**Decentralized Dominance: The Unbribed Power of Webmentions**

I've been a vocal advocate for Webmentions for a while - and I'm here to tell you that this game-changing technology is not just a nicety, but a necessity.

The fundamentals are crystal clear: take control of your online presence, ditch the middlemen, and shatter the shackles of Big Tech's stranglehold. It's time to rewrite the rules and reclaim your digital sovereignty.

Let's cut to the chase with an example that'll leave you breathless: imagine Asuka stumbling upon a scorching article on Shinji's site at https://Shinji.com/article. She fires off a comment that'd make a thousand lesser bloggers green with envy - but instead of relying on some soulless commenting system, she takes it to the next level by sending a Webmention directly to Shinji's site.

The implications are staggering: when both parties support Webmentions, they're essentially saying, "You can have my comment, right now." The source URL (https://Asuka.com/comment) and target URL (https://Shinji.com/article) are etched in stone - no more third-party intermediaries, no more social media login hoops to jump through. Just the raw power of the Web.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "But isn't this just a fancy alternative to ActivityPub?" Ah, friend, you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. #ActivityPub is a Byzantine nightmare that'll leave your head spinning with concepts like actors, relays, followers, and more. Webmentions, on the other hand, are a elegant, peer-to-peer solution that doesn't require any of that mumbo-jumbo.

And let's not forget the sheer flexibility of Microformats - you can use Webmentions to share anything from likes to RSVPs, media, locations, and even events. The possibilities are endless.

Don't be held hostage by the status quo. Join the Indieweb and take control of your online destiny once and for all.

#webmention #webmentions #indieweb

I'm thinking in adding #ONI proxyUrl support in the frontend.

Currently if a request to a remote #ActivityPub object fails - either due to CORS, or because of authorized fetch - I just display a fallback link to it.

I'm wondering if I can do a two step approach, if the request to the resource fails with 401-403 (for secure fetch) or 400 (for CORS failures) I try to redirect the request through the proxyUrl mechanism.

Only if that fails too, I fallback to something else.

How exactly are #Mastodon and #Bookwyrm interoperable? What #data or interactions can flow between the two via #ActivityPub?

#Fediverse #FediQuestion #federation

Recently, there was a question by @taylorlorenz about how you explain the Fediverse to someone who doesn't use it.

And usually, what we tend to do is we talk about servers and decentralisation and federation and ActivityPub and all these highly technical concepts.

I've been thinking about it, and all that technical stuff is really impressive work by people far more clever than I'll ever be.

But for me, that technology is a facilitating thing. It's like trying to describe how a bicycle works, rather than why you ride it.

Instead, what the Fediverse is, is a place to have conversations online without algorithms, AI, and ads getting in the way.

Which is increasingly a rare thing online.

Almost the entirety of the internet, from SEO on the web to YouTube to TikTok to Spotify to Instagram and X and Facebook, has been turned into a race to game an algorithm designed to sell ads.

What makes the Fedi unique is that it's not that.

And I suspect if you're trying to persuade someone to try Mastodon (or Lemmy, or Pixelfed, or GtS, etc), you'll get a lot further explaining it as algorithm-free, ad-free, AI-free conversations, rather than trying to describe a decentralised protocol.

#Fediverse #Mastodon #ActivityPub

I can say the #Fediverse is a different place than any other social media platform I have been on. I've been here since 2022. When my self-hosted instance went down for a couple days, I didn't yearn for social media like a drug. I wondered how certain people's cats were, one person had a mother in the hospital, someone was getting a new job, one had the blues, etc, etc. I missed people more than viralness of a platform. #Mastodon #ActivityPub Thank you for being my Old Friends.

@benpateBen Pate 🤘🏻 @strypey

#Roomy currently based on AT Proto but looking to add #ActivityPub soon
https://itsfoss.com/roomy-discord-alternative/

There's a lot of energy on the #Fediverse right now to discuss/find a #Federated alternative to #Discord using #ActivityPub.

@strypey suggested that I put this out there to anyone who's thinking about it. We could probably rebuild most of Discord's features as an #Emissary inbox without doing a lot of back end code.

