the Wordpress ActivityPub plug-in (doesn’t support Lemmy, but as per my previous comment I’m not sure that anything does).
Look at where my account is from in this comment
It’s also possible to ping Mastodon users to bring them into Lemmy discussions. @msftdevblogs
Yes, you can use Lemmy from Mastodon. Read my comment again - you can’t use Mastodon from Lemmy… unless you can tell me where in Lemmy I can click on and follow Mastodon accounts? That’s why, in the Wordpress screenshot, Lemmy isn’t supported - no-one has a Lemmy feed for the posts to appear in. All the supported services have a timeline feed for the post to appear in. Lemmy doesn’t.
It also doesn’t post back to Microsoft’s dev blogs. As an example, the Mastodon blog post doesn’t contain the comments from Microsoft’s post. I wouldn’t consider it federation until this is true.
It also doesn’t post back to Microsoft’s dev blogs
…because Microsoft has public commenting switched off in the first place anyway. Some blogs are read-only and that’s fine - I can still get them in my Fediverse feed anyway. One less separate site I have to visit to get my tech news - that’s the power of ActivityPub. 😁
The example linked has comments.
It also just seems very spam-like to me. Like 6 months ago, there were communities with lots of bot posts doing really low quality post mirroring for hacker news, some subs, etc. For some types of content, it does not work, as the content is a discussion. It’s just not very productive to see a link post to a question and then have seperation in answers because something isn’t properly federated.
The example linked has comments
Oh yes! You’re right. I didn’t see them before - needed to scroll further (was expecting to see them higher up). I was wondering why people were complaining that you couldn’t comment when you couldn’t comment anyway. 😂
Yeah, Microsoft requires you to login to comment - with MS account I guess? There’s one reason to give feedback to MS to join officially. :-)
