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#activitypub

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The AI agent-developed C++ #ActivityPub server now has about 2000 SLOC (all written by AI) and can process Follow/Accept and Create/Note (inbox/federated) and Create/Note delivery (outbox/C2S) with HTTP signatures and a good set of unit tests. Having the AI write unit tests has been key because it often creates regressions when adding features. The agents do a surprisingly good job of diagnosing compiler and unit test failures and fixing the problem automatically.

I am creating a #ActivityPub minimalistic implementation of a badge system similar to Credly, built using #dotnet and leveraging the #Fediverse

I have issued a first badge, the idea is to decentralize the verification systems, and allow organizations to self-certify. It is incredible that organizations like Microsoft or Non-Profits pay thousands of dollars to companies like Pearson to just provide "verified" badges. Similar to mastodons installed in social-dot-something, thinkg of badges<dot> mozilla<dot>com , certifications<dot>myschooldistrict<dot>com. Or even a podcast emitting a badge for its guests, with the verification in the domain.

ActivityPub already offers a secure way to sign artifacts and interact between actors. The fediverse already have people with profiles, a social graph as @mike says, ready to use. Think of how LetsEncrypt disrupted that market of few actors selling certificates for websites.

I have a functional poc,
@fediverse is not a mastodon, pledora or blog, it is an actor in a badge system, but you can follow it in Mastodon. Its badges will show in #mastodon but they are not notes or articles. If you want to learn more, follow me, I will be sharing the progress here. Or follow the github project here: github.com/tryvocalcat/activit

Who wants a badge of early adopter?

I've been playing with the experimental GitHub Copilot agent mode in vscode. I've asked it to start from an empty directory and create an #ActivityPub server in C++, directed only by prompts (no human coding). So far, it has created a C++ project and implemented WebFinger, resource persistence, resource retrieval and a decent set of unit tests. At this point, Mastodon is able to discover our actors. The AI is currently implementing Follow processing. I'm curious to learn how far I can push this.

The #fediverse is a fascinating place. I was using #nostr and came across a post by @cstross but I couldn't reply to it on Nostr and I couldn't find it on #mastodon

I suppose technically this isn't a fediverse issue as it isn't really related to the way #activitypub works, but rather more related to the way bridges work.

Now I'm guessing this occurred because the post in question was deleted by Charlie (though I saw nothing untoward about it) or because it was a very good imposter on Nostr.

If it's the latter , it doesn't explain why the post seemed to come from Mastodon, albeit not from Charlie's usually address.

If it's the former then that is more understandable but maybe worrying, because it means deletions on Mastodon are not respected elsewhere.

Now Charlie being charlie, there's no way he isn't already aware of this, but I think it might be worth spreading the word to others.

In the @newyorktimes: 👏🏼

"#ActivityPub has also led to a wave of start-up efforts such as #Mastodon, a microblogging service that now has more than 14 million accounts connected by a network of over 14,000 host computers, as well as start-ups like #Pixelfed and #PeerTube, distributed services that offer features similar to #Instagram and #YouTube."

A Long-Shot Bet to Bypass the Middlemen of #SocialMedia

nytimes.com/2025/03/06/technol

Mike McCue, the chief executive of Flipboard, sees its new Surf browser as a tool to help internet users communicate without relying on a single centralized service.
The New York Times · Facing the Looming Threat of A.I., Publishers Turn to Decentralized PlatformsBy John Markoff
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Finally, our team had a wonderful time at #SXSW on Sunday and Monday, where Flipboard and @surf hosted the first #FediverseHouse. Our CEO @mike and the whole team are 100% #TeamFediverse, and were thrilled to meet and talk to so many other open social web advocates. Here’s a feature by @Markoff for @newyorktimes, where Mike, @Gargron and @reckless1280 discuss the rise of decentralized social media, and how it can help publishers and media companies survive and thrive.

nytimes.com/2025/03/06/technol

Mike McCue, the chief executive of Flipboard, sees its new Surf browser as a tool to help internet users communicate without relying on a single centralized service.
The New York Times · Facing the Looming Threat of A.I., Publishers Turn to Decentralized PlatformsBy John Markoff
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“The Fediverse Isn’t the Future. It’s the Present We’ve Been Denied.” Here’s yet another brilliant feature by @Daojoan. “The fediverse won’t succeed just because it’s better. It will succeed if and only if people choose it. If they reject the idea that being trapped in someone else’s ecosystem is just the cost of existing online. If they stop believing that “free” means surrendering ownership of your own connections, your own history, your own data. If they see that the internet wasn’t built to be a factory for engagement metrics and AI-generated content farms. It was built to connect us, not silo us to pad a wealth-extremist’s bank account,” she writes.

joanwestenberg.com/the-fediver

So many people in Denmark now talk about building a Danish/European social media platform (I proposed it 12 years ago and was laughed at) They want to start from scratch, but I keep saying we can build it on the ActivityPub protocol (alternatively Bueskys but I don't trust that in the long run). Anybody here who has experience with that? And know of other countries having done that? Contacts to people who could help build it? #activitypub #socialmedia @mastodon

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@EUCommission
If the EU wishes to do something 10 times more powerful and impactful, it should wholeheartedly embrace and promote the #SocialWeb and extricate itself from State Controlled #USA #SocialMedia such as #Facebook and #Twitter.
The #EU should provide free assistance to anyone who wants to set up a #Mastodon or #PeerTube or #Pixelfed server.
It should make their own #Fediverse servers their primary source of communication. It should spend money on promoting #ActivityPub and its benefits.
This is how the EU fights #Trump #Fascism and puts Social Media and its moderation into the hands of EU citizens.
#Democracy #FreeSpeech

Little known fact: @evan and I worked at a startup in 2020 that never launched. It wasn't a great experience for me, but I loved the team we had hired, including Evan. I didn't know much then about #activitypub or the social web.

I went back to @Flipboard in 2021 and in 2023 I started to learn about #federation because of @mike's vision. Fast forward to 2025, Flipboard + @surf are organizing #SXSW's first #FediverseHouse. Evan was one of the first people to sign on, which created a snowball from there, which helped the event be a success.

This week, we got to meet IRL for the first time! So when I think about "the purpose" of that hard 10 months at that startup, I now know what it was.

I know why people do not switch to the Fediverse, or why they do not switch to secure messaging services, outside the reach of corporate and government oversight.

It is more convenient not to do so.

A lot of these free, open source developments, target geeks. Congratulation, if you're reading this, you likely have already put in more effort that it takes to sign up and use something else.

NO - Never - Get the idea out of your head, people will not give up convenience for better privacy. It is not in human nature and 30+ years of corporate and government oversight, should make that obvious. If it is not convenience, it does not matter how private and secure something is. Sorry, not sorry, those are just the facts. It is a hard pill to swallow, but swallow you must, so people can start focusing on making these many things, convenient.

I sometimes, although I cannot prove it, believe some of the developments behind better privacy and security, intentionally keep things hard, by design. That perhaps the FOSS world was infiltrated years ago, and that is why there has always been the pushback, on making things idiot-proof, graphically please, and simpler.

Mastodon and Misskey, for example, both use Activity Pub, but I should not need to copy and paste someone's username and manually search for them, to follow. It took years, for Mastodon, to make it easy for me to just stumble over a profile, and click a single button to follow.

If it is not simple, and easy, you're wasting everyone's time. Go code something else.

#Privacy #Security #InfoSec #InfomationSecurity #WhatsApp #Signal #Foss #OpenSource #Development #ActivityPub #Mastodon #Misskey