By @edent · ActivityPub BlueSky mastodon Social Media twitter · 2 comments · 750 words · read ~258 times.
What does it mean to block someone on a social media site? Way back in the mists of time, we dealt with trolls on Usenet with the almighty PLONK - PLaced On Newsgroup Killfile. It meant your newsreader never downloaded their posts. They could rant at you all day long, and you'd never hear from […]
Continue reading →By @edent · ActivityPub fediverse mastodon privacy · 3 comments · 500 words
Several years ago, I posted this poll on Twitter. Terence Eden is on Mastodon@edentIf the recent Twitter hack had exposed they way you voted on every Twitter poll, how would you feel?(There is no suggestion that this has happened, I'm just curious about people's relationships to voting and privacy.)Meh. So what?: (167)167Hmph. That's annoying.: (68)68Umm… […]
Continue reading →By @edent · capitalism fediverse mastodon startups · 4 comments · 500 words
Many years ago, when I was younger and more foolish, I worked for an advertising startup. Things seemed to be going pretty well! The office was expanding, the sales team was screaming into phones, the budget for servers was rising. Growth had been healthy, but now looked to be plateauing. One day we were summoned […]
Continue reading →By @edent · ActivityPub mastodon Social Media · 16 comments · 250 words
Vague thoughts as they enter my brainbox. The BlueSky social network has introduced "Reply Gating" - it looks like this: You can write your hot take on Taylor Swift and not be inundated by weirdos replying to you. Nifty! This is nothing new. Twitter has it. Facebook has the concept of "audiences" to restrict who […]
Continue reading →By @edent · ActivityPub mastodon · 2 comments · 500 words
I didn't realise this, so I'm documenting it to stop other people making the same silly mistake that I did. Messages in ActivityPub have two distinct ID strings. Here's a (truncated) view of what happens when I send a new message on Mastodon: "id": "https://mastodon.social/users/Edent/statuses/1234567890/activity", "type": "Create", "actor": "https://mastodon.social/users/Edent", "published": "2024-03-10T16:13:49Z", "object": { "id": "https://mastodon.social/users/Edent/statuses/1234567890", […]
Continue reading →By @edent · ActivityPub cryptography http mastodon security · 2 comments · 1,250 words
Mastodon makes heavy use of HTTP Message Signatures. They're a newish almost-standard which allows a server to verify that a request made to it came from the person who sent it. This is a quick example to show how to verify these signatures using PHP. I don't claim that it covers every use-case, and it […]
Continue reading →By @edent · ActivityPub mastodon php · 8 comments · 1,950 words · read ~2,649 times.
Any computer program can be designed to run from a single file if you architect it wrong enough! I wanted to create the simplest possible Fediverse server which can be used as an educational tool to show how ActivityPub / Mastodon works. The design goals were: Upload a single PHP file to the server. No […]
Continue reading →By @edent · ActivityPub fediverse i18n mastodon unicode · 35 comments · 750 words · read ~265 times.
We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere. It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some don't use […]
Continue reading →By @edent · ActivityPub fediverse mastodon php Symfony · 10 comments · 900 words · read ~695 times.
I've written an ActivityPub server which only allows you to post messages to your followers. That's all it does. It won't record favourites or reposts. There's no support for following other accounts or receiving replies. It cannot delete or update posts nor can it verify signatures. It doesn't have a database or any storage beyond […]
Continue reading →By @edent · mastodon twitter · 2 comments · 550 words
I remember seeing the original "A new decentralized microblogging platform" on HackerNews back in October 2016. A few weeks later, I joined - becoming the 7,112th user. As the years went on, my use of it waxed and waned. I started cross-posting to both Mastodon and Twitter. Gradually, I started spending more time on the […]
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