I'm too swamped to start on this right now. But if you're a great HTML+CSS designer, I'm able to give some time to a team who wants to take this on.

Week in Fediverse 2026-02-13

Servers

- Stegodon v1.7.1
- Hollo v0.7.2
- Manyfold v0.132.1
- Mbin v1.9.1
- tootik v0.21.0
- Mitra v4.18.0
- ActivityPub for WordPress v7.9.1
- flohmarkt v0.14.4
- PieFed v1.6.4
- Trunk & Tidbits, January 2026 (Mastodon)
- OpenSimulator ActivityPub Bridge

Clients

- Fedilab v3.36.1
- toot v0.51.1
- tooi v0.21.0
- Jerboa v0.0.85
- Interstellar v0.11.2
- Pixelix v4.3.0
- Fedi Reader: A link-focused Mastodon news reader for iOS and macOS

Tools and Plugins

- ap-thread-reader: ActivityPub-compatible Thread Reader (not only for Mastodon)

For developers

- Progress Report - February 2026 (GoActivityPub)

Articles

- On fediverse content warnings and filters
- Trusting Trust in the Fediverse
- Adding Fediverse Comments to a Pelican Blog

-----

#WeekInFediverse #Fediverse #ActivityPub

Previous edition: https://mitra.social/objects/019c3449-e714-29e9-b9f6-03cc6804b4aa

These days I have seed and flavorful vegetables on my mind. I'm grateful to be part of an international community with that passion. One of the places on the internet I learn the most these days is a #Discourse #forum dedicated to that topic and I wish it could federate with Mastodon and similar networks, so the conversations could take place here too. Atm you need a 500$ business plan to integrate #ActivityPub plugin.

https://goingtoseed.discourse.group

#Federation #NodeBB

With #HolosDiscover we checked multiple criteria before indexing: "indexable" enabled, account not locked, no #nobot or #noindex in bio, not in opted-out list, only public posts. Every deletion, edit or block was processed instantly via #ActivityPub.
Google uses that same "indexable" flag but ignores everything else, keeps deleted content cached for weeks.
We shut it down after pushback. Was that the right call? Don't hesitate to share, this concerns the whole Fediverse.

After shutting down #HolosDiscover, we're rethinking the approach with #HolosIndex: users explicitly opt in by adding #HolosIndex to their bio with interest tags, then submit their profile. No assumptions, no default settings.
This will power interest-based discovery across the #Fediverse, helping people find each other through shared interests. Still all through #ActivityPub of course, with real-time deletions and updates.

@dansup

are there any fediverse projects using more than one type of federation?

what are some good resources for implementing activitypub validly?
what languages should i learn?
what are good ways to test web application security on the cheap before deployment?
anything more i should be worried about?

i'm good at c, python and that's about it.

#fediverse #activitypub

@eyeintheskyThe Eye I am genuinely curious. What do you mean by a "real" schema language? What criteria should it meet?

More specifically, what would constitute successful interoperability for #ActivityPub in line with the aims of #SocialWeb?

#JSONLD is not a schema language. It is used to serialise #ActivityStreams as the primary vocab for exchanging social activities, providing a foundation, and leaves room for extensibility for broad human needs to express social matters.

Never before has it been this easy to leverage the fediverse across the web.

With @webintents and @socialwebgraph, you will be unstoppable 🚀

Available Soon.

#WebIntents #SocialWebGraph #Fediverse #ActivityPub #ActivityIntents

Hello World!

We're building a social web alternative to open graph, powered by @webintents and @fedidb

The website and documentation will be published soon, stay tuned 🚀

#SocialWebGraph #WebIntents #Fediverse #ActivityPub

This morning I promoted nolto.social, a platform that was made - at least I thought so, to be a Fediverse based alternative to LinkedIn. As I'm getting more and more annoyed by LinkedIn and all the useless posts over there, I was happy to find an independent alternative.

nolto.social still worked this morning, but when I came back later; i found the project deleted and at least when you are viewing the website from your smartphone, you see a message from the developer of nolto.social where he states that this project was never meant to grow. Obviously this was just a one person project who became overwhelmed by the success of the platform and by the fact, that companies started creating profiles and nearly 1000 people joined within a short time period. But now it seems that this project ran out of control and the maintainer decided to pull the emergency break. He is also talking about negative feedback he received for the platform and even personal harrassment.

