Steve Bate
@steve@social.technoetic.com
mastodon
4.5.7
American living in Southern France.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
·
54m ago
Fun! I just implemented vector search for my Mastodon instance. Now, I can search the posts in my instance (about 11 million of them) in a split second using semantic queries. It seems to work very well so far. The next step is create semantic timelines rather than relying on unreliable hashtags.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Mar 02, 2026
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Mar 01, 2026
@trwnh@mastodon.social @silverpill@mitra.social Another interesting "side effect" twist... some of the standard side effects are conditional (like only adding an actor to a following collection after an Accept is received). I think the FEP should also cover what happens with Undo of an activity with explicit side effects. Some secondary/side activities might have clear reversals and others not (some kinds of Update?).
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Mar 01, 2026
@trwnh@mastodon.social @silverpill@mitra.social I agree about the name and the extraneous external FEP references. Even if focused on side-effects, a properly specified FEP on this topic would be a challenge.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 28, 2026
@silverpill@mitra.social @mariusor@metalhead.club @trwnh@mastodon.social
> This FEP introduces new requirements to ActivityPub, and I will probably add more in the future. Does that make it non conformant?
Not at all. I was referring to the `Add` without an `object` to create a collection (instead of Create/Collection, I assume).
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 28, 2026
@silverpill@mitra.social @mariusor@metalhead.club @trwnh@mastodon.social In principle, I like the general idea, but I think it's misleading to call this an "ActivityPub" server FEP since it doesn't conform to the ActivityPub specifications. You also recommend (require?) using the `result` property to describe server side-effects, but you don't describe *how*. I don't know how you expect to "force clients to specify them".
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 28, 2026
@benpate@mastodon.social @mariusor@metalhead.club https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-profile and https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-preview
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 27, 2026
@nathan@ublog.hurel.me It's too early to say, but the improved UX enabled by an extended AP C2S would potentially motivate users to switch. The migration support will depend on the server implementations (Mastodon-style, LOLA, Nomad, ...).
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 27, 2026
@nathan@ublog.hurel.me Nothing I'm describing would force you to have one account. With multiple accounts, if they are hosted in one server or across multiple servers doesn't change the approach. For now, I'm discussing single actor clients, but theoretically multi-actor clients could be written too (I haven't thought much about that).
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What if... you had one Fedi account on a generic headless #ActivityPub server that simply hosts and federates your data... and had C2S UIs for microblogging, long form writing, media editing and shari
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@steve@social.technoetic.com looks similar to https://activitypods.org/ approach ?
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 27, 2026
@nathan@ublog.hurel.me Yes, ActivityPods (Mastopod) is similar, but based on Solid and RDF. The last time I checked, their C2S client was specific to Mastopod. However, that may have changed.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 27, 2026
@naturzukunft2026@mastodon.social 👋 I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but there's a W3C ActivityPub API (C2S) Task Force meeting on March 19. That's where C2S extensions will be discussed. It's listed on the SocialCG events calendar.
https://www.w3.org/groups/cg/socialcg/calendar/
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 27, 2026
@fasnix@fe.disroot.org @evan@cosocial.ca AFAIK, @HolosSocial@mastodon.social is a quite different architecture. The AP identity is bound to a phone and can't be shared with other client applications. However, I haven't used it. Let me know if this isn't correct.
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@mariusor@metalhead.club @steve@social.technoetic.com @evan@cosocial.ca @raphael@mastodon.communick.com An extension is a protocol extension. Specifically, I talked about activity types that are not m
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 26, 2026
@silverpill@mitra.social @mariusor@metalhead.club @evan@cosocial.ca @raphael@mastodon.communick.com "you have an EmojiReact activity which server should add to object's emojiReactions collection as a side-effect."
It's a direct rather than side effect, but how is that different from Add(object=EmojiReact, target=object_emojiReactions)? A generic server could support that.
