I want to believe in ActivityPub, because it has traction and seems to be doing this federation thing very well. The problem is that ActivityPub is not a protocol, it's a framework for building protocols... The spec is voluntarily vague and allows for "undefined behaviour". The issue is that you can't "implement" ActivityPub, you can implement something that respects ActivityPub but will be incompatible with another implementor's vision.
There desperately needs to be more work on writing down what platform does what, and remove all duplicates because it's not a viable path.
There desperately needs to be more work on writing down what platform does what, and remove all duplicates because it's not a viable path.
Some reading:
- https://schub.wtf/blog/2019/01/13/activitypub-final-thoughts...
- https://ehiad.org/blog/000002