I thought one of the advantages of the Fediverse was to have one account but access to many services. Is this possible just not common? I already have a Lemmy account and Mastodon and I didn’t want to start making more just to try out the other services.
No. The Fediverse is access to syndicated content from a single website. Signing up at some other rando’s website is not going to give you any privileges on mine, and my account on my server doesn’t let me log into any of your computers.
The fediverse isn’t a handful of commercial services for you to demand access to. It’s a shit ton of small websites run by random individuals for niche communities, and a small number of large websites run by people with an impulsive drive toward self-punishment.
It depends on whether the services are compatible. They don’t all implement activitypub quite the same way.
You can try pasting something into the Lemmy search field (a Mastodon user, pixelfed feed, etc.) and see what comes up. But it may take a minute to federate the first time.
You don’t need multiple accounts on each service to federate. So essentially if you wanted to communicate with a user, say from a Lemmy server on Mastodon you can do so. That’s federation.
Essentially the main things you are missing really from not joining another service is certain features, interface and a different focus and the like.
Right? so Peertube might have a completely different interface from Mastodon and Lemmy. And more of a specific focus on video related features.
edit: you would need a users handle, and then go to the service you use, like Mastodon and you can search for that user.
Common misconception by Fediverse newbies: “Fediverse” is an umbrella term for a bunch of decentralised walled gardens. Like, Lemmy only connects to Lemmy, Mastodon only connects to Mastodon, Pixelfed only connects to Pixelfed etc. And if you’re on Mastodon, and your Facebook friends join Friendica, you need a Friendica account to get back in touch with them.
In reality, just about everything is interconnected with everything. No matter what it is.
You can use your Mastodon account to follow people on Pixelfed, on Friendica, on Misskey, whatever.
That said, having a separate Lemmy account makes sense because Lemmy/the Threadiverse is somewhat special in operation. Also, it’s all about conversations and groups, and Mastodon doesn’t understand neither. And starting a thread on Lemmy from Mastodon is not as straight-forward as starting a thread on Mastodon from Mastodon.