ActivityPub Plugin

[David_Ghost]

where i can create a username for testing it? I Saw it shows my domain name in the end of the line. So, i just need to put a username or i need to register it before on mastodon.social?

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

Hey David, head on over to Admin > Plugins > ActivityPub and follow the prompts to create an Actor.

[David_Ghost]

Loving it, thank you

[eisammy (Dreadwhole)]

My question is about the topic body when an user create a new post with image I receive just text its a limitation?

[David_Ghost]

i second that

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

Hey guys, thanks for the reports.

Yes the plugin does not currently support images in the content it federates. As you might imagine, adding media (i.e. image) support for content federated to many different software platforms has some complexities, so we’ve intentionally excluded them for now. Support for federating media may be added in the medium term.

@Lhc_fl Just a note that I haven’t forgotten about your issue reports, and will be look at them closely this week.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

@Lhc_fl

This also resulted in a bug where if the category was set to TL0 could post (readonly for everyone), AP users may not post as they did not have this permission

I’m unable to reproduce this issue both in a spec, or in my own tests, for example

Receiving category permissions

Post from remote actor in receiving category

Indeed, while they don’t have an email, staged ActivityPub users are like any other staged users, and will be given whatever trust level is set for the site setting default_trust_level.

@Lhc_fl

We have a user who seriously violated our terms of service and was permanently banned, but they ran to another forum that cooperates with us, and through activitypub, we can still see their posts there.

I’m currently considering this issue.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

@angus

@Lhc_fl

We have a user who seriously violated our terms of service and was permanently banned, but they ran to another forum that cooperates with us, and through activitypub, we can still see their posts there.

I’m currently considering this issue.

Once this PR is merged you’ll be able to suspend the user of a remote Actor.

Fix local suspension of remote actor user

That will address the immediate issue. Medium term this plugin will also likely adopt the Block Activity

[David_Ghost]

Hey, is there a way to avoid the duplicate content penality from search engines when 2 forums are federated? I Saw that there no change with the canonical.

The “best” way is to no index a whole category?

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

Hey David, I would briefly observe that there isn’t really such a thing as a duplicate content penalty, see for example Google’s long-time position on this question. Nevertheless, I appreciate this is often a concern for folks, and I take it seriously on that basis.

@David_Ghost

The “best” way is to no index a whole category?

I wouldn’t recommend doing that.

I will consider the question of canonical links for ActivityPub topics and get back to you on that front.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@angus

Hey David, I would briefly observe that there isn’t really such a thing as a duplicate content penalty, see for example Google’s long-time position on this question

No, you are taking that out of context - that article is talking about a different issue - duplicate content on the same site

But most site owners whom I hear worrying about duplicate content aren’t talking about scraping or domain farms; they’re talking about things like having multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content. Like www.example.com/skates.asp?color=black&brand=riedell and www.example.com/skates.asp?brand=riedell&color=black. Having this type of duplicate content on your site can potentially affect your site’s performance, but it doesn’t cause penalties

And at the same time they address @David_Ghost their issue and say it’s real

There are some penalties that are related to the idea of having the same content as another site—for example, if you’re scraping content from other sites and republishing it, or if you republish content without adding any additional value

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

I disagree. But nevertheless, I’m considering the canonical url question.

[mcdanlj]

I agree that canonical URLs are worth considering. I agree with @angus here (if I understand correctly), grounded in this quote from the cited article:

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.

A mastodon server will have at least as much and likely more republishing than a federating Discourse, it does not include canonical URLs as far as I can tell, and they don’t seem to be penalized. I’ve done plenty of google searches that have led to posts on mastodon. Google has sent me to the original site, not to a site that has federated them. Each of those mastodon servers is also federating lots of other posts, including but not limited to federated comments on the pages Google has sent me to.

Therefore, google does seem to do a reasonable job of finding the original source, and doesn’t seem to be penalizing mastodon for federating heavily. I can’t imagine any reason that a Discourse that is federating would be worse.

However, I do like the idea of a canonical URL, even if it doesn’t make a difference for search, to support humans finding where stuff came from.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@mcdanlj

I agree with @angus here (if I understand correctly), grounded in this quote from the cited article

Again, that is taken out of context. “on a site” means “on a single site” in this context.

Above the part you quoted it says (emphasis mine)

they’re talking about things like having multiple URLs on the same domain that point to the same content

and immediately below the part you quoted it continues

having this type of duplicate content

where “this type” refers to “having multiple URLs on the same domain” and hence the part in between is also talking about that specific type of duplicate content, which is different from what we’re discussing here.

@mcdanlj

I’ve done plenty of google searches that have led to posts on mastodon. Google has sent me to the original site, not to a site that has federated them. Each of those mastodon servers is also federating lots of other posts, including but not limited to federated comments on the pages Google has sent me to.

Therefore, google does seem to do a reasonable job of finding the original source, and doesn’t seem to be penalizing mastodon for federating heavily.

Wait until a very well known and estabilished site starts federating content from a lesser known, new, site and see what happens.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

@mcdanlj

mastodon server will have at least as much and likely more republishing

That is very true. But I haven`t got ever any search hits by Google from any mastodon servers. And I know that isn’t proof of anything — but I use Google a lot, using different tacticts. But I get Discourse-hits.

My very weak point is maybe Google treats mastodons different way than Discourse forums

Sure, content is very different too.

[David_Ghost]

@RGJ

Wait until a very well known and estabilished site starts federating content from a lesser known, new, site and see what happens.

the problem I had in my first test was that:

I am the original poster, but my link was de indexed from Google, and the other forum is ranking for it.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

If you’re interested in following along on my thinking on how to set the canonical url for ActivityPub topics, I’ll be discussing it with some other ActivityPub folks over here

How do you use `context` (if at all)?

[David_Ghost]

Is there any way to update the name after saving it? Or i need to rebuild?

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

The current status on changing the username of an ActivityPub actor is that I have:

1. implemented it in a draft pull request (see here);
2. advocated for it in the broader ActivityPub developer community (see here);
3. made a pull request to Mastodon to make it feasible for Discourse to support the feature (see here).

3 is necessary due to the prevalence of Mastodon in the fediverse. If and when my pull request to Mastodon is merged I’ll publish the draft pull request implementing it in the plugin for review. If it’s accepted and merged I’ll let everyone here know they can update and change their actor’s usernames.

In the meantime you can currently change the display name of an Actor in Admin > Plugins > ActivityPub > “Edit Actor”.

[David_Ghost]

Hey angus, not thé username, but the name.

I have already edited the actor, but the name dont update at Mastodon.

I need to do a rebuild?