It is sad that a promising project like this had been terminated, but I can understand what made the maintainer doing so. Managing a business platform can become a fulltime job quite fast and it also requires technical ressources and money to run these resources.

I firmly believe that we need an alternative to LinkedIn. I believe that people don't want all this bullshit posts just created to please the algorithm and to generate likes and feedback. And I believe that people would like a business network which is nothing else than a business network - no space for bursting egos and self promotion, but a space for connection and serious discussion.

Fediverse would be the ideal space for this. But as we know, if business networks are successful, they require more and more attention, more ressources, more money. And at this is the problem. When you need money to run your social network, it's tempting to ask yourself how you could generate money by using the ressources you already have, which are user data...

I don't see a solution for this now, just sharing some thoughts.

#shutdown #activityPub #fediverseMoments #digitalCommons

@lhaigLance Haig

Nice! I have queued this up for inclusion in the delightful fediverse experience curated list.

https://delightful.coding.social/delightful-fediverse-experience

#fediverse #ActivityPub #mastodon

pack-mastodon v0.1.0 is now available on Ramble!

Deploy Mastodon, a self-hosted ActivityPub social network, to HashiCorp Nomad

https://ramble.openwander.org/lhaig/pack-mastodon

#Nomad #social #activitypub #mastodon

One option for events in Fediverse: https://gath.io/

#events #fediverse #Mastodon #ActivityPub #meetup

#ActivityPub ✅ #jsonld 🤷‍♀️ Why? 🤪

Hopefully the SocialWG will adopt a real schema language. 🙏

Hello @evanEvan Prodromou and @bifurcationRichard Barnes .. a question.

For inclusion of #ActivityPub information resources on the delightful-fediverse-development curated list there is this (now expired) #IETF draft exploring #MIMI / #MLS versus AP. I find this draft to be well-written and informative, and thus the draft possibly a candidate for inclusion for people as additional background reading to the #SocialCG work on MLS. Unless there are so many changes since the creation of the draft that it may raise confusion, and should not be included. What is your opinion here?

https://ietf-wg-mimi.github.io/mimi-arch/draft-ietf-mimi-arch.html

I would like to suggest that folks in #Canada who appreciate the #fediverse and #activitypub learn about and thank @dansup, who invented, developed & maintained @pixelfed for YEARS even while the user base was like in the few hundreds.

Now he's behind @loops and @fedidb as well

His dedication to the open web is so criminally underrated in our country, even though he has been on the global cutting edge of the #digitalsovereignty movement we're seeing in #cdnpoli for the better part of a decade.

Yay, Spritely Institute (@spritelyThe Spritely Institute) presents what the future of distributed social networks might look like:

- https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/HVJRNV-how_to_level_up_the_fediverse/

Decentralized social networks of consent.

For more information read https://spritely.institute

#spritely #activitypub #socialMedia #ocapn #distributed #consent #fediverse

@andycarolanAndy Carolan did it again and now #FedBOX, the generic #ActivityPub server, has a fresh of the press logo. :) Thank you Andy! 🥳

https://mariusor.srht.site/fedbox/

I'm playing around with Offer activities in Fedify. The AP Vocab provides this, easy peasy.

✅ Alice OFFERS Book to Bob
✅ Bob ACCEPTS Alice's OFFER

Or:

✅ Bob OFFERS Rotten Tomato to Alice
❌ Alice REJECTS Bob's OFFER

----------------

But I'm not clear if this is right:

❓Alice ANNOUNCES OFFER of Labubu to Followers?

❓Bob OFFERS $10 for Labubu to Alice?

❓ Alice ACCEPTS Bob's OFFER of $10 for Labubu?

✅ Alice OFFERS Labubu to Bob

✅ Bob ACCEPTS Labubu

#ActivityPub

@steveSteve Bate @jerger

Yes, I would highly discourage the use of "app". It is why I scare quoted it, but "app" is common language when people talk about the fediverse. "App" is a neat container concept that fits the full scope of ones own FOSS project, but on the fediverse - a growing heterogeneous and interoperable social network - one becomes highly dependent on the foundational network communication layer based on #ActivityPub, and any fedi FOSS developer should be concerned beyond direct project scope, and pay attention that this foundation evolves healthily. This unfortunately happens unsufficiently, and only a very small number of people try to get the ecosystem as a whole to higher levels, volunteering time where it does not directly benefit their own projects. Think @silverpill for the #FEP and @evanEvan Prodromou for #SocialCG.

