ActivityPub

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planted: 22/03/2020last tended: 27/11/2021

1. Criticisms

My big issues with ActivityPub is that the protocol is very big and not very easy to decompose.

– indieweb chat

Unfortunately, we have come to realize that using ActivityPub is considerably harder than we expected:

  • Using JSON-LD as an RDF serialization is very complicated. It requires the usage of algorithms (e.g. the Expansion Algorithm or the Framing Algorithm) that are incomprehensible and just pure madness. JSON-LD maybe was really just not intended to be an RDF serialization and trying to use it as such is painful.
  • There are practically no implementations of the ActivityPub Client-to-Server protocol (C2S). This made developing and testing the client and server more time-consuming as we had to develop the protocol in lockstep on client and server. At the end we were still only compatible with our own software.
  • ActivityPub is not a complete specification and many additional protocols need to be implemented (e.g. WebFinger) in specific ways in order to be compatible with existing servers.

    openEngiadina: From ActivityPub to XMPP — inqlab

2. Elsewhere

2.1. In my garden

2.2. In the Agora

2.3. Mentions

Recent changes. Source. Peer Production License.