Jupiter Rowland
For one specific Fediverse project each, yes.
But what the OP is looking for is a Web client that lets you log into Mastodon and Lemmy and PeerTube all the same. Probably one that unifies your Mastodon, Lemmy and PeerTube timelines into one, rather than listing your Mastodon timeline next to your Lemmy timeline next to your PeerTube timeline in three separate columns, TweetDeck-style.
Or maybe what the OP is looking for is a Web server and client that unites all features of Mastodon and Lemmy and PeerTube in one Fediverse project so that only one single login is needed for everything.
Neither of these exists.
What I meant weren’t screenshots from social media that are treated like memes.
I rather meant original memes made in the Fediverse for the Fediverse, lampooning the Fediverse, parts of it or certain aspects of it. Even if they’re based on existing templates, no matter how old.
Also, it’d be nice if there was a place where such memes can be posted in the first place.
These problems could simply arise from the fact that Mastodon is starting to really work on the management of Activitypub groups.
And re-invent the wheel once more, preferably in a proprietary way that’s as incompatible with the rest of the Fediverse as possible but sold to the Mastodon users as the Fediverse gold standard.
It is therefore appropriate to report any incompatibilities to the Mastodon staff, so that they can claim the other side is broken unless the other side has rock-solid proof that it’s actually Mastodon that’s doing it wrong.
FTFY
Any bets this will only work with Mastodon because it was built and designed only against Mastodon?
I wouldn’t even be surprised if other Fediverse server apps could simply circumvent sub.club if sub.club assumes that everything else out there works like Mastodon, too.
But where would a unified Web client run in the first place? It would have to be installed on a Web server and, from there, access the Web servers of the various different server apps which would still be entirely different and independent installations.
For a Web client with no actual server backend, the same would go as for a mobile app: It would have to cover pretty much all features of everything. If uniting Lemmy and Mastodon in one UI seems tricky already, try adding Hubzilla and (streams) to the mix.
If you’re actually looking for a unified Web server and client, i.e. one Fediverse project that literally covers everything the Fediverse can do with one login on one server and one identity: This won’t happen.
This would be way too much for one Fediverse project to tackle. You’d basically have to start with (streams), add back all functionality that has been removed since the first fork from Hubzilla (and that’s a whole lot), make all kinds of non-nomadic protocols compatible with nomadic identity via Nomad and ActivityPub, and then gradually add all kinds of features from all over the place, from PeerTube to Funkwhale, from PieFed to Owncast, from Mobilizon to BookWyrm. And you’d have to soft-fork everything and keep them in-sync with their respective upstreams.
The outcome would be too complex for most. People would have to deal with their account/their login not being their identity because their identity is containerised in a channel. They would have to wrap their minds around nomadic identity. They would have to deal with fine-grained permissions settings. They would have a post editor that’s every bit as powerful as those on big blogging platforms when all they want to do is tweet and retweet and occasionally watch a video. And they would have tons of features on top.
The whole thing would be an utter nightmare for its developers as well, seeing as they’d constantly have to track over 100 Fediverse projects and implement any upgrades which they’ve rolled out.
It isn’t just types of content that makes a fully featured, unified Fediverse client nigh-impossible. It’s features in general.
It all starts with having one unified timeline for any arbitrary number of Fediverse identities on any arbitrary number of different Fediverse servers. Nicely convenient. You only open one app, and you’ve got them all. Not even separated timelines within the same app, TweetDeck-style. No, you have posts on your three Mastodon accounts under posts on your Pixelfed account under posts on your Lemmy account under posts on your Friendica account, maybe even under posts on your Hubzilla channel if the app isn’t limited to the Mastodon API, and if it supports multiple identities under one login.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Maybe you want to reply to a post. Or you want to post something yourself.
And, of course, you don’t want to stick with the basics that Mastodon offers. Maybe you want to use text formatting.
So text formatting has to be implemented. But it has to be deactivated if you want to post to one of your Mastodon accounts, but it has to be reactivated if one of them is actually on Glitch.