Cool find yesterday was that @HolosSocial rather than C2S has a "full AP server" client-side, that communicates with a Websockets tunnel to a dedicated relay server.

@smallcircles🫧 socialcoding.. @jerger > In the case you mention it becomes confusing to still use client/server terminology.

In this case, I think the terms makes sense in the specific content of #ActivityPub clients and servers. There's significant overlap in the behaviors of the two, but there are significant differences too. For example, a client cannot federate and often runs in an environment where it can't expose listening sockets (browser, behind a firewall, etc.).

@steveSteve Bate @jerger @mariusormarius

As an aside: I just learned about Holos-Discover, an AP search engine was taken offline by @HolosSocial after discussions relating to consent. The key finding was in https://toot.fedilab.app/@apps/116051469228002847

> This highlighted a real conversation the Fediverse needs about default settings.

Yeah. I would reformulate to say that this is about protocol capabilities vs. these weird things we call "apps".

Can't check the Holos-Discover info, as it was taken down, but it seems to me that relying on an "Indexable" setting is an app-specific thing. Hence it can't be part of a generic consent mechanism.

When it comes to "defaults", the fediverse as a whole has a problem in that Microblogging is seen as something foundational to #ActivityPub, a given upon which all else is built. Protocol capabilities. But this is, should not be, the case.

Microblogging constitutes a domain, a set of user stories with well-define particular behavior. Or as app domains (Mastodon) + FEP practices.

@steveSteve Bate @jerger @mariusormarius

Guess this is a general area where due to the lack of clear protocol layering there's much confusion in overall terminology usage.

The whole idea of an "app" is not part of #ActivityPub itself. It is a leaked abstraction on what devs think they offer ("I build an app for my users").

There is no "generic" microblogging app, unless there exists an agreement for the specification of said app. PixelFed is a spec, PeerTube is another spec in different domain. A generic microblogging app would live where? As FEP? Collection of FEP's? W3C Note giving a 'specification profile'?

#AskFedi "Give me the #markdown of this #microblogging discussion please.."

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fediverse-ideas/issues/131

#fediverse #ActivityPub

@jerger @steveSteve Bate

I agree with this. The #ActivityPub spec says:

> The server MUST then add this new Activity to the outbox collection. Depending on the type of Activity, servers may then be required to carry out further side effects. (However, there is no guarantee that time the Activity may appear in the outbox. The Activity might appear after a delay or disappear at any period). These are described per individual Activity below.

My expectation as a client is that I find the Activity I just sent in the outbox on the server with the same (Note) payload. If there's translation into Article, then this is a side-effect that comes after that.

I'm curious what other devs think about this. If an actor posts an C2S #ActivityPub Create/Note to the outbox, what would you think if the object created by the server was a different type (e.g., Article)?

With https://discover.holos.social we may have highlighted that many Fediverse users don't pay attention to their default settings. We built a fully respectful search engine that only relies on #ActivityPub, with instant deletion, updates, and indexing only consenting users. We will likely shut down the service, but the source code will remain available as we believe the approach is ethical. That same indexable setting already lets Google index your posts and keep them cached long after deletion.

Just sent my first signed request to #Mastodon that was accepted. This took much more time than it should have, but the next steps should become much simpler. #rust #activitypub

RE: https://mastodon.social/@countablenewt/116033103469375924

Not every client for every #ActivityPub service needs to show all content

Take #FediReader, for example

Most of the content on #Mastodon isn't immediately visible in the UI

Posts without links don't show up at all, quote boosts don't show up at all, and any text content shared with the post is hidden in the post detail view

The fun thing about the #SocialWeb is that we can make highly opinionated clients like this for the people who want it

For those that don't, they don't have to use it

let's bring #longform (text) support to the #photoverse

(this is not (mainly) about long texts on #pixelfed or #vernissage (they can both fall back to show the summary), it is about supporting image posts with the object type: `Article`)

* https://github.com/VernissageApp/VernissageServer/pull/442
* https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/pull/6458

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/b2b8/fep-b2b8.md

#fediverse #activitypub

@lutindiscret

Indeed. There's a ton of fedi discussion taking place on Matrix.

