Head twist: How do #ActivityPub server implementations like Mastodon not understand that account transfer means the whole digital content related to an account, not just selected pieces.

Analogy: This is operating like old school bank accounts where followers are direct debits and who you follow are standing orders. Your content (transactions) don’t move to your new bank but you have statements (export of data).

It’s digital and data plus 2023. We can do so much better. Wander pondering.

@dahukanna the implementation detail starts to leak out really badly here. The underlying content isn't rewriteable, it's a stream. So the only way to migrate old content would be to send *all* of that data to every server, modified, and backdated, without having it show up in any feed because it's not "new" content.

Which is fine, actually. Some implementations might have issues with it, but I don't see any actual barriers, and I suspect mastodon would behave pretty normal with that, even

@dahukanna that said, the fact that this just isn't even attempted is indeed... Suboptimal. I agree with you there. There's a lot of small missing things floating around making mastodon a bit less user-friendly than it could be

@hazelweakly

Interesting. So ActivityPub protocol is stateless content transportation like HTTP, FTP, TCP/IP, UDP/IP?

Why not have post URLs and alias model? Social media is about personal expression and conversation, not ledger book transactions.

Now I understand how the fragmented and missing conversation effect happens. That’s instream, without changing servers.

@dahukanna
> Now I understand how the fragmented and missing conversation effect happens

It can be a result of moderation actions too; mutes/ blocks by users/ servers, followers-only posts etc. But as you say, there does seem to be a network-level issue too.

Some of what you're saying is a bit behind my technical understanding, and it's late here. But good stuff to share at the AP dev watering holes, eg:

http://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/

#fediverse-city:matrix.org

@hazelweakly

SocialHub

Where ActivityPub developers coordinate their efforts to make the Fediverse a great space for cooperation

SocialHub

@dahukanna @hazelweakly It literally is JSON over HTTP and the identifier is the URL, intrinsically tied to a hostname. So the meaning of moving posts to a new server is not obvious, and that's why Mastodon hasn't attempted it.

CalcKey copies history apparently. I don't know what decisions they have made around it.

If I migrate from hostsrc to hostdst and my post hostsrc/B refers to post hostsrc/A, should hostdst/B get rewritten to refer to hostdst/A?

If hostsrc is also a CalcKey, does it set up redirects so that any edits to hostdst/C can be seen by people who go to hostsrc/C? If hostdst sends out edits to hostdst/C, will any receiving servers know to apply the edits to their local copy of hostsrc/C?

@calckey

@clacke @hazelweakly @calckey

I was suggesting that the post should have it’s own atomic identifier and then qualified by the host name doing the publishing/syndication to allow for checking for content/moderation compliance.