Next trouble: Not everything that supports text formatting supports standard Markdown. Misskey and its various forks use “Misskey-flavoured Markdown”. On Friendica, Markdown is optional and off by default, and BBcode is the standard. On Hubzilla, Markdown is not available at all, only BBcode is, and it comes with a whole slew of extras specific to Mike Macgirvin’s nomadic projects from Red (2012) to Forte (2024). So yes, you may want support for things like [zmg][/zmg], [zrl=][/zrl] or [observer.baseurl].
Of course, if you are on Friendica or Hubzilla or (streams), you’re used to having a post preview. Code-heavy posting like on these three makes it a requirement; pure plain-text posting like on Mastodon doesn’t. But the preview button must be able to faithfully render any post just like its native server application would render it. No matter what it’ll be. Oh, and if you’ve got NSFW activated on your Friendica account or your Hubzilla or (streams) channel, the preview must be hidden behind an automatically generated content warning.
Speaking of which, Mastodon-style CWs aren’t unified either. Depending on the server, they would have to go into the CW field, the summary field, [abstract=apub][/abstract] (Friendica), [summary][/summary] (streams) or nowhere at all (e.g. Lemmy, replies on Hubzilla).
The Fediverse has various different ways of quote-posting, and Mastodon doesn’t have quote-posts at all. The Threadiverse has dislikes/downvotes/thumbs-down, Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) optionally have them, too, but others don’t. Misskey and the Forkeys have emoji reactions. Hubzilla has only twelve emojis, and clicking one creates a whole new comment with only that emoji in it. Friendica lets you hashtag other people’s posts, so does (streams) optionally, but only they themselves even understand this feature.
Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) also have categories, much like a blog, next to hashtags. At least on Hubzilla and (streams), they’re optional. But they require their own text field which the app must have, too, depending on the availability of this feature.
This goes further and further. After all, you may not just want basic functionality for when you aren’t on your computer. Maybe you don’t have a computer. Maybe your phone is the only digital end-user device you possess. So the app would have to cover not only the bare necessities (read, reply, post etc.), but everything.
For example, someone wants to follow you. On Mastodon, you just confirm it if you’ve set your account up to do so manually, and you’re done.
On Hubzilla with enough optional features activated, you assign a contact role to the new contact to give it the permissions you want to grant it, you add it to one or multiple privacy groups, you choose which profile that contact can see, you adjust the affinity slider, you may even want to pre-fill the per-contact filter lists (one allowlist, one blocklist), and then you confirm the new connection. Upon which Hubzilla automatically follows that connection back. Oh, and then you can still block or ignore or archive a connection or set it to invisible. On (streams), it’s somewhat similar, but since you can grant individual permissions to specific contacts in addition to a pre-defined permission role, you’ve got even more options.
A unified, daily-driver Fediverse app that’s supposed to fully replace Web interfaces would have to offer UI elements for all these settings. And only when they’re actually needed.
Don’t get me started about settings and options. Again, the app would have to mirror all of them. Many people have never touched the Web UI of their Fediverse servers, and they don’t intend to. They do everything on their phones with dedicated apps.
On Hubzilla, this would include access to Hubzilla’s built-in “apps”. “Install”, “uninstall” and configure them. Many important optional features are “apps”. But amongst these “apps”, there are also things like articles, wikis and Web pages. And what would being able to turn these features on and off be worth if you couldn’t use them in the app? And so the app will also have to provide access to Hubzilla’s articles and wikis and Web pages with all bells and whistles.
Of course, whenever a Fediverse server app changes in a way that makes changes in the UI necessary, this unified mobile app would have to follow suit immediately.
Even Fedilab is limited.
Sure, most “Fediverse apps” are Mastodon apps which allow you to use anything that supports the Mastodon API, but which only offer you Mastodon’s feature set, maybe even only the feature set of Mastodon 3 if the app is old enough.
Fedilab has specific features of other projects coded in. After all, it’s made by Pixelfed’s creator and developer, so it has to support as many Pixelfed features as possible, even if Mastodon doesn’t have them.
But Fedilab doesn’t have all features of all supported projects. For example, Fedilab does not have the necessary extra entry field for post titles on Friendica.
You don’t need any app at all to access it. Apps are just frontends (user interfaces) to access the information submitted to the Fediverse.
For many Fediverse users, Mastodon is an app. The whole of Mastodon is one app. Mastodon the server application and Mastodon the official phone app are united in one big murky monolith.