Integrating ActivityPub within Solid specs

Solid Specification
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Hey everyone

I split my initial post in a number of issues on the new activitypub-interop repo, so that it will be easier to discuss the details. Feel free to create other issues, or comment the existing ones!

The main issue for me is this one about the context of the specification. Please share your thoughts, as I’m not sure where to go from here.

In case you missed it, Vincent Tunrun wrote a nice blog post on his experience of writing a Solid-based ActivityPub client.

@mrkvon Have you been able to work a bit on the ActivityPub agent you planned to do ?

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Only some testing and research. No meaningful code, yet. This is still high on my list, but I was busy with other work.

I looked at how json-ld looks when it’s produced by CSS, and if it looks anything like the simple format that e.g. Mastodon may expect. (it does not.) There could be a way - having the webId stored as json-ld; but it’s already causing issues - NSS doesn’t authenticate such agent (i suspect it doesn’t ask for text/turtle, and receives the default json-ld instead). CSS seems fine with webId stored in json-ld representation.

Also thought of a name for the project, came up with soap-opera :smile:

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The most promising intersection of Solid and ActivityPub to me is the general notion of a personal data storage:

(I think AT protocol also provides an excellent real-world use case for Linked Web Storage, but I don’t know how to write up a lws-ucs for it.)

An essential complement to the PDS/Pod paradigm is nomadic identity, which there’s now a complete spec for in NomadPub.

Nomadic identity is a feature that allows users to freely move from one server to another without losing their identities and content.

An extension of ActivityPub protocol is currently being developed that enables nomadic identity and other protocol improvements:

  • Identity that is not tied to a single server.

  • Storing user data on multiple servers.

  • Local-first delay-tolerant applications.

  • End-to-end encryption.

  • Implementations of Nomadic ActivityPub can operate in a mode that is compatible with existing ActivityPub server applications.

Specifications

Fedify is working towards this with funding from the Sovereign Tech Agency.

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