What are the implications for #ActivityPub user interface design?
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bengo
@bengo@mastodon.social
mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06i like to play, explore, and help people talk with computers. 🌎🌖 robust openness, sustainability, generosity, harmony, tranquility, resilience, freedom, web4, DID, zcap, law, peace, dukkha, criticality. {B,T}LM.
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@aburka one more thing: I’m genuinely super excited about the near term readiness of social webs based on open protocols and architecture appropriate for 2026, not AP’s outdated arch from more than 15 years ago (eg AP had client side signatures in 2017, but the chairs of the old group cut it at the last minute so now your Mastodon instance can spoof you).
"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones." – John Maynard Keynes.
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@benpate@mastodon.social @smallcircles@social.coop @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu @nlnet@social.nlnet.nl good points. Totally agree about meeting people where they are. From my perspective, the majority of the people on the fediverse in 5 years aren’t on it now. So designing for them is different than designing for the smaller total addressable audience that is on it.
you’re right some folks will only want to use web pages. I’m glad they’ll have many options too.
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Here is where it was almost resolved without due process in 2023. Read the minutes from back then.
https://www.w3.org/2023/09/12-social-minutes.html#t03
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@smallcircles@social.coop @benpate@mastodon.social @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu @nlnet@social.nlnet.nl good reflection. If things here look copy pasted from the corporate captured web, it might be because the same people keep making the same limiting decisions with their cronies all the way since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial
Big believer in Conways Law and also moreso
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_principle
“the future lies with the youth”
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@davep that is a better question for the w3c staff, mozilla staff, etc that have been relentlessly railroading this for years
https://www.w3.org/2023/09/12-social-minutes.html#t03
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@benpate@mastodon.social @smallcircles@social.coop @strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu @nlnet@social.nlnet.nl i don’t know what you mean. I already discovered great secure apps via the open web on websites called signal.org, matrix.org, wire.com, etc etc.
And btw I’ve sold plenty of software in my day, with a diverse group of people, and there’s rarely consensus on how to think amongst tech/sales roles, at least not on diverse teams.
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@silverpill @bhaugen FEP is also permissioned by design 🧠
But you are good at granting permission broadly.
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@bhaugen update: this is the best place for latest information and to provide feedback. https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swicg/2026Jan/0016.html
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@evan @julian @darius @dmitri IMHO what's best for fellow implementers and end-users, and most fair to those who took risk to implement the specification as agreed upon, is:
WE DO NOT BREAK USERSPACE[0]
Linus' diction in that footnote is not great, but the principle is. It stands up for all implementers, not just corporate/rich ones. That's leadership in protocol development. Instead some of our leaders have not only been breaking userspace, but doing it for hire.
[0]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CA+55aFy98A+LJK4+GWMcbzaa1zsPBRo76q+ioEjbx-uaMKH6Uw@mail.gmail.com/
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@gvelez17@mas.to 🤷 Not really. Code review is a really big time commitment / discussion. Is there a reference deployment of the code anywhere? If so I can point my fledgling activitypub-testing tool at it and/or https://bengo.is/activitypub/projects/activitypub-actor-tester/README/
I don't think the code internals are as important as the behavior in the wild that can be inspected/tested from the outside by other AP clients.
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@darius @evan @julian I made the point in SWICG meeting years ago. W3C staff seemed to agree. https://github.com/w3c/strategy/issues/435#issuecomment-2065436813
There's no reason to keep repeating the half truth because it sounds true, but it's not, so it has clearly caused confusion. If that's the only reason we have a WG, we don't need one. There are other reasons.
There has not been CG consensus on a request to republish AP, and this is a way of venue shopping to a much smaller consensus group.
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@darius @evan @julian The CG decision policy, ie the group which ostensibly decided to approve a charter, *requires* the chair be elected. The CG Chair has not been elected ever. And yet we are talking about what the CG has decided by consensus as determined by a completely different policy than the CG charter's decision policy requires. It's so clear an outcome was decided and all process that made that inconvenient is ignored, so I just can't let this misinfo spread that process requires WG.
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@darius @evan @julian And I'm extremely disappointed in w3c staff for completely disregarding and failing to enforce the charter, and moreso in leadership in our community for failing to even have a decision policy (some in fact originally arguing against having one), later agreeing to one, and then ignoring its requirements when inconvenient.
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@evan @julian @darius @dmitri this isn't the first time you've claimed to not receive an email I sent from gmail and got no undeliverability notice for. You should fix your self hosted mail setup or use a reliable one for important roles.
I'm finding it hard to reconcile your position that private email is not the right way to work on this when you have sent me many such emails e.g. about how I should sign an NDA with Facebook to come work with you and them on ActivityPub and ActivityStreams.
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@evan@cosocial.ca @darius @julian The misinfo and deception here is endless and exhausting. That was not in the charter that passed SWICG CFC after ~ Feb 21, 2025.
Intentional or not this whole bit is effectively 'gish galloping' which is against the code of ethics and professional conduct. https://www.w3.org/policies/code-of-conduct/
The lazy arguments are indistinguishable from malice and harassment. I won't be replying to correct your inaccuracies here any more.
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@omz13 @aburka it’s interesting you mention that because ActivityStreams 2 started at IETF not W3C, mostly authored/implemented well before Evan inherited it after the original authors left SocialWG. There was a strategic decision to also work on it at W3C WG for wide review and to consider the needs of social web industry (of the time).
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-snell-activitystreams-00
It’s not an either or thing. There are many applied developers at both. I’m a big IETF fan as well, where AS2 has roots.
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@colm looks awesome! You might want to make the time zone a bit more clear. Thanks for hosting!
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@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz @benpate@mastodon.social @smallcircles@social.coop @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu @nlnet@social.nlnet.nl you could name a problem that, of course. But I was naming one of many kinds of paternalism, so you can’t name all kinds of paternalism that without invisibilizing other kinds of paternalism and for what? I hear that you don’t find it helpful yet. Take it or leave it. I only share stuff I’m myself looking for all kinds of takes on. So thank you for that.