Darius KazemiSep 14, 2024

Excited to announce that I will be at #fediforum today speed demo-ing my latest project: an ActivityPub data observatory!

This observatory does not collect any user data or metadata. Instead I am looking at the *shape* (aka schema) of data being sent around the fediverse. This will let software devs ask questions like "How is a Mastodon 4.2.0 image post formatted differently from a Misskey 2024.7.0 image post?"

And we'll get real answers based on data rather than on poor documentation.

Show threadDarius KazemiSep 14, 2024

I won't be actually LAUNCHING this tool until I've found out how you all would feel about it being opt-out vs opt-in. I will provide a longer blog post for you all to read with details, but in short:

It would be really helpful for general interop on the fedi if this were opt-out. But if people are generally freaked out by having technical details about software data formats being opt-out... I'll make it opt-in.

Quick explanation of the data scrubbing in the attached images

Show threadWilliam Pietri
@darius I'd say it's fine since it's not collecting user data. However, given how much jerks have caused sensitivity here I'd suggest an explanation page that uses some of your own posts as examples, with detailed explanations. And for usability/accessibility reasons, it should be in text, and with much higher contrast. Machine representations look forbidding to non-technical people anyhow, but especially so when dark and hard to read.
Sep 14, 2024 at 2:53pmWeb
Show threadDarius KazemiSep 14, 2024
@williampietri Yes, sorry, this is something I whipped up in a few minutes for a microblog post and is not going to be what my macroblog post looks like