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@mariusor@metalhead.club @steve@social.technoetic.com @evan@cosocial.ca @raphael@mastodon.communick.com I don't see any reason to call this a generic server if it doesn't support extensions. Just a he
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 26, 2026
@silverpill@mitra.social @mariusor@metalhead.club @evan@cosocial.ca @raphael@mastodon.communick.com You're starting to get it! 😉 You quoted "extensions" in the previous post and that was good since the way you think of "extensions" is likely very different than my view. The generic servers I'm discussing *are* highly "extensible" (more than most current Fedi implementations).
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@evan@cosocial.ca @raphael@mastodon.communick.com @steve@social.technoetic.com I think a generic ActivityPub server can't be built without major changes to ActivityPub. For example, it might be necess
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 26, 2026
@silverpill@mitra.social @evan@cosocial.ca @raphael@mastodon.communick.com Several generic AP server implementations have been built, so I don't know what you mean by the side-effect comment. Note that my mental model of a generic server doesn't implement any domain-specific behaviors in the server, but only side-effects specified by AP (and extended generic C2S support). There are also simpler ways to design servers so that content isn't tied to a specific server (with different tradeoffs than FEP-ef61). That's a long discussion...
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 24, 2026
What if... you had one Fedi account on a generic headless #ActivityPub server that simply hosts and federates your data... and had C2S UIs for microblogging, long form writing, media editing and sharing, link aggregation, games, fitness tracking, and so on, that all used that same Fedi account. Technically, it's a similar concept as ATProto (but no relay and app view) and Solid Pods (but no RDF).
It seems possible... if we can improve the AP C2S API/protocol sufficiently.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 23, 2026
What is the process of publishing #ActivityPub “notes” in the W3C SocialCG or one of its Task Forces (if it’s a different answer)?
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 21, 2026
@smallcircles@social.coop To follow up on the discussion from yesterday, @evan@cosocial.ca has created a proposal for another kind of “event stream” that is not necessarily associated with *any* AP collection type (see Example 1). This is more aligned with my mental model of an event feed/stream, where a timeline^1 is the history of the feed after optional filtering and content materialization. (^1 However, the terms are often used interchangeably in the Fedi.)
https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-api/sse
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@evan@cosocial.ca @mariusor@metalhead.club @smallcircles@social.coop Yes, I think that could be possible. I have a rough idea of a “timeline definition language” that could represent all the existing Mastodon timelines (other than “link timelines”?) and also user-defined custom timelines.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@mariusor@metalhead.club @smallcircles@social.coop @evan@cosocial.ca I *think* it’s
clear. I agree it’s a kind of “client”, just not necessarily a C2S client.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@thisismissem@hachyderm.io I suppose so. If you were truly nefarious, you could create a domain that looks almost like mine and it would still fool people. 😉 But, seriously, thanks for the info.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@mariusor@metalhead.club @smallcircles@social.coop @evan@cosocial.ca C2S has client-side and server-side aspects (different, but overlapping, behavioral requirements, etc.). Both sides consume *and* produce AP data (pull and push for S2S, currently only pull for C2S). Fetching AP data (URI dereferencing) is common to both C2S and S2S.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@smallcircles@social.coop @evan@cosocial.ca To me, it appears that Mastodon has content timelines (home, local, federated, account list, hashtag) that are materialized views of streams of content-related activities (Create, Update, Delete) and a notification timeline (a kind of *filtered* inbox activity stream) representing likes, follows, boosts, mentions, and so on. Empirically, users seem to like this model, at least for short content messaging, including microblogging and content comments.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@mariusor@metalhead.club @smallcircles@social.coop @evan@cosocial.ca I’m not sure I completely follow. A timeline is ordered by time. I agree that an unordered collection could be sorted by time to create a timeline. The AP OrderedCollection “stream” is a kind of rigid presorting that anticipates what an AP client would want. However, I also agree that even those could be reordered (by time or otherwise) and/or filtered in the client to provide custom views of the activity stream.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@thisismissem@hachyderm.io Thanks. That makes sense. Is the client_name untrusted even if the CIMD domain matches the redirect_uris domain?
