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1. Embed this notice
   Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:22 JST Julian Fietkau

   I am publishing a small #ActivityPub / #fediverse project: https://fietkau.software/webfinger_canary and @canary 🙂

   It is a tiny bot showcasing a split-domain WebFinger setup, where the handle domain is different from the ActivityPub server domain. This is supported by Mastodon and some other ActivityPub implementations, but not all of them.

   So this project, aimed at devs and power users, is part test case, part feature recommendation/advocacy. The bot's website at https://correct.webfinger-canary.fietkau.software/ has all the details.

   • Embed this notice
     silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:05 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     @mro @julian Could you elaborate? Where should I use anyURI?

   • Embed this notice
     Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻 (mro@digitalcourage.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:07 JST Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     in reply to

     • silverpill

     Hi @julian,
     a pity @silverpill doesn't use https://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#anyURI and doesn't keep the acct:alice@example.com from https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7565.html.

     And yes, I'd be happy if you add #Seppo!

   • Embed this notice
     Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:08 JST Julian Fietkau

     in reply to

     • Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     @mro There is a suggested FEP to include the WebFinger resource in the actor document: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/2c59/fep-2c59.md But I have not seen it implemented anywhere. In the meantime, the hacky approach works and is reasonably popular. 😄

     I don't want to push you into supporting something you don't want to support. Just keep in mind that your software is showing different account handles than Mastodon for some users.

     Do you want me to add Seppo to the overview table anyway?

   • Embed this notice
     Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻 (mro@digitalcourage.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:09 JST Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     Hi @julian,
     the document is a report from @evanprodromou mid 2024, not a standard and not part of #AP. And at step 4 it reads "4. Optionally:". But it proposes a solution - thanks for bearing with me. So the #rfc7033 subject: "acct:alice@correct.example.com" would be it.

     Feels hacky, IMO the profile should be explicit about the handle just like the way round #webfinger is explicit about the actor id.

   • Embed this notice
     Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:10 JST Julian Fietkau

     in reply to

     • Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     @mro You do a WebFinger request on the AP host domain, and its response will give you a subject with the correct handle domain. See for example this account: https://toot.kif.rocks/@team and its WebFinger response: https://toot.kif.rocks/.well-known/webfinger?resource=acct:team@toot.kif.rocks This is a Mastodon split-domain setup.

     The process is described here: https://www.w3.org/community/reports/socialcg/CG-FINAL-apwf-20240608/#reverse-discovery (step 4 is important for this)

   • Embed this notice
     Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻 (mro@digitalcourage.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:11 JST Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     in reply to

     Hi @julian,
     but how do you (they)? The actor just doesn't know the handle domain. Strictly spoken not eve the local part but there seems to be consensus to use the preferredUserName. Serious question.

   • Embed this notice
     Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:12 JST Julian Fietkau

     in reply to

     • Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     @mro The actor ID should be the thing uniquely identifying an account, yes. However, in conversations we use tags/handles and not AP IDs, so we gotta construct these handles somehow. Your approach, using the AP host, is equally as idiosyncratic as using the WebFinger host. Both ways exist in the wild – Pixelfed, Misskey and Friendica do it the way you do; Mastodon, GoToSocial and Iceshrimp do it the way I do. I just prefer this way because it lets people use their domains more easily. 🙂

   • Embed this notice
     Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻 (mro@digitalcourage.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:13 JST Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     in reply to

     Hi @julian @aSeppoToTry @canary,
     hm, interesting. I doubt there is a correct answer. Because #Webfinger doesn't care about #ActivityPub and ActivityPub doesn't care about Webfinger neither specifies how to construct the handle from a profile document. It would have to be explicitly mentioned which it isn't. All other is idiosyncratic, proprietary oracles.

     According to https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ the actor id is the canonical identifier.

     With best faith #Seppo combines the preferredUserName and the profile document's domain. What else could you do?

   • Embed this notice
     Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:15 JST Julian Fietkau

     in reply to

     • Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     @mro @aSeppoToTry To test the split-domain handle on a remote actor, you can look up @canary in your platform and see what handle it shows you. I just gave it a try, see attachment.

     It currently shows the wrong hostname. That means it's using the ActivityPub ID to construct the handle, when the handle domain should be coming from the WebFinger result. See my checklist https://correct.webfinger-canary.fietkau.software/#developers or the SocialCG report https://www.w3.org/community/reports/socialcg/CG-FINAL-apwf-20240608/#reverse-discovery for details on how to fix it.

     Btw: very cool project! 👍

   • Embed this notice
     Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻 (mro@digitalcourage.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:16 JST Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     in reply to

     Hi @julian,
     I'd like to test @aSeppoToTry, how can I?

   • Embed this notice
     Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:17 JST Julian Fietkau

     in reply to

     • Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     @mro Ah yes 🙂 This project was put together to raise awareness about the feature and help platform developers test it. Broken servers will always exist, hopefully I can reduce their number by helping their developers with documentation and advocacy.

   • Embed this notice
     Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻 (mro@digitalcourage.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:18 JST Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     in reply to

     Hi @julian,
     if you can't use them, it's because of broken servers. How do you improve 3rd party servers?

   • Embed this notice
     Julian Fietkau (julian@fietkau.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:20 JST Julian Fietkau

     in reply to

     • Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     @mro Could you clarify your question? The idea of a split-domain setup is that the ActivityPub and WebFinger domains do not necessarily need to match, so that custom domains can be more easily used in fediverse handles.

   • Embed this notice
     Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻 (mro@digitalcourage.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 06:39:21 JST Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻

     in reply to

     Hi @julian @canary,
     what problem are you solving? Why should the domains have to match? And bad implementations happen. #Webfinger

     https://dev.seppo.social/2024-03-19/apchk.cgi/webfinger?redirect=self&resource=@canary@correct.webfinger-canary.fietkau.software

     P.S.: Are you aware #webfinger isn't part of #activitypub?

   • Embed this notice
     silverpill (silverpill@mitra.social)'s status on Thursday, 31-Oct-2024 07:09:25 JST silverpill

     in reply to

     • Marcus Rohrmoser 🌻
     • silverpill

     @mro Is it related to me trying to follow Seppo actor?

     I just received a Create(Note) where Note doesn't have attributedTo property (but is has actor property, which should be used only on activities afaik).