Pre-Alpha ActivityPub-related bug reports

Angus McLeod

I'm getting this delivery failure trying to send a follow to a category inbox

[Discourse Activity Pub] POST request to https://community.nodebb.org/category/31/inbox failed: Expected([200, 201, 202]) <=> Actual(400 Bad Request)
[Discourse Activity Pub] https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ap/actor/797217cf18c0e819dfafc52425590146 failed to deliver to https://community.nodebb.org/category/31/inbox
id: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ap/activity/02feb8d245fa780e4683d03015f1b41e
type: Follow
to: https://community.nodebb.org/category/31
cc:
- https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public
published: '2024-04-05T18:09:14Z'
updated: '2024-04-05T18:09:14Z'
actor: !ruby/hash:ActiveSupport::HashWithIndifferentAccess
  id: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ap/actor/797217cf18c0e819dfafc52425590146
  type: Group
  updated: '2024-04-05T12:49:51Z'
  url: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/c/meeting/threadiverse-wg/88
  name: Threadiverse Working Group (SocialHub)
  inbox: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ap/actor/797217cf18c0e819dfafc52425590146/inbox
  outbox: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ap/actor/797217cf18c0e819dfafc52425590146/outbox
  followers: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/ap/actor/797217cf18c0e819dfafc52425590146/followers
  preferredUsername: threadiverse-wg
  ...

julian

@Angus-McLeod did it just send a 400 or was there an error message involved in the response?

Edit: I added some additional debugging to the S2S validation logic. Can you try to follow @[email protected]? That instance is my testing instance and is a little quieter.

Angus McLeod

@julian I've just sent a few follows from my local to @[email protected]. The code is again 400 and the error message is just "Bad request". I know our follows work with Mastodon (and other Discourse instances), but nevertheless there could be an issue on either end here. Lmk if you find anything in the logs about why it's being rejected.

the skyfoxx

@julian said in Pre-Alpha ActivityPub-related bug reports:

but kbin.social is down now! Oh boy.

Happy to test any scenarios you have!

crazycells

what is the difference between posts and topics?

topics are "toot"s and posts are both "toot"s and "comments" ?

Screenshot 2024-04-14 at 14.57.58.png

additionally, when I click the posts, url fails; however, clicking topics works...

clicking posts are taking me here: https://community.nodebb.org/post/https://mas.to/users/Techaltar/statuses/112270974822779415

the skyfoxx

When you click on the world/all icon, the world/curated icon also highlights

nhl.pl

Error 405 Not Allowed after trying to reply and hitting Submit button.

julian

@nhl.pl That's a weird one, are you still seeing that issue when replying to that topic? I wonder if it was a transient error.

julian

@the-skyfoxx said in Pre-Alpha ActivityPub-related bug reports:

When you click on the world/all icon, the world/curated icon also highlights

Thanks, given that I'm going to remove the /world/all route altogether, this should no longer be an issue

nhl.pl

Invalid API call when trying to bookmark one of the posts from World (All).

nhl.pl

Sorting changed from default to Newest to Oldest.
https://community.nodebb.org/topic/d35644c9-5820-49a6-9b85-9b5673acdfa4/morning-i-hope-your-day-is-awesome/2?_=1713379891143&sort=newest_to_oldest

Issues:

wrong time for Last reply near to 7 Replies dropdown menu - 12 hours ago when latest reply timestamp shows 4 hours ago,
7 Replies after expanding them are sorted Oldest to Newest when posts below them are sorted Newest to Oldest as requested.

Both things work as intended outside World (All) within normal topics not related to ActivityPub.

nhl.pl

ActivityPub user profile > Flag Profile window:

It looks to be an API call and returns {"errors":["Bad request"]}. /ap/actor/ae0fea90a57bf109abf03f47806c7285 tells nothing to end user so it would be nice to change it to something familiar for local community or Fediverse handle.

hellekin

@angus, @devnull I think this is a bug report

julian

@[email protected] yes, it was posted on the NodeBB community and is related to it's integration there

crazycells

hi @julian , I wonder how search engines and SEO will work for federated posts? Let's say I published a post specific to forum-1 on forum-1, however since it is federated out, the same posts and topic can be found on 10+ more websites simultaneously... and let's assume forum-2 is higher ranked on search engines for some reasons...

when people are searching related keywords on search engines, will they be directed to forum-1? or forum-2, namely the forum that search engine favors/ranks higher?

julian

@crazycells That's a good question, and not one I'm sure I have the answer for.

It's something I wonder about because it has been said that search engines will penalize sites that contain repetitive content. Does that mean we may see downweighting because federated content can be found word-for-word elsewhere? I don't know.

I think what might be a good practice would be for a site to refer back to the original site if available.

For example, if you inspect the source for this topic, you'll see that it contains a canonical reference:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://community.nodebb.org/topic/17867/pre-alpha-activitypub-related-bug-reports?page=3" />

If this topic appears elsewhere (and it does, on the ActivityPub SocialHub), then it would be better if that site also provided a canonical reference back to community.nodebb.org, but that's not a requirement anywhere at this point in time.

That way, a search engine upon encountering a site, would be able to learn the appropriate original source and weight it accordingly.

crazycells

@julian thanks for the answer. my guess is that since google or bing do not have any contribution to the fediverse or any activitypub adopting sites (or do they?), maybe they will simply not care enough or change anything about their calculations... lol...

additionally, I believe there is this bug ... edited federated posts are not updated on other sites? This is what it looks like on mastodon social however I have edited the second to the last word as ranks 4 days ago?

Screenshot 2024-04-26 at 16.00.49.png

crazycells

@julian additionally, I have just checked "ActivityPub SocialHub" , my edited post is not updated there either...

and here -originally- I just made a comment in a topic, but there it looks like I opened a new topic... and with a very ugly title is this because you have adjusted it that way?

Screenshot 2024-04-26 at 16.17.45.png

julian

@crazycells said:

originally- I just made a comment in a topic, but there it looks like I opened a new topic

That one's because SocialHub (more specifically, Discourse's implementation of ActivityPub) does not automatically traverse up the reply-chain to discover the original post. The original topic pre-dates @[email protected] and I syncing the categories together, so SocialHub does not know about the other posts in this topic. In that scenario, it will create a new topic like you saw.

julian

@crazycells said in Pre-Alpha ActivityPub-related bug reports:

edited federated posts are not updated on other sites?

We're sending the appropriate activity out (an Update activity) whenever a post edit takes place.

I believe @oplik0 worked on this a bit, so if there are issues perhaps he may be able to speak to that.

However there is no guarantee that updates are properly handled across the fediverse. Best effort, I guess