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@thisismissem@hachyderm.io Also, I’ve read that authorization servers may require the CIMD client_id domain to be the same as the domain of the redirect_uris. Is that common?
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 20, 2026
@thisismissem@hachyderm.io Sounds good! Thanks for providing that service. I didn’t fully understand the issue about the CIMD hostname. How is that related to the `client_name` property in the CIMD (if present)?
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 12, 2026
@smallcircles@social.coop @silverpill@mitra.social
@HolosSocial@mastodon.social Holos Social is interesting, but to avoid confusion, the phone app is not a "full AP server". It can't federate without an external relay server, for example. Although it combines both client-like and server-like functionality, I don't see it as an alternative to C2S. With C2S I'd be able to access my account/actor from a phone, a tablet, and desktop and laptop computers with different clients. Holos Social binds the actor to a single phone IIUC.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 12, 2026
@mariusor@metalhead.club Thanks. No rush.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 12, 2026
@mariusor@metalhead.club Is there documentation that describes the OAuth2 flow for FedBox? I've searched but haven't found it. I'm trying to authorize with a pre-registered client and using the oauthAuthorizationEndpoint endpoint in the actor doc, but I'm seeing 404 errors.
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@smallcircles@social.coop @jerger@social.meissa-gmbh.de > In the case you mention it becomes confusing to still use client/server terminology. In this case, I think the terms makes sense in the specif
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 12, 2026
@smallcircles@social.coop @jerger@social.meissa-gmbh.de I feel like using C2S client and S2S server is a bit more precise than "app" for this thread. At this point, I haven't been able to determine how you define "app".
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 12, 2026
@smallcircles@social.coop @jerger@social.meissa-gmbh.de > In the case you mention it becomes confusing to still use client/server terminology.
In this case, I think the terms makes sense in the specific content of #ActivityPub clients and servers. There's significant overlap in the behaviors of the two, but there are significant differences too. For example, a client cannot federate and often runs in an environment where it can't expose listening sockets (browser, behind a firewall, etc.).
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 11, 2026
@smallcircles@social.coop @jerger@social.meissa-gmbh.de @mariusor@metalhead.club The app implementations could be hosted anywhere. If you mean an interop spec for a category of app (community developed or otherwise), I don’t know.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 11, 2026
@smallcircles@social.coop @jerger@social.meissa-gmbh.de @mariusor@metalhead.club I meant "generic" primarily to mean it's not a client for a specific server implementation. In this case, it is a C2S testing client so it is not specific to a particular user domain either. In the first sense of "generic", I could imagine a media publishing app (images, videos) that's not tied specifical to PixelFed or PeerTube (as examples). Or a "generic" microblogging app. The latter is where the Note to Article conversion would probably be an issue.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 11, 2026
@mariusor@metalhead.club Yes, I'm seeing it in a real server while doing C2S testing/exploration. In this case, the server can handle Note and Article, in general, so I don't the rationale yet for the conversion. It's in pre-release code so it may or may not be intentional.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 11, 2026
I'm curious what other devs think about this. If an actor posts an C2S #ActivityPub Create/Note to the outbox, what would you think if the object created by the server was a different type (e.g., Article)?
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 10, 2026
@django@social.coop
> bob decides his Post should be stand alone... Too bad json-ld has trouble with this, from a c2s perspective
I'm curious what the JSON-LD/C2S issue is with the scenario.
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@steve@social.technoetic.com
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Feb 10, 2026
TIL that Accept headers with a ":" cause surprising CORS behavior (the header is no longer "safelisted"). Beware of that when accepting the standard #ActivityPub (via AS2) `application/ld+json; profile="https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"` content type. You've been warned. 😉(Note that you might see the http URL above automatically hyperlinked in your Fedi client.)
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Feb 05, 2026
@pfefferle@mastodon.social I haven't been working on Flowz for the last 6 or 7 months, but I plan to dust it off and continue work on it given the recent interest in the ActivityPub client API. I subscribed to the github issue and will track that. Is the WP implementation ready for testing?
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