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I think the #ActivityPub client-to-server API is extremely important and underrated. I’m glad to see the SWF and W3C group prioritizing it, because I think it has the potential to fix something that’s kind of broken on the #Fediverse: too many accounts, on too many platforms that really ought to be clients.

Here’s the rub, though: you need the big players in the space to support it. Mastodon needs to support it. Pixelfed and PeerTube need to support it.

So, how do you get the big existing projects to all implement it? How do you justify it?

Michael 🇺🇦

@[email protected] replied · 4 days ago

@deadsuperhero At Friendica we already support C2S. But it is rather limited. There are a lot of questions that will need to be answered until C2S is fully usable.

Evan Prodromou

@[email protected] replied · 3 days ago

@heluecht @deadsuperhero hey, is anyone interested in participating in the API task force?

Sean Tilley

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

Here’s the thing: Mastodon already has a really good API. There’s a whole ecosystem of clients around it, to the point that many other Fediverse implementations adopted it, so that they can use the apps.

I don’t think this is a bad thing in and of itself. But, if we want projects like Mastodon to support it, the value proposition has to provide things that the Mastodon API does not.

I think a killer feature to focus on would be identity management.

just small circles 🕊

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@deadsuperhero

Yes. Mastodon has always given their own product decisions precedence over healthy evolution of the ecosystem as a whole. And despite many people being very frustrated about that, I think this is perfectly valid decision. After all choosing to implement an open standard should not come with the obligation to maintain/evolve that standard. It is only smart to do so, and Mastodon did this with an eye on their own product development.

Imho it is really the broader dev ecosystem that is at fault in letting the fedi be taken hostage by past Mastodon decisions, making them the post-facto #interoperability leader. As for Mastodon API I'd argue that its users are not on the fediverse. They are on Mastodon.

Identity management may be killer feature, but only when first a sound #ActivityPub foundation is in place. AS/AP isn't as-yet robust enough to be the future of social networking. I'd say the extensibility mechanism is killer feature, and having SDK's and devtools for that.

just small circles 🕊

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@deadsuperhero

Right now extensibility of #ActivityPub shapes up as custom app-by-app app-centric development where individual devs just pragmatically throw new stuff on the wire, and when their app gains any popularity or other apps to integrate in a similarish application, things are bolted onto that in random ways. That whole story really constitutes a Big Ball of Mud anti-pattern that only introduces protocol decay, tech debt, and whack-a-mole programming, that is very hard to get rid of once there exists an installed base.

The reason that we do things that way is very understandable. It works in a grassroots environment where indivualist devs find it very hard and not valuable to collaborate at scale in what amounts to a kind of design-by-consensus process. But it comes at a high cost, where interoperability is basically out the door and any app has to be shaped as a pretzel and adopt all the quirks introduced by predecessors in a particular app domain to fit itself on the wire.

just small circles 🕊

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@deadsuperhero

It does not need to be that way. I am quite happy after all (after being initially frustrated) by how #ATProto has disrupted things, and opened the eyes of devs in the #ActivityPub ecosystem that we must act or lose out (stay niche, which may be fine too) to the Atmoshpere and how it enables devs to focus on service and product delivery instead of low-level wire plumbing and continuous breakages.

ATProto also shows the way that we can now follow on the #fediverse to catch up again: cocreate a similar robust basis for people to build on. #Bluesky had the advantage of a greenfield start and dedicated team unburdened by past decisions. And they build this whole Lexicon system and ways to introspect functionality.

We can do that too, solve the #LinkedData conundrum, and create an extensibility mechanism that allows devs to focus on service modeling. The more introspection this mechanism allows for, the less design-by-consensus is required, easing expansion to new domains.

Emelia 👸🏻

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@smallcircles @deadsuperhero I've quietly been borrowing ideas from AT Protocol for ActivityPub:
- declaring moderation actors
- supporting content labels (first party abd third party)
- looking at how custom feeds, DIDs and other tech may translate across

just small circles 🕊

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@thisismissem @deadsuperhero

I was looking at #ForgeFed which is a very sizable #ActivityPub extension (constituting the "Code forge" app domain in app-centric view, but arguably "Software development" top-level business domain in a service-oriented fedi).

The way that things are modeled here adheres more to the actor model where there's a Factory actor, which in turn creates resource actors that expose various sub-domains. For instance for the management of Issues and PR's there's a TicketTracker actor to obtain via a Factory actor on a forge instance. Though I'm not sure whether I'd modeled that in similar fashion, it is a fascinating direction where we focus much more on good protocol extension design.

All in all AS/AP offers a very granular foundation that allows for very interesting architectures, if only we dare explore them and do not dogmatically stick to some engrained notion how "social media" ought to be. I see #SocialMedia as but a small subset of #SocialNetworking.

Sean Tilley

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

Would love to hear what @evan thinks about this.

Evan Prodromou

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@deadsuperhero

I am heart to heart with you on this, friend.

GIF

Evan Prodromou

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@deadsuperhero so, here's my best bet. I can be wrong!

1. Get some servers to implement the API well.
2. Get some must-have clients that run on those servers. This shows the value of the API.
3. Our leading servers shift to supporting it.

That may work; I don't know. It's my best bet right now!

I want to note that WordPress is working on the API!

django

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@evan @deadsuperhero there are also a number of frameworks that have already signalled interest or intent in supporting the API:
#Bonfire #FedBox #Fedify #Emissary

Sean Tilley

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@evan Yeah, I mostly agree with this. It’s just that the buy-in is a little bit of a chicken and egg problem. You need servers to adopt it, but you need a compelling first mover. Bonfire, maybe?

The spec definitely needs love, too. I think one of the harder things is building a timeline out of inbox activities. I feel like maybe a future version of the API could specify timelines somehow, whether it’s an endpoint or some kind of basic query? Maybe there’s even a way to implement alternative timelines at that level?

These are all just guesses on my part, but I feel like this could be a gateway to universal custom feeds.

Evan Prodromou

@[email protected] replied · 3 days ago

@deadsuperhero so, it's a two-sided market -- clients and servers. The traditional mechanism is a "ratchet" -- build up one side, then build up the other, and then build up the first.

So, yes, servers first, then clients, then more servers, more clients, and so on back and forth.

julian

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

Does the inbox have to map to a timeline, specifically? Mastodon called this out as being difficult to do because you would have to real-time parse the inbox every time you wanted to load the timeline.

Of course one could always reduce the inbox into a single timeline and serve that instead, but then we're braching out with our own proprietary APIs again.

Is that ok?

@[email protected] @[email protected]

Evan Prodromou

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@julian @deadsuperhero We actually have a meeting tomorrow if either of you wants to come.

https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/3432cf4c-a9fe-4f72-8de5-fa6809b57767/20260219T110000/

W3C

19 February 2026 | ActivityPub API Task Force Meeting | Calendar

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.

Sean Tilley

@[email protected] replied · 5 days ago

@julian @general @evan Again, this is sort of why I’m advocating for supporting timelines as a concept in the ActivityPub API. Instead of repeatedly parsing the inbox, we could do exactly what you’re saying with some kind of representation of a timeline. Even if it’s just plain old algorithmic time-sort.

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