Advanced Support for Videos & Rich Media in ActivityPub

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 17:27:22 -0600

scott@codejournal.dev

I just thought of something interesting thanks to a conversation with @infinite love ⴳ about different platforms using ActivityPub differently. We have @PeerTube and @loops that serve videos, but other platforms don't necessarily support videos natively (other than embedded within a note or article).

What if we took a play out of the email playbook? Email can send both the plain text and the HTML version together. If an email client supports HTML, it displays that version. If it does not support HTML, it displays the text version.

We could do something similar with ActivityPub with video and other rich media formats. We send a note or article in a format that platforms such as Mastodon understand. We also send rich media information as well. Platforms that support native videos could handle the display of the video differently than platforms that do not. Same concept can apply to threaded conversations and photos.

cc @Evan Prodromou @julian @dansup

Mon, 25 Nov 2024 13:13:16 -0600

silverpill

silverpill@mitra.social

@scott Some Fediverse services already operate in this way.

"plain text version": attributedTo and content properties
"HTML version": all other properties

Mon, 02 Dec 2024 18:16:15 -0600

Scott's Code Journal

scott@codejournal.dev

@silverpill I am working on a fediverse-enabled project management system. I am still trying to figure out how I want to federate it. ActivityPub, Nomad protocol, or an API. If I do it over Nomad or ActivityPub, I would have to do the two versions method, since most platforms won't support tasks. But I could still allow them to comment on tasks or manipulate it via hashtags, if they have permission to do so.

The first version is going to use federated single sign on so that fediverse-users who have OpenWebAuth can sign in with their existing identity. But the end goal is to federate it.