Several days ago WordPress.com announced that blogs on their platform could now be integrated to the Fediverse via an ActivityPub plugin. Great news!
After a few bumps it was fairly easy to get things connected, and sure enough posts end up in the Fediverse. Comments made in the Fediverse find their way back to the blog, and post tags are included in the post in the ActivityPub plugin sends as hastags.
But there’s a complication – they end up there via a new account created for the blog. The account name is not user selectable (except for folks on the more expensive WordPress.com plans) and is a bit long, but that’s not the problem.
The problem is that the account isn’t a regular Mastodon account. There’s no way to log into the account and see mentions, for example, or toot without posting in WordPress. The account can’t follow anyone. It’s an account for someone who doesn’t ever want to interact with Mastodon.
So, if I want to interact with Mastodon normally, I still need another account.
There seems to be 3 possibilities:
Have a normal Mastodon account and have the marketing connection in WordPress.com send posts there
It works fine, but no hashtags are included, which is very severe limitation for Mastodon.
Have a normal Mastodon account and the ActivityPub account created by WordPress.com for the posts
Now there are two accounts, but there’s nothing to connect them. If I’m going to publish a long piece about something, and I want to post about it in advance, I’m doing the advance posting on one account but the post is coming from another.
I can try to join the accounts via the bio on the normal account, but what’s that going to look like? If someone comes across my content via a hashtag on Mastodon (very likely) how will they find my normal account?
Have a normal Mastodon account and the ActivityPub account and post to both of them
Still two accounts, but now when a blog post comes out it is posted to both of them. One of those, the ActivityPub account, will include hashtags but the other will not. Seems like a needless waste of space, and for those that are following both accounts (which would be the desired state in this scenario) there are going be two posts.
None of these are great options. I suspect this is all in flux and features will be changing, but in the mean time, which option is the best?
I’ve decided on the middle option, and will try to modify my Bio to include it, and see how that works.
Those of you who are in the same boat, which way are you going?
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