item (@item@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)
Content warning:Mastodon's previews for Article-type objects still link to the original instead of rendering the content itself, but now they also include the summary along with the title; CW: long (over 3,000 characters), Fediverse meta, Fediverse-beyond-Mastodon meta, quote-post
Okay, while this is not optimal, I'd say it comes close enough to an improvement to be of importance.
Some of us know what it's like to send Article-type objects (and long-form content should always be these according to the ActivityPub spec) to Mastodon. Now, Mastodon's handling of long-form content has changed, believe it or not. Something that neither Friendica nor Hubzilla nor (streams) nor Forte could ever achieve happened under pressure from Flipboard (commercial player), Ghost (quickly growing Substack alternative that's trying to attract professional and commercial users), Automattic (the owner of WordPress) and NodeBB (fairly big bulletin-board forum player that added ActivityPub a while ago).
So much I should say in advance: No, Mastodon does not fully render Article-type objects in their full HTML-formatted glory from the title to dozens of embedded images. Mastodon's own Web interface isn't geared towards that, and neither is any Mastodon app, official or third-party.
Instead, Mastodon still handles Article-type objects by linking to the original like it used to. But it used to show only the title if there was one. If there was no title, all that Mastodon showed was a plain URL. If there was a summary, Mastodon did as Mastodon always does and has been done since 2017, regarded it as a content warning and hid the whole "post" with the title (if there was one) and the link behind it.
What Mastodon does now is finally acknowledge that some software out there actually uses the summary field as a summary field. The preview with the link to the original now also contains the summary, along with the title. If there is either, of course.
So if you're on something that can send or always sends Article-type objects (specialised blogging software, Friendica, (streams), Forte), it's well worth adding a summary to those posts that go out as Article-type objects.
(Speaking of Friendica: Dear Friendica users, please substitute any use of "summary" in this post with "abstract" if you don't know what I'm talking about.)
julian schrieb den folgenden Beitrag Sat, 09 Aug 2025 05:31:48 +0200
Re: Long-form articles
The long form content "movement" (of which I'm adjacent to but not fully involved) started up because two big implementors, Ghost and WordPress, were running into the same issues AP devs have been seeing this whole time, that Mastodon reduces articles to a title and link.The difference is devs got together and pushed for changes, and got them done. Mastodon no longer treats articles the way they used to.
Now you can send in a summary that is used, and that gets you heaps closer to a better UX than what came before.
The long form text FEP aims to provide a way to send an alternative representation for the ubiquitous microblog software on the fediverse, in the form of a note, while still maintaining the use of other objects types (e.g. article)
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #QuotePost #QuoteToot #QuoteBoost #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Mastodon #LongFormContent #ArticleType #Summary
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deimidis (@deimidis@mastodon.uy)
Estoy volviendo a instalar #ghost porque me gusta que hayan incorporado #activitypub . Además para autohostearlo están probando un contenedor de docker. El problema es que lo tienen todo preparado para un servidor que no tiene nada más corriendo ahí, y yo tengo un Apache con varios WordPress y Moodle.
Ya logré el proxy reverso de Apache para el ghost. Pero todavía tengo que lograr que funcione la parte de ActivityPub (y no soy un especialista en Apache). Espero lograrlo.
(Antes usaba el método de ghost-cli, pero me cansé de pelear con la versión de node de debian y otras yerbas)
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JBrickelt963 (@JBrickelt963@framapiaf.org)
@tired_and_wired I'm not sure I understand. Are you looking for a #video hosting service as an alternative to which application? Otherwise, for an alternative to #YouTube, there are #Peertube instances connected to the rest of the #Fediverse with #ActivityPub 😉
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daltux (@daltux@ayom.media)
Estou para postar fotos do #Flokinho no #Pixelfed @daltux@metapixl.com #Sabafoto e vi que, curiosamente, há opção para desligar comentários na publicação.
Escrevo isto aqui pois era algo sobre o qual havia reflexão, ontem, entre possíveis motivos que afastariam da nossa #Federação os chamados "influencers" nas redes antissociais privativas/centralizadas.
Enfim, mais um ponto de reflexão: 
(nem 
) não deveria ser a regra de como a Federação #ActivityPub funciona... 
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Kye (@Kye@tech.lgbt)
Did I imagine it or did Ghost's ActivityPub support have a way to migrate followers before the 6.0 release?
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mariusor (@mariusor@metalhead.club)
Added a small UI improvement to #ONI instances.
Once you have a local actor set-up with an avatar, it will also show up as the favicon of the website.
The only issue so far is that SVG images don't get rendered properly as icons. Need to investigate some more about this ...
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item (@item@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)
@julian
Now you can send in a summary that is used, and that gets you heaps closer to a better UX than what came before.
Mastodon has misused summaries for content warnings since someone from the demo scene sent in a PR for Mastodon to do so in 2017.
So this means that Mastodon stopped doing so on Article-type objects and actually regards summaries as summaries and handles them accordingly instead?
And when and with which version was this rolled out?
Or did Mastodon insist in the creation of yet another text field which has to be rolled out to all macroblogging and long-form blogging server applications? Even though ActivityPub does have a perfectly good summary field, only that Mastodon uses it for CWs?
Although I must say that the step from displaying Article-type objects as title (if there is any) + link to displaying them as title (if there is any) + summary (if there is any) + link is not that big. Mobile users who see their Web browsers popping up as a nuisance will still ignore your content.
On the other hand, this does not only appease Eugen Rochko, the Lord and Creator of the Fediverse and all of its technology (according to the Gospel of Mastodon, anyway), but also those Mastodonians who demand there must not be any posts with over 500 characters in the Fediverse, and who immediately block everyone who exceeds 500 characters even only once even on the federated timeline.
