FEP-3b86

[benpate]

Requirements

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Is your proposal related to a problem?

FEP-3b86: Activity Intents is a small change to the data published by WebFinger that would improve how Lemmy connects to other Fediverse servers.

Describe the solution you'd like.

Implementing this FEP is as simple updating WebFinger results to include the URLs that let website visitors perform Activities on their own server (such as Follow, Like, or Announce). Then, other websites can use this information to display interactive buttons to take those actions.

Describe alternatives you've considered.

Activity Intents is similar to the old oStatus "remote follows" but it is 1) works for any kind of Activity, not just Follow, and 2) has actual documentation instead of linking to a Chinese gambling site.

Additional context

Activity Intents make it possible for a remote server to display (for example) "Share" or "Like" buttons that lets Lemmy users interact with the remote pages using their home Lemmy account.

This is an easy addition that helps connect the social web together, in more ways than just through their timeline.

I am not a Rust developer, so I probably shouldn't try to make this change to Lemmy myself, but I'm happy to work with anyone who's interested in making this enhancement.

[benpate]

Sorry, RUST. I’m not a RUST developer either. Edited. :)

[Nutomic]

Not sure which other endpoints there are, at least /create_post takes query parameters for url, title, body etc. So it should probably look like this:

    {
      "rel": "https://w3id.org/fep/3b86/Create",
      "href": "https://example.com/create_post?title={name}&body={content}"
    },

In this case there is no param for url. Generally the FEP relies on Activitypub IDs for many parameters, but Lemmy uses simple int ids for the API. So this approach is not going to work well unless someone decides to implement new endpoints for all these (which is not really wirth the effort).

[benpate]

Hey, thanks for taking a look at this!

Implementing inbound shares activities should be straightforward, and definitely SHOULD NOT require new endpoints.

For create activities, I’m expecting the URL would be put in the content field, which mirrors how Mastodon handles “share” pages now.

If Lemmy requires a URL separate from the content, we should probably update the FEP.

[dessalines]

I spose this is about the webfinger actions for persons and groups: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/crates/routes/src/webfinger.rs#L96

[benpate]

@dessalines - You're exactly right. Thanks for finding that in the code :) Without adding extra functionality to Lemmy, you could update this WebFinger response to include links to Lemmy endpoints that "share" or "like" external pages. That would be the easiest thing to do, and a big step forward for interop.

Down the road, Lemmy might also add Activity Intent buttons on its own pages, with "follow", "share" or "like" buttons that help un-authenticated users get back to their home servers to continue interacting with pages hosted by Lemmy.

I have this working on https://bandwagon.fm as a proof-of-concept, and am working to refiine the UX and DX of the whole process.

[dessalines]

The FEP lists a lot of intents that would be pointless or don't apply for us. So we'd have to handle which ones are useful, case-by-case.

[benpate]

Yes. Here's my (rough) project plan. I can flesh this out if it would be helpful:

1. In WebFinger results, document the endpoints that Lemmy already supports. These are probably Follow and Create (which works as a "share"). This should be quick and easy to do, and does not break any backward compatibility.
2. Consider adding endpoints that let remote users Like (upvote), Dislike (downvote) and Announce (boost) content as well. If so, then these would be fantastic to document in WebFinger as well. This helps build a base of apps and instances that can publish Activity Intents. It's slightly more involved, and will be useful once Lemmy (and others) take step 3.
3. Add buttons to Lemmy's user profiles and content pages that let visitors follow, like, and share directly from there. This takes a bit of work. I can help with this when the time comes. I've written a reference implementation in Go, and I'm planning on rewriting them in pure client-side Javascript.

[Nutomic]

1. Webfinger is defined in this file: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/crates/routes/src/webfinger.rs#L122
2. Like and Dislike dont have their own pages, there are only buttons. So for those it would be enough to link the respective page. Users cant Announce things manually in Lemmy.