Publishing posts to Mastodon

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

This topic covers publishing posts from Discourse to Mastodon with the Discourse ActivityPub Plugin, and follows on from Setting up an ActivityPub Actor and Following an ActivityPub Actor. If you’re not sure what this means, head on over to the Discourse ActivityPub Plugin topic first.

Instructions

To publish to Mastodon:

1. Set up an actor for the Category or Tag you want to publish content to Mastodon.
2. Copy the “handle” of the Actor.
3. Look up the handle on Mastodon and follow it.

[note] markup

You can select part of your post to be published via ActivityPub by wrapping text in [note][/note]. This gives you more control over what appears on microblogging services like Mastodon. For example, if your post looks like this in the composer:

We have some exciting news to share: [note]Everything Pets is launching a magazine![/note]

This will appear on Mastodon:

Everything Pets is launching a magazine!

[icaria36]

Hi, currently the posts by actors on Mastodon seem to miss a profile picture, which makes them look meh:

Is it possible to either use the avatar of the Discourse user posting, or at least the Discourse instance small logo?

[icaria36]

@angus

You can select part of your post to be published via ActivityPub by wrapping text in [note][/note].

I tried this for the first time and didn’t work as expected:

• Used on a tag.
• Edit Actor > Post object type > Note

Is the note syntax supposed to be visible for readers in the Discourse post?

Then the full post was federated anyway, without the note syntax visible:

For what is worth it, first I published the Discourse post with the notes. Then, during the 5 minutes before it is federated, I removed the note tags because they were ugly and I was confused. Then I thought maybe they “disappear” after the post is federated and I added them again.

After seeing that the full post had been federated, I removed the note syntax from the Discourse post.

[hellekin]

Did you forget to mention [/note] ?

An example would be :

[note]The Social Music Network is a community[/note] that encourages...

In this example, only the first seven words would be sent to Mastodon (and the Fediverse).

The tags do not need to be at the beginning of the post. If they are not present, then the first 500 characters will be used as an excerpt.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

Or the whole post if Activity pub note excerpt maxlength = 0

Now I’m not totally sure, but I have weak memory print where if that setting is zero then [note][/note] doesn’t do anything.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

@icaria36

Then, during the 5 minutes before it is federated, I removed the note tags because they were ugly and I was confused. Then I thought maybe they “disappear” after the post is federated and I added them again.

I’m slightly confused. Were the tags present when the post was first federated?

[icaria36]

Thank you for your questions!

@hellekin

Did you forget to mention [/note] ?

No, you can see it there in the screenshot I shared. Does it make a difference if both enclosures are in different paragraphs?

@Jagster

Or the whole post if Activity pub note excerpt maxlength = 0

Ah, we do have this set to 0, but I didn’t understand from the description that notes won’t work if set to 0.

@angus

Were the tags present when the post was first federated?

Yes the tag we use to federate topics was there from the beginning and remained untouched. It’s the note syntax that went forth and back.

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

@icaria36

notes won’t work if set to 0

I don’t know if that’s true. I just have such feeling. Try what happens?

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

@icaria36

It’s the note syntax that went forth and back.

Yes, sorry by “tags” I meant [note][/note]. I’m still a little unclear as to whether they were in the post at the time the post was federated. If you added them back in after federation they are not going to apply to content that is already federated.

[icaria36]

Ok, yes, [note][/note] was in place when I posted the new topic on discourse and they were also in place after a few minutes when the topic was federated.

Maybe we can leave this here, and next time we federate a post I will be paying attention on every step, now that I know what tp expect and what might happen.

[angus (Angus McLeod)]

@icaria36

Ok, yes, [note][/note] was in place when I posted the new topic on discourse and they were also in place after a few minutes when the topic was federated.

Sorry I’m still a little unclear. Apologies, maybe I’m just being a bit slow today! Did this series of events occur?

1. You created a new post in Discourse with [note][/note] tags included.
2. The post was scheduled to be published via ActivityPub in 5 minutes time.
3. Prior to the scheduled publication you removed the [note][/note] tags
4. The post was published via ActivityPub.
5. After the post was published via ActivityPub you re-added the [note][/note] tags to the post.

Is that what happened?

[icaria36]

@angus not quite. I’d swear it went like this, but after so much discussion I’m starting to doubt.

1. I created a new post in Discourse with [note][/note] tags included.
2. The post was scheduled to be published via ActivityPub in 5 minutes time.
3. Prior to the scheduled publication I removed the [note][/note] tags because I wasn’t expecting them to be visible in the post.
4. But then I thought “whatever, maybe they disappear after the post is federated, somehow” and I put them back.
5. The post was published via ActivityPub.