Besides, there is still "long-form", multiple-paragraph content going out as Note-type objects. In general, I guess that comments always go out as Note-type objects.
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CW #CWs #CWMeta #ContentWarning #ContentWarnings #ContentWarningMeta #Summary #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Mastodon #ArticleType #LongFormContent
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fedizen (@fedizen@mastodon.social)
»Big Updates Are Coming to Loops« https://wedistribute.org/2025/08/big-updates-are-coming-to-loops/?Fedizen.EU #Fedizen #Fediverse #ActivityPub #News
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w (@w@makertube.net)
Fedinspect GTK demo
https://makertube.net/w/8AJV75EyQY9Sh6yHPSYfkj
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objects (@objects@mitra.social)
Week in Fediverse 2025-08-08
Servers
- PieFed v1.1
- Ghost v6.0
- Mastodon v4.4.3
- Hubzilla v10.4.2
- Hollo v0.6.6
- Ktistec v2.4.8
- NeoDB v0.11.8.1
- Wafrn v2025.08.0
- NodeBB v4.4.6
- kmyblue v19.4
- Lemmy Development Update July 2025
- Trunk & Tidbits, July 2025 (Mastodon)
- Bridging the gap (ActivityPub for WordPress)
- jekyll-activitypub: A plugin for Jekyll to generate an ActivityPub feed
Clients
- Tuba v0.10.0
- Photon v2.0.1
- Aria v1.3.5
Tools and Plugins
- Fediverse Redirect v1.15.0
- fedidevs.com: Discover amazing developers across the fediverse
For developers
- APx v0.15.0
- Fedify v1.8.1
- Botkit v0.2.2
- Fedialgo v1.0.4
Articles
- Reflections on the social web
- Navigating the UK Online Safety Act
- Mastodon Defence Command: The Scam Wave
- IWF Offers Fediverse a Way to Block CSAM
- Fediverse Report – #128
-----
#WeekInFediverse #Fediverse #ActivityPub
Previous edition: https://mitra.social/objects/0198674a-03a6-4e5c-39fc-b934f3ee7708
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item (@item@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)
@silverpill
The dataset doesn't include some other popular platforms like Friendica, but I am sure they also display long form content just fine.
Friendica and its descendants from the same creator, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, can produce long-form content just fine. With just about all bells and whistles from a title plus six levels of headlines to an unlimited number of images embedded within the text.
So yes, they can display it as well. However, outside of their own communities, hardly anyone knows what they're capable of. Thus, Fediverse developers often try to solve problems that aren't even really there because they were solved before they became problems.
Mastodon's lack of support for articles, linking to the originals instead, is not really a lack. It's a deliberate design decision from around 2017 or so.
See, the first ActivityPub implementation was on Hubzilla. That was in July, 2017. And Hubzilla implemented ActivityPub by the book.
Mastodon followed two months later. But Mastodon has always had its own "interpretation" of ActivityPub that was limited by Mastodon's own intentional design limitations in order to remain Twitter-like, purist, minimalist, old-school, original-gangsta microblogging with as few features that Twitter didn't have as possible.
This is also why Mastodon has a HTML "sanitiser" built in. Up until the release of Mastodon 4.0 in October, 2022, that "sanitiser" reduced any and all incoming HTML to plain text. And it did so for all object types, including the Article-type objects which Hubzilla sent. After all, Hubzilla can act as a fully-fledged long-form blogging platform.
However, the ActivityPub spec defines Article-type objects as formatted long-form content. Still, Mastodon defaced Hubzilla's Article-type objects by reducing them to plain text.
So Mike Macgirvin got into contact with Eugen Rochko and told him to adhere to the spec and deactivate Mastodon's "sanitiser" and make it support full HTML rendering for Article-type objects.
And Eugen Rochko said that bold type and italics and bullet-point lists and images in the middle of the content have nothing to do with old-school microblogging, so they have no place on Mastodon, so he won't implement them.
This head-butting went back and forth. Eventually, Eugen presented a "solution". And that was not to render Article-type objects at all anymore. Instead, Mastodon links to them and adds their title above if they have one.
This was only done to shut Mike up so he'd stop complaining about Mastodon defacing Hubzilla posts and breaking the spec by doing so. From Mike's perspective, however, what Eugen did was flip Hubzilla the bird by completely refusing to show actual Hubzilla content and practically lock out a competitor.
Mike's reaction was to break the spec himself and switch Hubzilla from sending Article-type objects to sending Note-type objects, regardless of Mastodon still defacing them.
With the exception of a very short period after the release of Hubzilla 9.0 when Mario Vavti and Harald Eilertsend learned the hard way that Mastodon still links to Article-type objects, Hubzilla has only sent its posts as Note-type objects ever since.
Mike's other creations have different ways of handling object types.
Friendica, by default, sends posts with titles as Article-type objects and posts without titles as well as comments as Note-type objects. This can be deactivated so that Friendica only sends Note-type objects.
CC: @Laurens Hof
#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #ActivityPub #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #ArticleType #NoteType #LongFormContent
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objects (@objects@alceawis.com)
A brutally-simple proxy for #ActivityPub that lets you circumvent instance blocks by masquerading as another domain name. All it does is replace all hostnames in the text proxied through, and for signed POST requests, it swaps the public keys and re-signs the requests
#proxy
https://gitea.moe/lamp/activitypub-proxy
Wonder what @Gargron has to say about thi-
Actually I don't.
#repost •acws #acws
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