Masto-Redirect
At this point, you may be wondering: if someone has an account on a different instance, or posted something I want to reply to, how can I do this from my account on a separate Mastodon instance?
This is where my friend Jason Snell comes in: a few days ago, he shared a post in which he noted that the default method for redirecting a post or profile from another Mastodon instance back to yours is, well, somewhat convoluted. If you come across a profile or post from a different Mastodon server, you have to copy its original URL, go to your instance, manually paste it into the search box, find the result you’re looking for, and only then you can interact with it. That works, but it’s not intuitive, and I figured I could improve this aspect of the Mastodon experience with a shortcut.
From what I understand (after reading a couple "Welcome to Mastodon") posts by long time Mastodon users, some (if not all) of the "inconvenience" of the system is by design. A core feature has been safety of the posters, and freedom from harassment.
It will be interesting to see what happens when a bunch of middle age tech bros decide to "fix" a service they don't seem to understand.