ActivityPub

Mechanics

ActivityPub is an open, decentralized social networking protocol based on Pump.io's ActivityPump protocol.[1] It provides a client/server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server API for delivering notifications and content.

Project status

ActivityPub is a standard for the Internet in the Social Web Networking Group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). At an earlier stage, the name of the protocol was "ActivityPump", but it was felt that ActivityPub better indicated the cross-publishing purpose of the protocol. It learned from the experiences with the older standard called OStatus.

In January 2018, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published the ActivityPub standard as a Recommendation.[2]

Former Diaspora community manager Sean Tilley wrote an article that suggests ActivityPub protocols may eventually provide a way to federate Internet platforms.[3]

Notable implementations

Federated (Server-to-Server) Server

  • Mastodon, a social networking software, implemented ActivityPub in version 1.6, released on 10 September 2017. It is intended that ActivityPub offer more security for private messages than the previous OStatus protocol does.[4]
  • Pleroma, a social networking software implementing ActivityPub.[4]
  • Misskey, a social networking software implementing ActivityPub.
  • Hubzilla a community CMS software platform that uses Zot, added ActivityPub support from version 2.8 (October 2017) with a plugin.
  • Nextcloud, a federated service for file hosting.
  • PeerTube, a federated service for video streaming.[4]
  • Pixelfed, a federated service for image sharing.
  • Friendica, a social networking software, implemented ActivityPub in version 2019.01.[5]
  • Osada, a social networking software implementing Zot & ActivityPub. With focus on being the glue that binds much of the decentralised web.
  • Zap, a social networking software implementing Zot & ActivityPub. With focus on privacy.

Client-to-Server protocol

Client implementation

The following solutions are clear client based implementations of ActivityPub:[4]

  • dokieli a client side editor using WebAnnotation and ActivityPub.[6]
  • go-fed a library that implements ActivityStreams and ActivityPub in Go.[7]

Server implementation

The following solutions are clear server based implementations of ActivityPub:[7]

  • microblog.pub is under development and a self-hosted, single-user microblog implementation for a basic ActivityPub server.[8]
  • distbin is a distributed pastebin service implemented ActivityPub.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Sandstorm and the Social Web". zenhack.net.
  2. ^ "W3C Recommendation 23 January 2018".
  3. ^ Tilley, Sean (23 September 2017). "A quick guide to The Free Network".
  4. ^ a b c d "Server-Server - ActivityPub implementation reports". Retrieved 2019-01-02.
  5. ^ "Friendica 2019.01 released". Retrieved 2019-01-24.
  6. ^ "dokieli - homepage". Retrieved 2019-01-02.
  7. ^ a b "ActivityStreams & ActivityPub in golang, oh my!". Retrieved 2019-01-02.
  8. ^ "microblog.pub - homepage". Retrieved 2019-01-02.
  9. ^ "distbin - about page". Retrieved 2019-01-02.

External links