Bilingual

Scattered thoughts on social geolocation
10 hours ago
- The author wants to share location with friends on social media, noting that Twitter and Facebook had features, but ActivityPub and AT Protocol lack them.
- The GeoSocial Task Force is developing Geographical Microsyntax proposals for optional location sharing, but user research is needed to understand what people want to do with geotagged posts.
- Inline text microsyntax is problematic because users format inconsistently and location names are ambiguous; suggests text is for text, not syntax.
- Centralized location services (Google, Foursquare, Wikidata, OSM) have flaws; proposes latitude/longitude as a fully open, unrestricted alternative.
- GeoJSON is recommended for adding geographic information to post metadata, allowing flexible precision and additional properties like name or Wikidata ID.
- Future steps include user research, privacy advocacy, developer collaboration, and client implementation of GeoJSON metadata.
ActivityPub over ATProto
18 days ago
- The open social media space is often divided into factions, similar to political movements, where people feel compelled to pick sides instead of collaborating.
- ActivityPub could potentially run atop the AT Protocol Personal Data Server (PDS) with some modifications, leveraging ATProto's pluggable identity and signed data repositories for user agency.
- ATProto is a generic toolbox for building social media applications, not just Bluesky, with open standards intended for the com.atproto routes.
- ActivityPub uses actor documents to specify API endpoints via URLs, allowing indirection to point to an ATProto PDS, though issues like XRPC method limitations and identity alignment need bridging.
- Combining ActivityPub and ATProto could break social media siloes by merging ActivityPub's URL-based federation with ATProto's user-centric data control and credible exit guarantees.
Why implementing ActivityPub is hard, and why it doesn't have to be
25 days ago
- Implementing ActivityPub from scratch is challenging due to complexities like handling multiple signature standards, JSON-LD shape variations, and ensuring secure defaults.
- Fedify is a TypeScript framework that abstracts away these complexities, providing built-in solutions for signatures, interoperability quirks, and delivery infrastructure.
- The framework supports various web frameworks and databases, includes development tools like CLI and debugging, and is used in production by platforms like Ghost and Hollo.

Hasty Briefsbeta

activitypub

Scattered thoughts on social geolocation

ActivityPub over ATProto

Why implementing ActivityPub is hard, and why it doesn't have to be