{"id":59968,"date":"2025-09-13T08:28:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T11:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/?p=59968"},"modified":"2025-09-13T08:28:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T11:28:54","slug":"adeus-fediverso-activitypub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/en\/adeus-fediverso-activitypub\/","title":{"rendered":"Farewell to the fediverse"},"content":{"rendered":"

In December 2023, this blog joined the fediverse<\/a> (pt_BR). Thanks to a WordPress plugin \u2014 the publishing platform used by Manual do Usu\u00e1rio<\/strong> \u2014 it became possible to follow updates here without leaving Mastodon, Pleroma, GoToSocial, or any other application compatible with the ActivityPub protocol.<\/p>\n

Over nearly two years the plugin has improved a lot. And it\u2019s set to improve further, judging by the developers\u2019 roadmap<\/a>, to the point that \u2014 if all goes well \u2014 it may one day be possible to turn blogs into full actors in the fediverse.<\/p>\n

Despite that, I plan to remove ActivityPub support soon. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The situation today is a bit messy. The implementation works, but it\u2019s confusing. A basic example: there isn\u2019t a \u201cprofile\u201d page for the Manual<\/strong> in the fediverse. That makes sense: the blog itself is the web presence. What doesn\u2019t make sense is how someone used to other social platforms and to Mastodon itself is supposed to find the blog in the fediverse without a \u201cFollow\u201d button to click.<\/p>\n

(The workaround is to use search or find a way to follow @blog@manualdousuario.net<\/code>. Even for me it\u2019s awkward and clumsy.)<\/p>\n

A more technical and worse problem is that ActivityPub is a distribution model, not a remote information access model. As Rob Shearer explained<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The important technical point is that ActivityPub is (again, among other things) a protocol for one instance to tell another \u201cI am interested in the following kinds of posts from you, so please send them to me when you see any\u201d and for that other instance to periodically say \u201chere are some posts you\u2019re interested in\u201d. Obviously there\u2019s lots of technical detail, but what matters is that it\u2019s not (primarily) a mechanism for accessing remote information; it\u2019s a way to asynchronously distribute data so that the data is available locally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a subtle distinction, but enough to separate social platforms from blogs. Blogs are already \u201csocial\u201d by nature (comments) and have established distribution channels (RSS).<\/p>\n

In practice, ActivityPub\u2019s distributive nature replicates content across a multitude of servers (every server where someone follows the blog), which, while not catastrophic here, is at least inefficient.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Given that \u2014 and the fact that few people follow and almost nobody interacts via ActivityPub \u2014 I\u2019ve been considering removing Manual<\/strong> from the fediverse for several months. I held off because, until the end of August, there was no way to do it. It was only in version 7.3.0<\/a>, released on the 28th, that the plugin gained a self\u2011destruct feature.<\/p>\n

That feature is important to notify other servers that Manual<\/strong> is no longer in the fediverse. It\u2019s the formal, proper way to say goodbye to the fediverse: to remove profiles and ask other servers to stop \u201cpulling\u201d posts from here.<\/p>\n

I imagine some people got used to following Manual<\/strong> via ActivityPub. That\u2019s why I\u2019m publishing this notice in advance so the message reaches anyone it may concern. ActivityPub support will be disabled next Friday (9\/26). I invite anyone who wants to keep following me on the fediverse to find me on Mastodon at @manualdousuario@mastodon.social<\/a>. I echo almost everything published on Manual<\/strong> there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In December 2023, this blog joined the fediverse (pt_BR). Thanks to a WordPress plugin \u2014 the publishing platform used by Manual do Usu\u00e1rio \u2014 it became possible to follow updates here without leaving Mastodon, Pleroma, GoToSocial, or any other application compatible with the ActivityPub protocol. Over nearly two years the plugin has improved a lot. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_locale":"en_US","_original_post":""},"categories":[1575],"tags":[1951],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59968"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59970,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59968\/revisions\/59970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manualdousuario.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}