from julian@community.nodebb.org to swicg-threadiverse-wg@community.nodebb.org on 06 Jun 20:17
https://community.nodebb.org/post/99944
This is a spin-off discussion from today's ForumWG meeting
During today's ForumWG meeting an interesting side discussion cropped up regarding what constitutes an Actor, and whether other object types could be considered Actor-like.
ActivityStreams defines an Actor as being one of five types:
- Application
- Group
- Organization
- Person
- Service
However, a looser definition of an Actor could simply be "if the resolved object contains an inbox and an outbox".
Such a definition opens up the possibility of having lots of things be followable, perhaps without direct user interaction. This was one possibility outlined by @cpmoser@mastodon.social
@trwnh@mastodon.social also mentioned that Mastodon does not consider an object as being an actor unless it is one of those five types.
@dmitri@social.coop noted that this was a topic brought up at a previous AP issue triage meeting. Could you provide a summary?
Also cc @evan@cosocial.ca for his thoughts.
threaded - newest
@julian I would enjoy being able to follow different things like entire instances or such...🤔
@julian From ActivityPub spec:
>ActivityPub actors are generally one of the ActivityStreams Actor Types, but they don't have to be.
The looser definition is correct.
@silverpill @julian
Though they are different beasts I continue to be intrigued by alignments in codebase and architecture of actor model with the actor-based nature of AP.
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/thoughts-on-actor-model-versus-fediverse/3572
@silverpill @julian
Though they are different beasts I continue to be intrigued by alignments in codebase and architecture of actor model with the actor-based nature of AP. Posted some musings before, inspired by @hrefna
https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/thoughts-on-actor-model-versus-fediverse/3572
@smallcircles
To answer the question: The standard that I have been told is that "anything can be an actor without declaring it, it just needs an inbox and outbox."
I think this is a terrible pattern, personally, but that's the standard.
@silverpill @julian
@julian @cpmoser @trwnh @dmitri absolutely. The ActivityPub spec says anything can be an actor. It just has to have the required properties.
@julian @cpmoser @trwnh @dmitri HOWEVER, Mastodon currently only allows the big five. There should probably be a ticket for that somewhere.
@evan @julian @cpmoser @dmitri
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/22322
What would work for Mastodon is to multi-type the actor as one of the five types, so you could do [Group, Collection] or [Service, Collection] but not just [Collection]
But yeah, I think the restriction should be dropped.
@julian @cpmoser @trwnh @dmitri also, sorry I missed the call!