Notices by Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)

@flancian There are also protocol-related concerns. Setting up copies of existing Mastodon posts on a different server changes their ActivityPub IDs, so past interactions would get lost. So you can't meaningfully "move" posts - that would require them to have decentralized IDs, something that @silverpill does work on.

I'm with you that copying post content should be part of account migrations though. @renchap once mentioned that Mastodon wants that too, it's just not urgently prioritized.

@reiver

(a) My impression from some semi-recent discussions here and on the Mastodon Discord is that there's much more momentum for abolishing host-meta support than for abolishing WebFinger.

(b) My stance on handles is that they should not be used for protocol-level identification of actors (since ActivityPub already has IDs). Resolvable? Sure. Permanent? Nah. Let people change their names and configure custom domains without moving their accounts. https://correct.webfinger-canary.fietkau.software/#developers

@mro There is a suggested FEP to include the WebFinger resource in the actor document: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/2c59/fep-2c59.md But I have not seen it implemented anywhere. In the meantime, the hacky approach works and is reasonably popular. 😄

I don't want to push you into supporting something you don't want to support. Just keep in mind that your software is showing different account handles than Mastodon for some users.

Do you want me to add Seppo to the overview table anyway?

@mro The actor ID should be the thing uniquely identifying an account, yes. However, in conversations we use tags/handles and not AP IDs, so we gotta construct these handles somehow. Your approach, using the AP host, is equally as idiosyncratic as using the WebFinger host. Both ways exist in the wild – Pixelfed, Misskey and Friendica do it the way you do; Mastodon, GoToSocial and Iceshrimp do it the way I do. I just prefer this way because it lets people use their domains more easily. 🙂

@mro You do a WebFinger request on the AP host domain, and its response will give you a subject with the correct handle domain. See for example this account: https://toot.kif.rocks/@team and its WebFinger response: https://toot.kif.rocks/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:team@toot.kif.rocks This is a Mastodon split-domain setup.

The process is described here: https://www.w3.org/community/reports/socialcg/CG-FINAL-apwf-20240608/#reverse-discovery (step 4 is important for this)

I am publishing a small #ActivityPub / #fediverse project: https://fietkau.software/webfinger_canary and @canary 🙂

It is a tiny bot showcasing a split-domain WebFinger setup, where the handle domain is different from the ActivityPub server domain. This is supported by Mastodon and some other ActivityPub implementations, but not all of them.

So this project, aimed at devs and power users, is part test case, part feature recommendation/advocacy. The bot's website at https://correct.webfinger-canary.fietkau.software/ has all the details.

@mro Could you clarify your question? The idea of a split-domain setup is that the ActivityPub and WebFinger domains do not necessarily need to match, so that custom domains can be more easily used in fediverse handles.

@mro Ah yes 🙂 This project was put together to raise awareness about the feature and help platform developers test it. Broken servers will always exist, hopefully I can reduce their number by helping their developers with documentation and advocacy.

@mro @aSeppoToTry To test the split-domain handle on a remote actor, you can look up @canary in your platform and see what handle it shows you. I just gave it a try, see attachment.

It currently shows the wrong hostname. That means it's using the ActivityPub ID to construct the handle, when the handle domain should be coming from the WebFinger result. See my checklist https://correct.webfinger-canary.fietkau.software/#developers or the SocialCG report https://www.w3.org/community/reports/socialcg/CG-FINAL-apwf-20240608/#reverse-discovery for details on how to fix it.

Btw: very cool project! 👍

@silverpill Thanks, that helps me a bit. So I'd set up my client to send the posts I write to all of my multiple servers, and if one of them goes down I'm still reachable on the others with all my stuff? And the idea is that people who reply to me send their replies to all of my servers, or do my servers synchronize themselves on their own?

Maybe I just need to read up on this more...

@mcc @MrCheeze

@mcc @MrCheeze I'm pretty sure there are people today running ActivityPub profiles on redundant servers or using distributed identities, but I have yet to understand how that works for post availability and retention, like how I would know where to go to read their stuff if the place I know them from is gone.

@mcc @MrCheeze Define systematic infrastructure? Mitra exists as a practical implementation compatible with Mastodon, and it implements https://codeberg.org/silverpill/feps/src/branch/main/c390/fep-c390.md and https://codeberg.org/silverpill/feps/src/branch/main/ae97/fep-ae97.md. So you can divorce your identity from your AP instance today if you like. I just don't fully understand what that gets us.

If you decide to take your Bluesky PDS down, does their relay keep serving cached copies of your posts forever? Is that a good thing, do we want that?

@aral @sarajw Going by his GitHub comments, I wouldn't be surprised if Ryan changes the plan to opt-in after sleeping on it. Making a protocol bridge 100% opt-in comes with some thorny interaction design challenges, but the "prompted opt-in" idea that a few people have brought up seems workable. I think that's what I would do in his shoes.

@denisbloodnok @aral @sarajw I do tend to be optimistic with people. 😄

Of course I'm not in his head, but I empathize. He was up pretty late last night of his timezone replying to people, and in that time got the two puzzle pieces "move towards opt-in" and "how an opt-in process could work in practice" figured out, only missing the final commitment. I wouldn't have made a big statement at like 2:30am either, I would've gotten some rest and come back refreshed.

But maybe I'm wrong. We'll see! 🙂

@denisbloodnok @aral @sarajw @yala

Called it. 💪

https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/835#issuecomment-1942046208

@aral Hey Aral, I gave you a shout out while talking to @fediversereport about the philosophy behind my recent weekend project Pinhole :fietkau_software: https://fietkau.software/pinhole and why I built it to be anti-scalable. Thanks for the inspiration! 🙂 If they end up using the full quote, your name should appear in their next newsletter.

@aral You don't even necessarily need an extension for this since Firefox has it built into the accessibility tools.

Though the extension you linked appears to offer more options.