New blog post: Understanding ActivityPub - Part 4: Threads
A first detailed look into how Threads implements ActivityPub. Learn about the data that is shared (or not), an interesting implementation of HTTP signatures, and Threads' take on quote posts in ActivityPub.
@crepels Nice article! In particular, this is the best explanation I've seen yet of the "infinite signature recursion" problem, and the way around it.
I haven't tried to talk to Threads from my own toy implementation yet. I have a suspicion that the "instance actor" requirement is going to give me a headache.
Uff @linos kann es sein, dass ich noch etwas nicht verstehe? Offensichtlich haben Menschen an meinen letzten #activitypub Post kommentiert und die Kommentare sind auch am WordPress Beitrag https://www.videospielgeschichten.de/welche-konsole-ist-die-schoenste/ gelandet. Leider finde / sehe ich diese aber nicht im Fediverse am Post; was mache ich falsch?
@vsg_DE Was meinst du mit "Fediverse", auf deiner Mastodon-Instanz, während du eingeloggt bist? Es ist so wie immer: du siehst nur jene Kommentare, die auf deiner Instanz landen. Das tun sie nur, wenn jemand auf deiner Instanz den kommentierenden Account bereits folgt.
A project has started to build a #Fediverse#testsuite, so it becomes possible to systematically test interoperability between applications in the fediverse.
It is going to need some virtualization, to run "substantial" server-side applications for testing. So we'd like to know what development and virtualization platforms #ActivityPub developers develop and test on.
If you are a Fediverse developer, could you spend 5min and answer our survey?
The proliferation of #ActivityPub is exciting. But don't dismiss those that want to defederate with corporate socials. The #fediverse was built by individuals escaping the harassment they faced on those platforms.
If you don't agree with your server admin's decision to federate with a specific domain, you can block it on your own. You have the power!
This seems preferable to an admin making the decision for all users.
With yesterday's announcement that Meta is starting to test Threads and ActivityPub integration, I see the #Fediverse is at an all time high again of whining and crying and being butthurt over it all.
I get stating your opinion about not wanting them here or whatever, but come on people, don't sound like a little 2 year old who lost their pacifier. It gets old, quick.
Just mute/block and move on and be done with it all. It's really that damn simple.
At the State of the Word address this week, Matt Mullenweg was asked about support for the plugin, and he commented that less than 5,000 sites had installed it. So he wasn't sure how interested people are in it.
So... if you have a WP site, let's start installing that plugin and making more sites available via ActivityPub! 😀
@warrows He was talking about installations of the plugin in WordPress installs. When you install from the central plugin repository, they gather a count of how many sites have installed a plugin. And that number shows on the plugin page, and can help give people considering a plugin a sense of how actively the plugin is used.
The network effect for #ActivityPub is gaining some serious momentum right now. As more services adopt the protocol, more people, more communities and more content are added to the network making it increasingly more valuable for everyone. This will only accelerate in the coming months as Threads, Wordpress, Tumblr, Flipboard and others federate.
We're still in early innings but there's no way to put this genie back in the bottle. The open social Web / the #Fediverse is going to be huge.
what do we have to do to make the #ActivityPub plugin attractive to more #WordPress users? We are currently at 4000+ active users on WordPress.org + the WordPress.com users.
bto, bcc to not exist or be broadly disabled in AP (edit, to clarify: I want to and cc to take the meaning of bto and bcc in general; the functionality is useful, but in a social network it should be the default behavior and we have other mechanisms to tag people in)
I've been thinking a bit about this post regarding #Mastodon's responsibility to be compatible with the #threadiverse (#ActivityPub thread aggregators like #Lemmy & #Kbin). Right now, a thread from Lemmy or Kbin usually federates to Mastodon with truncated text and a link to the actual thread. However, many want Mastodon to be more compatible with threads so that the people over on Mastodon interact with the threadiverse more.
