I finally got around to testing the “follow accounts” feature that was in the latest piefed and it’s awesome The pixelfed integration is very fun — following photographers feels very natural, and gets a lot of image content into my feed instead of just endless links. It does look like loops works too, but I could only see a privacy guides account so I didn’t follow it. I did manage to follow a couple of Bluesky accounts via bsky.brid.gy, but I can’t see any of the Twitter mirrors (like sportsbots.xyz), though I suspect that’s because a lot of those early Twitter shovels ended up on blocklists because they’re technically bots. My favorite follows are definitely publications — there’s a Graphic Policy account on sfba.social and a BBC news account from flipboard.com that fit in great in my feed. Definitely the biggest shortcoming is that there is no way to fetch an account that isn’t already known to your instance (I was hoping to get the Shiba every hour or the capybara every hour accounts, but alas), or a good way to search for accounts on larger instances, like mastodon.social, so I’m curious: what accounts have you found that are a good follow from piefed?

Edit: I couldn’t find a working rss shovel or an available ghost instance either, though both seem like they would be good follows.

I feel that this post might fit better in a "let's explore Fediverse" post but my proposals would be

• @Bellingcat@mstdn.social
• @wonderofscience@mastodon.social
• @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy (opens up following bsky accounts. With the new feature it works now)
• @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu
• @isthereanydeal@mastodon.social

For sure there are many more, Mastodon's content presentation has never really worked for me. I've been waiting for Threadiverse to be able to follow accounts directly

I'm not following anyone yet. It'll get a whole lot more interesting once we can accept boosted posts, which I'm working on now. Currently we're only seeing posts the authors wrote, not posts boosted by people we follow.

It's a bit complicated because in Mastodon people often boost a post halfway through a conversation so when it arrives here we've got a fragment of a conversation and need to go out and get the rest before it can be stored. In contrast with Lemmy the top-level post always arrives first, followed by comments on it so it's simpler to accept them.

I subscribed to a bit of German IT News from Mastodon, but I was limited to the accounts who previously mentioned Lemmy communities and showed up in my feed:

• @heiseonline@social.heise.de
• @kuketzblog@social.tchncs.de

I’m having trouble using this functionality, what’s the correct way to look up a specific account?

On Mastodon I follow an account with news from mas.to. I can look up this instance through Instances and browse users but I can’t find a way to look up a specific person. I tried adjusting URL using random account as a template but the one I’m after isn’t found even though it’s a valid handle.

There isn't a correct way yet. I'm getting other things tidied up before opening the flood gates.

Now I see that this account resolves. Next time try piefed.social/user/lookup/<their handle>/<their instance>

I hope boosts can be disabled, as I'd only follow someone to see their posts, I'm not interested in seeing boosted posts.

Thank, i'm trying it because there is some account i want to follow and retrieve their content for my communities mostly one free software, agriculture, space... :)

Cool ! You can add them to the weekly post :)

Yes some people really really overdo their boosting so it needs to be avoidable somehow!

As for following Twitter bots, you can get the RSS feed from a profile you want through Nitter and send to @birb@rss-parrot.net.

However, you may also need to do it through Mastodon, and you may also need to try cycling through Nitter instances as they have time outs to avoid abuse and RSS Parrot seems to ping the feed before adding it, probably to ensure it's a valid link.

::: spoiler Here's the public Nitter instances I know of:

• https://twiiit.com/
• https://nitter.privacyredirect.com/
• https://nuku.trabun.org/
• https://nitter.space/
• https://nitter.catsarch.com/
• https://nitter.poast.org/
• https://lightbrd.com/
• https://nitter.kuuro.net/
• https://nt.vern.cc/
• https://nitter.kareem.one/
• https://xcancel.com/
• https://nitter.net/
• https://twiiit.com/
• https://nitter.tiekoetter.com/
  :::

Also RSS Parrot may be used for any other RSS feeds, provided the feed doesn't have ? in the link (aside from Youtube), and the feed doesn't block the bot's access outright.

I don't follow anyone, I don't care. I'm here to talk with anyone, and I don't look at usernames.

@bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy (opens up following bsky accounts. With the new feature it works now

I'm just seeing this now, and this is awesome news! I'm trying to follow the account to get this working. Do I need to use a mastodon account as some sort of intermediary, or can I get this working directly with my PieFed account?

Edit: Looks like I probably had my PieFed DM settings a bit too restrictive which might be interfering with the process of getting this working. Trying this again.

non. I peruse all and block communities im not interested in.

With the new feature, bridgy should notice your follow directly from piefed. No need for intermediary Mastodon