Re: Meta Unspools Threads

Hi Ben,

Appreciate the responses. I missed an important question: what’s going to be in your webfinger and in your @context?

Their variety is very large in real-world Fediverse implementations, see a collection here: https://fedidevs.org/reference/actor/ and https://fedidevs.org/reference/webfinger/

Are you going to mostly follow Mastodon’s exceptionally large @context section, or make it as clean/brief/standard as possible? Will there be any new elements introduced by Meta?

Related: consider contributing to (help fund?) a Fediverse test suite that we could all run against our respective apps. It would benefit the entire Fediverse including Meta/Threads. Nothing as frustrating as attempting to debug customer-reported interop problems on a truly decentralized (development, operation) network.

Best,




Johannes.


Johannes Ernst

Fediforum <https://fediforum.org/>
Dazzle <https://dazzle.town/>




> On Jul 13, 2023, at 19:30, Ben Savage <btsavage@meta.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi
>  Johannes,
> 
> Thank
>  you for the welcome, and for these questions:
> 
> >
>  I think one of the things we are all very interested in learning is just what exact stack of protocols Meta is implementing, and then the higher-level policies not prescribed in the standard. As we all know, merely implementing ActivityPub in itself is not
>  sufficient to produce interoperable software nor make what’s happening comprehensible to users.
> 
> The
>  Threads team is hard at work on a bunch of different features requested by the community, so it’s difficult to estimate when support for ActivityPub will ship. That said, a fair bit of progress has been made on this front, so I can share with you all our current
>  thinking about some of these things. Again, it’s possible things could change between now and when it ships, but this is at least a snapshot of our current plan:
> 
> 
> Identifier
>  format: @user@threads.net <mailto:user@threads.net>
> 
> Webfinger:
>  Yes. This would be the first step when someone asks to follow a fully-qualified identifier from another instance
> 
> 
> HTTP
>  Signatures:
>  Current plan is to implement HTTP Signatures and not LD signatures. This is what mastodon uses when secure mode is turned on.
> 
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-cavage-http-signatures
> 
> 
> https://docs.joinmastodon.org/spec/security/#http
> 
> 
> Which
>  of the activity types:
>  Most of the core formats, still scoping out the feasibility of all of them. 
> 
> 
> Mastodon doesn’t support
>  quote posts (yet, it’s coming), so we’d like to discuss how to model those when we send them outbound.
> 
> 
> Rich
>  text or not?:
>  No current plans for rich text
> 
> 
> Hyperlinks?:
>  Yes
> 
> 
> HTML
>  Markup?: No
>  plans for this right now
> 
> 
> —Ben
> 
>> On 12 Jul 2023, at 1:04 AM, Johannes Ernst <johannes.ernst@gmail.com <mailto:johannes.ernst@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> This Message Is From an Untrusted Sender 
>> You have not previously corresponded with this sender. 
>> Welcome from me, too!
>> 
>> It’s great to see participation from Meta here, because bona fide participation in the relevant standards community can help alleviate many potential concerns that the community has about Meta’s role in the Fediverse, as I’m sure you are very aware. So this is good. To echo your comment, I’m looking forward to working together as well.
>> 
>>> út 11. 7. 2023 v 4:53 odesílatel Ben Savage <btsavage@meta.com <mailto:btsavage@meta.com>> napsal:
>>>> I'm a newb to the ActivityPub standard, but I'm excited to start attending the group's meetings, learning more, and hopefully contributing back to the community.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm really excited that Meta plans to implement the ActivityPub standard, and federate with other instances. I'm really interested to see how this interoperable future plays out!
>> 
>> I think one of the things we are all very interested in learning is just what exact stack of protocols Meta is implementing, and then the higher-level policies not prescribed in the standard. As we all know, merely implementing ActivityPub in itself is not sufficient to produce interoperable software nor make what’s happening comprehensible to users.
>> 
>> For example …
>> * Identifier format? @user@threads.net probably? Will there also be HTTP aliases?
>> * Webfinger? Probably?
>> * HTTP Signatures with … what signature types?
>> * Which of the activity types?
>> * Rich text or not? Hyperlinks? HTML markup?
>> … and so on.
>> 
>> And of course if the people writing the code at Meta think that they need to deviate from the standard, or augment it, to meet some kind of requirement that you are encountering, we’d love to hear that at the earliest opportunity so we can keep network talk the same, standardized protocol.
>> 
>> Again welcome, and cheers,
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Johannes.
>> 
>> Johannes Ernst
>> 
>> Fediforum <https://fediforum.org/>
>> Dazzle <https://dazzle.town/>