Lemmy @lemmy.ml jessel @universeodon.com 1y ago

question for the #lemmy users and #activitypub developers out there:

now that @lemmy is seeing a spike in interest, and @Gargron has said he's interested in building out groups on #mastodon - this seems like the right time to update ActivityPub protocol to support groups natively. anyone looking into this?

lemmy's integration into mastodon is pretty janky right now and can be a lot better!

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Here's the standard, FEP-1b12: Group federation -- finalized in February.
- @jdp23 will take a read through this, thanks!
  
  I think it's also compatible with Friendica groups, and forums like Discourse are testing out federation as well, so there's certainly potential. @[email protected] calls it "the threadiverse", I wasn't sure about the term at first but it's growing on me
@jessel @lemmy @Gargron Groups have multiple meanings tho...

"groups" as in.. a.gup.pe - people post into the group account, and it boosts for everybody following the group account to see on the main timeline like any other account.

groups as in - private group chats - a bunch of people posting to each other (not searchable/not public)

groups as in subreddits.. you subscribe to the group, and you can toot into that group... these toots are inside the group but fully interactive inside the group.
- I'd appreciate it if you keep your toots in a private group.
- @shlee @lemmy @Gargron yeah i was thinking about the last one
I can’t point you to the details, but yes things have been worked in at the protocol level for groups. It got finalised sometime this year.

I don’t know whether any future work will be compliant with it though.
@jessel @lemmy @Gargron

Lack of [private] groups are one of the things keeping me from spinning up an instance, because the people I'd like to prise away from FB need that.
I know there are options, but the clearest way to having a backup admin is a managed service.
Local-only posts would be spiffy too, but groups should push the bar far enough
- @olavf @lemmy @Gargron +1 to private and secret groups. super important to have as there are topics that aren’t appropriate to be discussed publicly so i’m hoping the protocol supports it soon if not already
@jessel what does "support groups natively" mean to you ?

There are Group objects in the ActivityPub vocabulary already.

Posting to a group is already covered by well trodden interactions.

With a little charity with regards to the interpretation of some other vocabulary activities we can say that joining/leaving a group are also there.

What more do you think is needed?
- @mariusor i guess help me understand how we, as mastodon users, can browse and interact with lemmy content without having to use their UI or account?
  
  if i follow @lemmy on mastodon, it seems to be a feed of unstructured replies and comments that don’t have logical cohesion. is that because they are not using the Group objects in ActivityPub? and/or the Mastodon client doesn’t support Groups natively?

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