As the other person that replied indicated, *key is shorthand for Misskey and Misskey fork instances like Sharkey/Iceshrimp/etc.

There’s a bunch of them and since many of the instances with primarily English or other language (besides Japanese) people on them aren’t using Misskey (or any specific fork) it’s easier to write *key.

I should have clarified that in the OP, but I hoped the body text would help with that. My bad!

@fediverse@lemmy.world

I follow where you’re coming from.

I can see the perks to the Bluesky option, but given it’s centralized, venture capital funded (and they’re already trying to figure out monetization), and so forth, I’m personally not inclined to rely on much related to it.

However, I’m very aware of the hurdles the option I shared present to those unfamiliar with all of this, and why they’d choose otherwise. Then again, we’re here using this stuff, I’m posting from a microblogging instance (Sharkey) to you, and so my posts are also indirectly for others on other microblogging instances (like those using Mastodon).

For anyone these replies may reach on a Mastodon instance, using Phanpy is much simpler. It’s just going to Phanpy.social, logging in with their info, and they’re set to use it. Much like someone on Lemmy can go to Phtn.app and give Photon a try.

All that said it would be preferable if there was a guest accessible version to Phanpy (or any similar catch up-style service for fediverse stuff), without a doubt.

@fediverse@lemmy.world

No need for another account, since it’s log in via your Mastodon account.

As I understand it, it’s a more feature-rich alternative frontend (think like Alexandrite/Photon for Lemmy), so it’s grabbing content in the sense that any ActivityPub instance does so. So…Yes? Unless you meant in a different way.

@fediverse@lemmy.world

Something cool to note is there’s an interface for Mastodon called Phanpy with a Catch Up feature.

It allows for a more granular look at posts from the past from what I gather.

@fediverse@lemmy.world

Yeah, when I ran into it and realized what was happening, I was a little stumped on what a possible solution could be too. All that comes to mind are some clunky workarounds unfortunately.

@fediverse@lemmy.world