Eugen RochkoSep 3, 2023
The fragmentation among friends that follows Twitter’s collapse is exactly the kind of problem that Mastodon and the social web solves for. Imagine that you don’t have to pick and choose which new platform to adopt, or make and maintain a million accounts—because you can follow anyone regardless of which platform they’re on. That’s our reality.
Show threadYurkshireLadSep 3, 2023
@Gargron does #mastodon stick to the #ActivityPub specs or does it extend them?
Show threadEugen RochkoSep 3, 2023
@YurkshireLad Yes
Show threadYurkshireLadSep 3, 2023
@Gargron yes it sticks to the specs or yes it extends them? I’m confused. 😁
Show threadkikSep 3, 2023

@YurkshireLad @Gargron Extensions are part of ActivityPub (well, of ActivityStreams, to be exact), so both are true. :)

reference : https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/#extensibility

Activity Streams 2.0

Show threadYurkshireLad

@kik @Gargron thanks! He could have said “both” and saved me from replying.

So if mastodon implements its own extensions, any ActivityPub client has to also support those extensions, otherwise it won’t be fully operative with a mastodon instance? Or do I not understand enough about the protocol yet?

Sep 3, 2023 at 2:59pmWeb
Show threadkikSep 3, 2023

@YurkshireLad @Gargron If they want to consume the specific ActivityStreams types, yes. Even in that case, most of the content produced by Mastodon is consumable as is : without implementing extensions, you would be able to list posts from a given user, and follow them for example. Plus, it's not really a problem for Mastodon, as it's the de facto reference implementation, everybody is aware of what they add. :)

You can see the extended types there : https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/activitypub/#extensions-not-defined-by-activitystreams

ActivityPub - Mastodon documentation

A decentralized social networking protocol based upon the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format and JSON-LD.