Interacting on instances which are not yet discoverd and connected to instance where we are registered is pain in the ass. Copying URL into search bar? That is really repelling. I’m sure it was discussed before but I can’t find this discussion. How to make it easier? Do devs need to make changes to protocol or it’s enough and it can be done within the apps themselves? How close are we to the solution?
The current solution is for bots on participating instances to automatically perform the search + subscribe song-and-dance routine. This is pretty surprising to some people[1], and it requires someone to set it up in addition to the instance itself, but it does work.
[1]: I tried to translate an explanation into Japanese for some folks experimenting with Mastodon/Lemmy interaction yesterday – they thought Lemmy had a ton of spam accounts following groups instantly…