Oh look, with the very fair blackout happening at Reddit, people are, once again, pointing to "Fediverse" alternatives. This time, it seems to be kbin, which is "Reddit, but make it ActivityPub". And clearly that's cool, because ActivityPub allows all services to talk to each other, eh?

Okay, cool. As the r/Firefox subreddit is participating in the blackout, there's now a "kbin group", @firefox@fedia.io. So, how do I participate there with my Mozilla-hosted Mastodon account? There is a post I'd like to reply to, so I have to.

Since this is just ActivityPub, I can surely just search for the handle on Mastodon and see everything, right?

Ah well this isn't good. Okay maybe this instance is too young or the Mozilla Mastodon is too small? Let's go to mastodon.social and search for a much older and bigger group - @tech@kbin.social:

Huh.

So, how do I participate?

Well, it's easy: Forget about this whole "ActivityPub means that all services can talk to each other", and sign up for a kbin account on some kbin instance (or host your own). So now you'll have two "ActivityPub" accounts on two independent services, where both do not talk to each other, even though both are "using ActivityPub".

Ah yes. So easy, so convenient, so interoperable!