Relaxing treatment of non-notes by Mastodon

[julian]

@[email protected]

Our user testing (and many feedback) points that this is a very common issue with AP federation at the moment, even between Mastodon instances.

I am more than willing to admit that this is a complex issue that cannot be solved independently by one implementor. A user shouldn't have to think about how to navigate various ActivityPub implementations with respect to replying/liking, etc.

My apologies for assuming it was about growth hacking (which I still wouldn't begrudge you if it factored in, I think we all think about it a little.)

So let's set aside that for now and see if the content presentation can be improved just enough.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@hongminhee @julian @renchap @pfefferle @mike @michael

That's an interesting idea using as:preview to carry an as:Note representation of the activity, abd would probably be pretty easy to integrate, I think?

[pfefferle@mastodon.social]

@thisismissem @hongminhee @julian @renchap @mike @michael but isn't this a hack we only might have to add because of the summary/content-warning thingy?

[julian]

@[email protected] @[email protected] Yeah that's something I haven't seen before. Would love to get @[email protected]'s take on it.

Blog software has the concept of "excerpts", which I think fits well with that idea.

@[email protected] is right though... this is likely only because an excerpt can't be sent in via summary, otherwise it gets treated like a CW.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@pfefferle @hongminhee @julian @renchap @mike @michael

To a degree, but for activities like Travel, Listen, Visit, etc, I think representing those to something resembling a Note will always be difficult, hence having an as:Note preview of the activity does make sense to me

[samsethi@podcastindex.social]

@evan @julian @pfefferle @manton @renchap @andypiper @Gargron I 100% agree with Julian. We are new to AP development but very excited. I was surprised by the lack of AP vocab support in Mastodon given the AP vocab has not been updated since May 2017.

Being a podcast & music app we had hoped to use the LISTEN verb. Sadly we can't as there is no support? Equally we offer blogging and event ticketing in our platform, so using ANNOUNCE, ARTICLE and BUY verbs will hopefully work???

[beaware@social.beaware.live]

@julian the cynicism in me tells me that they did that and haven't changed it yet so they don't "accidentally" send someone to a better Fediverse software.

Lots of Mastodon decisions seem very sus lately. The lack of moderation tools and the devs completely ignoring requests for them are the biggest concern.

[pfefferle@mastodon.social]

/cc @linos

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@samsethi so, I think you should just publish the activities that make sense for the problem domain, and we can worry about getting support for them by other platforms afterwards.

[pfefferle@mastodon.social]

@samsethi here are the Object-Types that are supported by Mastodon and that will be transformed into a `Note` https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/blob/ca8e892c1abb91722c256030c83cabec8e3445ff/app/lib/activitypub/activity.rb#L9

[samsethi@podcastindex.social]

@evan sadly its chicken and egg. If we publish with the listen verb and no apps read/render it then. our users will ask why their activity was not published. So we are forced to use the lowest common denominator aka note so it is read now by AP clients. Very happy to experiment as I know we are a new use case.

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@samsethi @evan this is why AP servers need to advertise what activities and objects they support, without this we'll almost never be able to use the full vocabulary, as everyone will choose the lowest common denominator for the platform with the most users.

[linos@graz.social]

@julian @renchap @pfefferle @mike @michael @hongminhee

Same for #CastoPod: Mastodon was/is the reason they actually send the creation of a `Ǹote`, which essentially contains the name, summary and the link of their well defined PodcastEpisode ActivityStreams object. In fact adding a new supported object type to Mastodon is a one-liner and I was a bit sad that not even a issue got opened. But I hope we can overcome such hurdles in the near future!

[samsethi@podcastindex.social]

@thisismissem @evan 100% agree but how?

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@samsethi @evan I think this links to the various efforts: https://github.com/w3c/activitypub/issues/430

[trwnh@mastodon.social]

@thisismissem @julian @pfefferle @manton @samsethi @renchap @andypiper I don't think "capability negotiation by nodeinfo software version" is a good idea or at all desirable.

[trwnh@mastodon.social]

@thisismissem @pfefferle @hongminhee @julian @renchap @mike @michael hot take, but mastodon should be able to convert *anything* into a status "simply" by taking name/summary/content if present. https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/#h-text-representations

[thisismissem@hachyderm.io]

@trwnh @julian @pfefferle @manton @samsethi @renchap @andypiper

It's a stop gap solution until we have something better.

[erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net]

@trwnh @thisismissem @pfefferle @hongminhee @julian @renchap @mike @michael but one thing I'd note: I think objects should always degrade gracefully into something note like, but that's not the case for activities

Imagine I used a federated last.fm like application. If Mastodon converted as:Listen to a note, my followers would probably get pissed off about the "Now listening to: X" statuses every 2 minutes

[erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net]

@trwnh @hongminhee @julian @michael @mike @pfefferle @renchap @thisismissem back in pump.io these things were relegated to your "minor feed". Absent an equivalent, I think implementations *should* suppress them. If your use case isn't amenable to this behaviour, you should probably consider if an activity is appropriate for it