Adding Mastodon Comments to Your Blog

One cool implementation of Mastodon-as-comments was with the G-Droid frontend app for the F-Droid ecosystem.

F-Droid apps don't have comments or ratings on the default F-Droid app. They're generally less necessary because the apps don't have ads or severe privacy concerns like the ones from Play Store do, but it's still nice to hear others' experiences and comments on them.

G-Droid introduced a commenting system by simply redirecting you to a mastodon URL when you clicked "Add a comment". That URL will by default add "@gdroid@mastodon.technology" and a hashtag based on the app package name to your post. For eg., for the Markor app, it would add

     @gdroid@mastodon.technology #net_gsantner_markor #fdroid_app_comments

Sadly, G-Droid itself doesn't seem to be actively maintained anymore, the last update being a few years old, but it's a really cool example of what is possible when you have open, flexible systems that can be plugged in together in many ways to create the features you need.

This is a nice idea!

I ended up doing something similar, but statically, and searching for discussions dynamically rather than using a single hardcoded thread. Essentially it's a script that searches for recent posts linking to my domain name on Reddit, HN, etc, and then updates a file with the URL of that post and some information about when it was made and how many posts there are. Then there's a Hugo template that converts the data in this file to HTML.

The script runs every few hours using free GitHub runner time, and if it makes a change, it commits it and creates a pull request with the contents so that I can review it. (I could automatically commit straight to the main branch but I like having the manual review just in case.)

I couldn't get it to work for Mastodon because there's not really a public search for Mastodon (for all sorts of reasons), although at some point I want to get it working for Bluesky. I did try hooking it up with Twitter for a while, but that required all sorts of API keys and things that I didn't want to deal with so I gave up. You also need API keys for Reddit, but that was easier to get hold of and manage.

I wrote a post about how I implemented it here: https://jonathan-frere.com/posts/adding-discussions/

After spending far too much time integrating third-party comment systems into my website, I finally decided to roll my own in Common Lisp [1].

I’m quite happy with the result. It’s simple, minimal, and fast. It does exactly what I need and no more.

Plus, everything is held for my review before being published, so I don’t have to worry about spam, cross-site scripting, or off-topic comments. It’s been a satisfying solution.

[1] https://github.com/susam/susam.net/blob/main/form.lisp

I’ve seen a few times the option to email your comment, which I thought was a really elegant solution. So much in fact that I built that into my own site https://spenc.es/writing/email-as-a-commenting-system/#comme...

If you want to use Matrix instead of Mastodon for your blog's comments, there's https://cactus.chat/

There's a rather long list of other solutions over at https://darekkay.com/blog/static-site-comments/

And there's https://github.com/carlitoplatanito/disgus for adding Nostr based comments to your static blog.

When I publish something I like not shouting into the void so I want comments , but I also don't want to give a platform to anyone and everyone on my blog.

What works best for me is to add a link to the fediverse, linkedin and sometimes HN threads of comments when I publish a post. It's also a very low tech solution :)

https://ergaster.org/posts/2024/03/06-welcoming-feedback/

I've been considering trying to get to a similar result, but considering making my actual blog _be_ a (minimal) ActivityPub sever with a si gle user/actor such that posting to the blog is publishing an ActivityPub post, and have replies to that post coming directly into the blogs own inbox, then show up as comments.

Anyone else weighed up the two approaches, I'm still on the fence tbh.

I've been doing this on my site for a couple of years: https://github.com/offbyone/ideas/blob/3f50f69494aca01f21aeb...

It's pretty easy to do. I recommend it, if you already use Fedi for anything.

I think this is a pretty great step in the direction of not being wholly dependent on one platform; makes you start thinking about your website as the source and the social media networks as just a representation.

https://micro.blog has a good implementation of this for both the Fediverse and Bluesky. A random example of mine that has an array of 'em if you want an example: https://zacwe.st/2025/02/12/amazon-is-removing-the-ability.h...

Great read. I posted some thoughts on the pros and cons of using Mastodon for comments. Overall, it's been a positive experience for my blog.

https://jszym.com/blog/mastodon_blog_comments/

Nice! I'm waiting for (/ thinking of building) something similar for #atproto/Bluesky. You could even use OAuth to allow users to add responses inline, which would then also show up in the Bluesky feed (if you wanted), with a UX pretty similar to Disqus.

Mastodon is great, but the "pick a server" step is a pretty hard filter for most users, who just want to sign up for something.

You'd also get to benefit automatically from Bluesky's blocking/moderation tools.