I was initially in agreement as a Kbin user. But having given it some thought, I think this is an unwise approach that'll only serve to overcomplicate platforms on the #fediverse. Yes, people on Mastodon should promote other parts of the fediverse (and vice versa), but complete interoperability shouldn't be expected of every platform.
As much as many would like it, you can't have long-form video from PeerTube, images from Pixelfed, threads from Kbin, blogs from Writefreely, etc. all neatly fit in a microblog feed. These are different formats made for different platforms, and the people making them are expecting them to be interacted with in completely different ways. When someone makes a thread in a Lemmy community, they're probably expecting that the people who are going to see and interact with the thread are people that want to see threads and are thus on a Lemmy instance (or another thread aggregator). If someone from Mastodon were to interact with it as if it were a microblog post, there'd be a big mismatch. People interact with microblogs differently than they do with threads — that's why they're separate to begin with. You don't see everyone on Twitter also wanting to use to Reddit because people who want microblogs don't necessarily want Reddit-style threads, and vice versa.
The other option, then, is to separate these different formats into different feeds or otherwise make them clearly distinct from one another. Kbin does this by separating threads and microblog posts into two tabs. While you can view both in the "All Content" tab if you'd like, they're styled differently enough that it's very clear when you're looking at a thread and when you're looking at a microblog post. This distinction lets users treat threads like threads and microblog posts like microblog posts, which is really helpful since the two formats serve different purposes and have different audiences. This option — clear distinction — is a great way to solve the conundrum I've been talking about… if your platform is meant for viewing all these different kinds of content to begin with.
And that's what it really comes down to imo. Mastodon is a platform for microblogging. Most people go to Mastodon because they want a Twitter alternative, not a Twitter alternative that's also an Instagram alternative and a Reddit alternative and a YouTube alternative. Even if you put these different content types in separate tabs, it would inevitably make things seem more confusing and thus raise the barrier of entry. Add a Videos tab to Mastodon to view stuff on PeerTube, and people are inevitably going to go, "Wait, what's this? Is this like YouTube? I thought this was just a Twitter alternative! This all seems too complicated," even if you tell them to ignore it.
It's probably best to leave Mastodon as it is: a microblogging platform that has some limited federation with other formats. The way Kbin threads currently display on Mastodon is fine. In fact, when I post a Kbin thread, I'm expecting it to be viewed via a thread aggregator. If people on Mastodon were part of the target audience, I would've made a microblog post.
Now, if you want to make something that lets you view everything on the fediverse via different tabs, feel free. As aforementioned, Kbin supports both threads and microblogs, though it comes with some challenges (e.g., trying to fit magazine-less microblog posts into Kbin's magazine system). However, this doesn't mean every platform on the fediverse needs to seamlessly incorporate everything else. I'd love people on Mastodon to promote and even try out Lemmy & Kbin more, but that doesn't mean Mastodon needs to also become a thread aggregator.
This isn't a hurdle because people typically aren't going to the fediverse with the idea of "I want a single app for all my social media." That's not how social media works outside the fediverse, so it's not really going to be a surprise that the Twitter replacement is a Twitter replacement and not one for 5 other platforms. If someone really wants to view Reddit-style threads, they're straight up better of making an account on a different platform (just like they would make a different account for Reddit) because Mastodon is a microblogging site.
Even the best attempt to incorporate all these different types of content into Mastodon is going to further complicate the platform and make more people dismiss Mastodon as too complicated of a Twitter alternative. This isn't a situation where there's no harm at best. And the potential benefit? Lemmy comments having the occasional Mastodon user?
Mastodon itself is a good enough introduction to ActivityPub without needing to make it support other things. It shows how people on different servers can share & interact with a pool of media through the same protocol. When people learn about other platforms on the fediverse, they can go check those out. Just promoting the platforms will do the job fine without complicating people's entry into the fediverse.
What’s the BBC up to in the Fediverse? What have they learned so far from their experiments? And how is all this like the early days of the internet? In the latest episode of Dot Social, Flipboard CEO @mike chats with @Ianforrester, Senior Firestarter at @BBCRD. (How cool is that title, btw!)