Encourage people to check out this huge collection of #ActivityPub / #fediverse related matrix chatrooms gathered (I think) by @codelutin@mastodon.libre-entreprise.com in this #Matrix space:

https://matrix.to/#/#activitypub-community:codelutin.com

I gotta say Google, the degradation of your Search product is now almost complete.

I was looking for documents that I am fairly sure exist; at the intersection of three specific technical disciplines.

Namely
#activitypub #duckdb #python

And basically just want to throw my archives into duckdb and have them in whatever schema the JSON-LD of a mastodon archive carries, so I could do a bit of analytics on my past self.

And for the first time you didn't produce a useful top level result that I could use to find what I was looking for.

You've gotten dumber Google and it shows.

@jrollansJonathan Rollans I don't know how close #Funkwhale gets to what you seek, but it is an interesting #ActivityPub application to check out, if you didn't know it already..

https://www.funkwhale.audio

I started using a service called Concert Archives (it is what it sounds like) and I really like it! It’s helped me remember live shows that I had forgotten I even went to and artists I didn’t even recall seeing until looking at the archive entries.

I wish it was federated with #ActivityPub, something like that on the fediverse would be very cool.

Here’s my profile (still working on adding concerts, lots more to go…) https://www.concertarchives.org/jonathan-rollans

#Music #Live #Concert

TIL that Accept headers with a ":" cause surprising CORS behavior (the header is no longer "safelisted"). Beware of that when accepting the standard #ActivityPub (via AS2) `application/ld+json; profile="https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams"` content type. You've been warned. 😉(Note that you might see the http URL above automatically hyperlinked in your Fedi client.)

I couldn't get pixelfed to work under #NixOS. That's why I'm building pxvoid now. A simple, self-hosted web gallery with #ActivityPub integration. No multi-user management, no filters, no stories, and a local upload script. Follows and likes from the #Fediverse are possible. It's an early alpha version, but the basics work in under 1800 LoC #Python. Now all that's missing is the final design and code cleanup 🥳🎉

@nickNordnick 🐘 @nikclaytonNik @ntnsndrNathan Schneider @strypey @pachli @bhaugen @lynnfoster @Quasit

> Are any of you familiar with #Pachli and its dev team?

Not used, but it is on the delightful fediverse clients curated list..

https://delightful.coding.social/delightful-fediverse-clients/

#fediverse #ActivityPub

@dansup Can I request a @pixelfed feature to be able to pin a post?

#pixelfed #activitypub #fediverse

I managed to get 2/3rds of quote posts (FEP-044f) working in #ktistec. The only part remaining is quote posting from the server and this depends on functionality to delay delivery until the quote request is accepted (or not). I need that for scheduled posts, so it's a delay but time well spent!

#activitypub #fediverse

Has anyone figured out how to use ActivityPub to make something IRC or Discord shaped?

#activitypub #irc

Your Home Feed is the inbox of an ActivityPub actor — in particular YOUR ActivityPub actor.

There could be an actor for each hash-tag, too.

You could even do Del.icio.us like things — and have actors for intersections of hash-tags, too.

These hash-tag actors' inboxes would need to be readable by anyone.

...

This could be a more ActivityPub like API alternative to Mastodon's "GET /API/v1/tags/{name}" API.

#ActivityPub #FediDev #FediDevs #Fediverse #HashTag #HashTags

Reminder to anyone managing a #ActivityPub project that matrix has been adopted as the chat solution by bookwyrm, write.as, friendica, plume, pleroma, fedilab, funkwhale, mitra, forgefed, mobilizon, phanpy, tokodon, moshidon, lemmy, gotosocial, bonfire, voyager, tusky, lemmy, loops, piefed, pixelfed, manyfold, owncast and others. You don't need to start from scratch if you leave discord : join us on matrix!

@GargronEugen Rochko