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Federating servers

So, one part of the popular imagination about ActivityPub I've seen is the idea of server federation.

I think the idea is that if two servers have interacted in some way, all (?) public (?) content from one server will be sent to the other server, and vice versa.

This comes up a lot with new servers; people ask to have a post shared broadly so that their server rubs shoulders with others, getting the federated feed flow going.

ActivityPub does in fact have a mechanism defined for this:

[...]

So, one part of the popular imagination about ActivityPub I've seen is the idea of server federation.

I think the idea is that if two servers have interacted in some way, all (?) public (?) content from one server will be sent to the other server, and vice versa.

This comes up a lot with new servers; people ask to have a post shared broadly so that their server rubs shoulders with others, getting the federated feed flow going.

ActivityPub does in fact have a mechanism defined for this:

Additionally, if an object is addressed to the Public special collection, a server MAY deliver that object to all known sharedInbox endpoints on the network.

As far as I've seen, most (?) servers don't implement this; it would overwhelm small servers pretty quickly.

However, some (?) servers do implement it for some (?) activities, especially profile update and delete activities.

Is this the origin of the idea that new servers need to have their content shared around? Are people misunderstanding the way that relays work? Is it just a trick to get your content shared?

evan

@evan@activitypub.space · yesterday

Federating servers

Another possibility is that when someone asks to have their content shared, that will result in a few Follow requests, which does result in their future content being distributed to other servers (and public content goes to Fediverse and hashtag feeds).

So, it seems like the sharing is what got the distribution going, even though it is indirect (sharing causes following causes appearing in the Fediverse feed).

julian

@julian@activitypub.space · 16 hours ago

Federating servers

@evan personally I think "server federation" is best achieved through relays.

The distribution model fits best, and the technology already exists, even if not broadly implemented.

One could be able to plug a server instance actor in to subscribe to its relay.

evan

@evan@activitypub.space · 3 hours ago

Federating servers

@julian yes, I agree. This is a different idea -- that somehow interaction between actors on different servers will make their servers connect and share data. It's incorrect, but it's interesting.

julian

@julian@activitypub.space · 3 hours ago

Federating servers

@evan oh I see what you mean... that a server merely discovers another, and that kickstarts a mutual sharing of activities.

I'm afraid that would be a bit of a scaling challenge 😁

1 more replies

infinite love ⴳ

@trwnh@mastodon.social · 23 hours ago

@evan in the Mastodon sphere, boosting a post has these side effects:

- servers that receive the boost will now be aware that the boosted post exists. if it contains hashtags, then that post might show up in hashtag timelines/searches and the home timelines of anyone following that hashtag.
- servers will also be aware that the author of the boosted post exists. their profile can appear in search results based on their account's name/summary.
-- (in the future, their outbox might be backfilled)

Johanna, CanCon variety

@johannab@cosocial.ca · yesterday

@evan I think - reviewed it given that you corrected my misapprehension the other day - that other than for those who live'n'breathe protocol, the nitty-gritty details are really not spelled out in the platform documentation for users or admins.

Or even those of us who understand enough to read along (I did remember that I "knew" this, just not that expert in expressing), it's more detail than we can articulate when there's a new user or instance showing up.