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1. Embed this notice
   Osma A (osma@mas.to)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 00:21:21 JST Osma A

   When an ActivityPub server fetches a remote post from its origin server, does it also fetch (references to) replies from the origin, or maintain its own list of replies? Is there any concept "authoritative list of replies"? Thinking also in terms of is there a method for the OP to demote replies as a hyperlocal moderation feature.
   #ActivityPub

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 00:21:20 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @osma

     - Activities are pushed, not pulled.
     - Mastodon keeps its own list.
     - Yes, absolutely. The "replies" collection has all the replies.
     - Yes, there's a way in the ActivityPub API to remove a reply from the list of replies.

     #ActivityPub

   • Embed this notice
     Osma A (osma@mas.to)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 00:58:37 JST Osma A

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan
     Thanks! I don't recall seeing a feature for muting/removing/demoting a single reply from a conversation/thread in any client, but such a feature should therefore be possible.

     Activities are not always pushed, though - the most obvious situation is a QT, which can cause my client to request a toot which hasn't been seen by my server yet. Also, visiting a remote profile for the first time, authorized_fetch.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 00:58:37 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @osma I'm trying to remain open to being taught about ActivityPub.

     However, most of the posts in your timelines are pushed to your server. You're right, you can GET a lot of things in ActivityPub world.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 01:21:31 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @osma So, long story short: every object has a `replies` property, which is a collection of all the replies to that object. The author can make a `Remove` activity, to remove a reply from that collection. That should propagate to other servers, so they can keep a sync'd copy of the replies (or fetch it from the originating server).

     That's how it's supposed to work, at least.

   • Embed this notice
     Osma A (osma@mas.to)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 01:21:32 JST Osma A

     in reply to

     To flesh out what I was thinking. Consider user X on server A, whose toots are federated to user Y on server B.

     If A blocks B, (future) federation is broken. If X blocks Y, federation isn't broken but follower relationship is.

     However, if B has replied to A's toot prior to a block, what controls does A have to remove B's reply from the timeline of server A, server B, or an unrelated server C where user Z may follow either X or Y?

     #ActivityPub

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Thursday, 16-Nov-2023 01:23:31 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @osma Many ActivityPub implementations ignore the `replies` collection and just do a search for any object with an `inReplyTo` property equal to the ID of the original post. So, they won't show all the replies (only ones that they received), and they won't handled curation of the replies list.