It is still not possible to follow someone on #Mastodon (or elsewhere) from #Lemmy or #Piefed, right?

[julian@activitypub.space]

@mikka@mstdn.social you don't follow people on Lemmy and Piefed, you follow communities.

You can follow people from Mbin and NodeBB.

All four of those softwares use ActivityPub.

[liaizon@social.wake.st]

@julian @mikka you can follow Lemmy and Piefed people from other places just fine tho! I follow accounts from my Mastodon account quite often

[mikka@mstdn.social]

@liaizon @julian My question was about a different case. Just the other way round.

[mikka@mstdn.social]

@julian My question was about a different case. Just the other way round.

Yes, and that is why I did not mention mbin.

[pfefferle@mastodon.social]

@mikka @liaizon @julian you can follow a blog on lemmy (see @notiz.blog ) and following others using WordPress is an early beta and I have not tested to follow communites/groups, but we definitely plan to support that.

[mikka@mstdn.social]

@pfefferle @liaizon @julian @notiz.blog Actually I wanted to know if it is possible to follow *from* lemmy/piefed > someone elsewhere. Because this is a necessitiy to federate anything from a WP-installation running activitypub (plugin) to fediverse.

[julian@activitypub.space]

@mikka@mstdn.social @pfefferle@mastodon.social the answer is yes.

WP federates out as a group actor which threadiverse software understands.

[mikka@mstdn.social]

@julian @pfefferle Yes, but only if you have at least one follower on the targeted flavor of fedi.

[julian@activitypub.space]

@mikka@mstdn.social that's correct, this is how all software running AP works.

[mikka@mstdn.social]

@julian Just not with lemmy/piefed, if you are not able to follow an individual (WP-blog in this case) residing out of the walled fedi garden.

Not sure about mbin. Couldn't test that yet, as I am still waiting for my registration...

[gelbphoenix@social.gelbphoenix.de]

@mikka @julian This is @notiz.blog viewed on lemmy.world. WP blogs are federated out as groups as you can see on the example of notiz.blog on the second picture.

[mikka@mstdn.social]

@gelbphoenix @julian @notiz.blog Good info. Many thanks.

[informapirata@activitypub.space]

@mikka@mstdn.social said in It is still not possible to follow someone on #Mastodon (or elsewhere) from #Lemmy or #Piefed, right?:
> So no use of the WP-plugin #activitypub either. Is that correct?

With Lemmy, you can only follow Activitypub groups. Therefore, those who use Activitypub for WordPress and want to be followed by Lemmy can configure their blog in different ways. Regarding groups, you basically have two options:

1. You can create a "group" account for your blog and a "user" account for each author. In this case, if you follow the community corresponding to the blog's group account, you'll see all the posts.
2. You can disable the creation of a "blog group" and create only "author" accounts, as I do and publish my blog posts (for example: https://www.informapirata.it/2025/11/22/digital-omnibus-ecco-una-prima-analisi-giuridica-del-suo-impatto-regolatorio-a-cura-dei-legali-di-noyb/) by mentioning a Lemmy community (see for example: https://lemmy.world/post/39162221).

> It is still not possible to follow someone on #Mastodon (or elsewhere) from #Lemmy or #Piefed, right?

Returning to your initial question, however, you must not forget that Lemmy is designed specifically for those who don't want to follow users, but only follow conversations related to a topic.

The only way I know of to "follow a user" from Lemmy is this:

1. Create a Lemmy community "accounts followed by Mikka"
2. Create a social media account (Mastodon or Friendica)
3. Configure the mastofeed.org service to follow the RSS feed of the account you're interested in (you know that every account in the Fediverse has a feed for public feeds) and republish it on your social media account
4. In the mastofeed.org preset message, add a mention to the "accounts followed by Mikka" community
5. Follow the "accounts followed by Mikka" community with your Lemmy account

It works, but I'm not sure how smart it is!

[mikka@mstdn.social]

@informapirata Many thanks for this elaborate explanation. Might help others too.