Should publishing with ActivityPub be about as easy as publishing with RSS?
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Yes, but...
I understand the RSS and Atom specs well enough that I've created programs with RSS/Atom feeds. But the ActivityPub spec scares the willies out of me. Too many moving parts.
I just finished reading your post (after posting my previous reply) and it confirms my thought that ActivityPub, even a static implementation, has too many moving parts. I'll follow some of the links in your post (later, I've rate-limited) to see if I can wrap my head around it. I've never been able to wrap my head around anything Ruby, tho.
@bobjonkman I think it's possible to tighten up the file structure even further, by using embedded objects with fragment identifiers. That said, I think it's a big step forward for publishers. I was able to make a plugin for Jekyll pretty quickly.
The ActivityPoll #FEP has a very unfortunate name, clashing and overloading with the existing concept of a #Poll on the fediverse. The mechanism it documents is generally called #Polling.
@bobjonkman @evan Relevant: http://scripting.com/davenet/2001/04/04/aBusyDevelopersGuideToSoap.html.
Back in the day both Dave Winer (no Fediverse handle?) and Sam Ruby ( @samruby) showed ways to do The Simplest Possible Thing with SOAP.
@evan ...but it never will be.
@jpaskaruk really? Tell me more.
@evan I was speaking from an Admin/Dev standpoint, not user.
But the effort required from admins and devs is a factor in the ease of use of any project; ultimately, if it's to be considered easy, we have to take into account the need to either hire or inspire talent.
To publish RSS (as I understand it), you add an endpoint to your website where your content is presented into a parseable format that readers can present in their context, and you format your content accordingly. That's basically a markup language, unless there's more going on behind the scenes with RSS that I don't comprehend, and anyone can understand a markup language, if they're willing to try.
ActivityPub, on the other hand, has to talk to a lot of other AP things, on an ongoing basis. There is Compute and Network Connectivity and Databases involved. That's hard. You have to point those highly vulnerable things at the public-facing Internet. That's treacherous.
You might, if you can hire or inspire enough talent, and also fund the thing, make it just as easy for the end user, but don't act like that's easy. Or necessarily even good.
edit: read first couple paragraphs of blog. You're basically saying we can use a subset of AP formatting in a one-way manner to replace RSS... which, if someone chooses to boost it on Mastodon, will be automatically transformed back into RSS...
I think we should just use RSS, and remember Aaron. I tell my friends who are not here but who might want to keep track of my ongoing public meltdowns and outrages that the good news is, they can follow me on RSS without any need to join Mastodon. I suppose I'm worried about inceptions beginning to happen, and circular conversions.
edit 2: I can see the purpose for it, if it's a 2-way thing that allows Mastodon accounts to act as the comment section, and that's what I assumed you were talking about in the poll.
@jpaskaruk I wouldn't say "replace RSS". The point is to provide easy to publish Fediverse accounts.
@jpaskaruk also, have you read my blog post?
https://socialwebfoundation.org/2026/09/04/static-activitypub-publishing/
I usually don't give a response to polls until they're done but since I just published a blog post on this topic it feels dishonest not to link to it.
https://socialwebfoundation.org/2026/09/04/static-activitypub-publishing/
@evan can you maybe please guide us on how to proceed once the plugin is integrated on static sites?what's next? how can we connect it to the fediverse for mastodon to be able to see it and for people to connect/follow? if i'm on a different instance of mastodon what should i ask of my admin to make it happen?
Thanks to everyone who replied. I say yes.
@evan A question that reminds me of this project: https://rss.chat/
@evan ... but RSS could be a little more intuitive. It's really too late to update the standard, so UIs and culture need to adapt.
