Why did #ActivityPub create special behaviors such as Like, Announce and Block (and the Undo variants) instead of using Add to or Remove from the associated Collection objects?
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The biggest folly imho is this idea of "let's cram every domain into #ActivityStreams somehow". Flatten everything and project it onto this small set of social primitives that AS defines.
It is once more a choice of pragmatism: "Hey, I've seen it working with Mastodon, so I copied that. And #LinkedData extension mechanism is a handwaved horror show".
So understandable perhaps that we did it. But now we must overcome this trend which has taken stubborn root and drags the ecosystem down.
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Why did #ActivityPub create special behaviors such as Like, Announce and Block (and the Undo variants) instead of using Add to or Remove from the associated Collection objects? I have a similar question for outbox and inbox POST, which is an implicit Add to those collections.
When adding support for extended collections, is an new collection-specific Activity preferred over Add/Remove? FWIW, I see Mastodon uses Add/Remove for pinned and featured posts.@eyeinthesky I think
Add/Removeshould be used for extended collections.Like,Announceetc look like legacy / tech debt to me. -
@eyeinthesky I think
Add/Removeshould be used for extended collections.Like,Announceetc look like legacy / tech debt to me.@silverpill@mitra.social add and remove feel more like building blocks than actual activities.
It would never capture the nuance of many of the activities that it would purportedly represent.
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@silverpill@mitra.social add and remove feel more like building blocks than actual activities.
It would never capture the nuance of many of the activities that it would purportedly represent.
@julian @thisismissem @eyeinthesky @mariusor @smallcircles
Yes, they are building blocks, together with
Create,UpdateandDelete. Everything else can be constructed from them. -
@julian @thisismissem @eyeinthesky @mariusor @smallcircles
Yes, they are building blocks, together with
Create,UpdateandDelete. Everything else can be constructed from them.@julian @thisismissem @eyeinthesky @mariusor @smallcircles Maybe
Offer,AcceptandRejectare needed too.Followcan be replaced withOffer(Relationship), I am not sure if there's a way to do it withAdd/Removealone. -
@julian @silverpill Add/Remove don’t replace the activity being added/removed so there’s no risk to nuance from my perspective. They make the collection side-effects explicit and consistent with other non-special collections. Sometimes the Add (or Remove) is the primary activity rather than only a building block (Add a member to my Group, Add an Article to my fave articles, Add a song to a social play list — maybe with an Announce of the Add sent to followers).
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@eyeinthesky my assumption for why there's multiple methods for achieving relatively similar results is that first the social vocabulary was created as a way to express the actions that the existing platforms already had enshrined, and then other operations, like collection management, were needed.
But as @thisismissem already said, the canonical social activities have specific side effects attached to their behaviour that extend to the entire social graph, and those are what ActivityPub actually codifies into its specification.
@mariusor
The earliest discussions on Activity Streams did constantly get stuck on which platforms' concepts were "real" and which was just an alias for another.e.g. is a "tweet" the same thing as a blog post? As a status update on Facebook?
e.g. is listening to a podcast the same verb as watching a video on YouTube?
e.g. is "liking" the same verb as adding to a "Favorites" playlist?In retrospect I think it was naive to try to be so specific, since it was too early for that, but alas.
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@mariusor
The earliest discussions on Activity Streams did constantly get stuck on which platforms' concepts were "real" and which was just an alias for another.e.g. is a "tweet" the same thing as a blog post? As a status update on Facebook?
e.g. is listening to a podcast the same verb as watching a video on YouTube?
e.g. is "liking" the same verb as adding to a "Favorites" playlist?In retrospect I think it was naive to try to be so specific, since it was too early for that, but alas.
‍️@apparentlymart very interesting perspective, thank you.
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The biggest folly imho is this idea of "let's cram every domain into #ActivityStreams somehow". Flatten everything and project it onto this small set of social primitives that AS defines.
It is once more a choice of pragmatism: "Hey, I've seen it working with Mastodon, so I copied that. And #LinkedData extension mechanism is a handwaved horror show".
So understandable perhaps that we did it. But now we must overcome this trend which has taken stubborn root and drags the ecosystem down.
@smallcircles @eyeinthesky I was mostly thinking of the Follow activity and the following collection: it doesn't contain Follow activities, it contains Actors: https://hachyderm.io/users/thisismissem/following?page=1
In Mastodon the "likes" collection for a Note doesn't even include the Actors, just the count: https://browser.pub/https%3A%2F%2Fhachyderm.io%2Fusers%2Fthisismissem%2Fstatuses%2F115622304738688291%2Flikes
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@thisismissem @smallcircles The weird thing about Like+side_effects vs Add(Like activity to “likes collections”) is that the side effect is Add Like to “likes collection”. lol They are both one inbox activity.
@eyeinthesky @thisismissem @smallcircles i would use as:result for this -- the *result* when you Accept the Like activity is to Add it to the likes collection... if you care about that level of detail. most people only care about the Like. maybe even less than that! (synthesizing a statement such as :bob :likes :this.)
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@eyeinthesky @smallcircles that's the thing though! The likes collection doesn't contain activities, it contains objects.
@thisismissem @eyeinthesky @smallcircles likes contains Like activities; shares contains Announce activities; the exception is followers not containing the Follow activity (or not having a follows collection) (or not doing the better thing which is subscription management)
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