Mastodon – Simplified Federation!

Simplifies following or interacting with other users on remote instances. Basically, it skips the "Enter your Mastodon handle" interface and takes you directly to your own "home" instance, when you click on a "Follow" button or a reply/retoot/fav button on another instance. 😄

Idea by @akkes.

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Why?

You may wonder why to use this browser add-on. But actually, it's easy!

You do not need to enter your Mastodon account handle anymore! (except for login 😉) This makes interacting with remote instances much simpler.

Additionally, this add-on makes sure to keep your Mastodon handle private. It will never expose it into any third-party site. As such, e.g., it does not – literally – enter your Mastodon ID into the input field you normally see, but basically "skips" this page. For the technical details, on how this works, see How does it work? below.

How does it work?

1. It intercepts any remote interaction popup/request.
2. It tries to get the toot/account you want to interact with from the "Enter your Mastodon ID" popup.
3. for remote follows: It get's the account to follow from the URL.
4. for toot interactions: 1. It gets the local toot ID from the URL. 2. It sends an additional web request to the remote server to get the remote toot ID.
5. Afterwards it redirects you to the "remote_follow"/"remote_interaction" endpoint of your own Mastodon instance directly, thus skipping entering the Mastodon handle in that "foreign" page.

Due to the fact that it does not block loading of the "Enter your Mastodon ID" popup, it may – especially in the case of "toot interactions" – happen, that the "Enter your Mastodon ID" popup is shown anyway for some seconds. After some time, it should be redirected though. If it really fails, this behavior ensures you still have a fallback to be able to manually enter your Mastodon handle.