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ActivityPub

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Re: ActivityPub

#21

Post by _Algernon_ »

whimsicalism wrote: post #17
doener wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes: "Does Mastodon or the Fediverse use ads or trackers or algorithms or blockchain or cryptocurrency or anything annoying like that? No. There are no ads, no trackers, the timeline shows all posts from everyone you follow in chronological order, and there is no blockchain/cryptocurrency/web3. Fediverse servers connect to each other using traditional sustainable methods that email and websites have used for decades.…

Yeah, I'm sure the Fediverse doesn't use any "algorithms."

There is no need to be pedantic. Everyone knows that "algorithm" is synonymous with "recommendation engine" these days.

Re: ActivityPub

#22

Post by dang »

chatterhead wrote: post #11
dang wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid so, and you've been posting so many unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments that were going to have to ban you unless you stop. We've already asked you once. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

This isn't moderating, Daniel - it's curating. So do what we both know you enjoy about this job since you don't seem to do the other aspects of it.

People mean so many different things by those words (you can throw in 'censorship' too) that I don't know what they mean any more.

If you want to say something about which aspects of the job I'm lacking in, I'd definitely be interested.

Re: ActivityPub

#23

Post by tedunangst »

bullen wrote: post #20

How does ActivityPub make sure posts on other hosts are "real"? I would have gone for a pub/priv key solution instead and supported tree structured comments and real private messaging.

The post must either be retrieved via https, or signed with a key pair retrieved from the same origin.

Re: ActivityPub

#24

Post by jeroenhd »

outside1234 wrote: post #6

Totally ignorant question - is ActivityPub the preferred way to work against a Mastodon server if you want something like a Twitter firehose? If not, what is the preferred manner of accomplishing this?

I don't think there's a firehose alternative for Mastodon. There's the generic stream API (https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/timelines/streaming/) which should contain all public posts but that will only reflect the local timeline.

The general public API also has a "fetch posts since ID " call but in practice you'll only be able to fetch 400 posts at most based on the docs I can find.

There are tools like this: https://github.com/cscape/mastodon-firehose which you can use to combine multiple stream endpoints. That tool probably comes closest if you provide it with enough servers to monitor.

Re: ActivityPub

#25

Post by bullen »

tedunangst wrote: post #23
bullen wrote: post #20

How does ActivityPub make sure posts on other hosts are "real"? I would have gone for a pub/priv key solution instead and supported tree structured comments and real private messaging.

The post must either be retrieved via https, or signed with a key pair retrieved from the same origin.

Aha, thx!

Re: ActivityPub

#26

Post by lsaferite »

barbazoo wrote: post #13
andrewmutz wrote: post #4

How do algorithmic feeds work in the fediverse? Are there already services out there the last slurp in a ton of activitypub feed data and help surface content to users that they will enjoy? Some of the centralized social media services do this extremely well after you've been using them for awhile (YouTube in particular)

It's funny but I definitely wouldn't have put YT on that list. Even after attempting to "train" it by removing from the feed stuff I'm not interested in, it's still very random and comically irrelevant at times.

YT is SO bad. It's not even funny at this point.

Re: ActivityPub

#27

Post by oflor »

It looks a lot like XMPP with some of its flaws – too much flexibility and no principled stance on privacy and security issues. For example, I couldn't find how ActivityPub supports signatures of sent content, while Mastodon (one of ActivityPub implementation/services) specifies and requires it. And it's really disappointing that they don't solve the identity theft problem, leaving it all in hands of instances' admins.

Re: ActivityPub

#28

Post by codefreeordie »

chatterhead wrote: post #11
dang wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid so, and you've been posting so many unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments that were going to have to ban you unless you stop. We've already asked you once. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

This isn't moderating, Daniel - it's curating. So do what we both know you enjoy about this job since you don't seem to do the other aspects of it.

[flagged]

Re: ActivityPub

#29

Post by zaik »

oflor wrote: post #27

It looks a lot like XMPP with some of its flaws – too much flexibility and no principled stance on privacy and security issues. For example, I couldn't find how ActivityPub supports signatures of sent content, while Mastodon (one of ActivityPub implementation/services) specifies and requires it. And it's really disappointing that they don't solve the identity theft problem, leaving it all in hands of instances' admin…

I use Mastodon over the web-interface. Where would signatures of sent content be generated or signed? How does the receiving end verify the signature?

With XMPP+OMEMO I have verified the fingerprints of my friends by scanning their QR code.

Re: ActivityPub

#30

Post by oflor »

zaik wrote: post #29
oflor wrote: post #27

It looks a lot like XMPP with some of its flaws – too much flexibility and no principled stance on privacy and security issues. For example, I couldn't find how ActivityPub supports signatures of sent content, while Mastodon (one of ActivityPub implementation/services) specifies and requires it. And it's really disappointing that they don't solve the identity theft problem, leaving it all in hands of instances' admin…

I use Mastodon over the web-interface. Where would signatures of sent content be generated or signed? How does the receiving end verify the signature? With XMPP+OMEMO I have verified the fingerprints of my friends by scanning their QR code.

I'm sorry, I don't have a good answer for you. While PGP-like web of trust is accessible on native desktop and mobile applications, it's certainly harder to use in browser. I don't think that it should be an argument against supporting it.

One of the widespread solutions in the cryptocurrency world is browser extensions, which store in its private storage the private key and allow you to use it to sign some transactions in the same browser window. I reckon it's possible to implement the same approach for PGP and store the private key and trusted public keys in order to sign and validate messages.

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