Topic removal from a category/community

[rimu@piefed.social]

Looks like for Mastodon we just do a bare Delete.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

rimu@piefed.social got it, thanks. How do you reconcile the Delete coming from outside your domain? I would figure Mastodon would drop those Deletes.

Edit: that was confusing wording... I mean — how do you sign a Delete for an object that doesn't belong to your instance?

[rimu@piefed.social]

We only federate the deletion if it is in one of our local communities.

The activity is signed by the person who did it, so if Mastodon detects that the person deleting is not the author and doesn't know how to find out if someone is a moderator or not, that's their problem.

Mastodon has been dropping the ball on groups support for years so I didn't even bother to find out if they handle it well - I bet they don't.

[silverpill@mitra.social]

@rimu

so if Mastodon detects that the person deleting is not the author and doesn’t know how to find out if someone is a moderator or not, that’s their problem.

It is not their problem. If your actor Deletes an object that is owned by a different server, then your implementation of ActivityPub standard is incorrect:

ActivityPub

The ActivityPub protocol is a decentralized social networking protocol based upon the [ActivityStreams] 2.0 data format. It provides a client to server API for creating, updating and deleting content, as well as a federated server to server API for delivering notifications and content.

(www.w3.org)

The side effect of receiving this is that (assuming the object is owned by the sending actor / server) the server receiving the delete activity SHOULD remove its representation of the object with the same id

@julian

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

I think Announce(Delete(Object)) skirts around that, though. Maybe not if you're being technical about it, but the shape of the activity is different enough to mean something else in 1b12-land:

• A community/group-actor announced a Delete
• The object may or may not belong to the same domain as the community/group-actor or Delete actor
• Verify that the community/group-actor and Delete actor are same-origin (might not need this if cross-instance moderation is a thing)
• Verify that the Delete actor is a moderator of the community/group-actor as per 1b12

[silverpill@mitra.social]

@julian @rimu No, when one object is embedded in another, it doesn't change its behavior. A Delete activity wrapped in Announce doesn't mean something else, it exists as an independent object that can be fetched by its id.

The invalid Delete activity worked for Lemmy only because they didn't care about federation with non-forum software. But it can't work in the multi-app network without ugly hacks like checking remote server's NodeInfo.

[julian@activitypub.space]

Perhaps resolvable contexts can be a solution for this then.

I have been implementing topic deletion logic in NodeBB, and while I can send out Announce(Delete(Object)) where Object is the root-level post, it occasionally would send out Deletes where the sender is not the owner of the object. This is the 1b12-speaking logic.

In 7888-speaking logic, Object would be the local context collection. A receiver would be able to resolve the context URL to the appropriate local representation and delete it as needed. This would also satisfy the "sender needs to own the object" constraint.

[julian@activitypub.space]

Hey rimu@piefed.social, I sent over this activity but I wasn't able to make crust delete that representation.

{
  "id": "https://bb.devnull.land/post/2#activity/announce/delete/1759851369554",
  "type": "Announce",
  "actor": "https://bb.devnull.land/category/2",
  "to": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
  ],
  "cc": [
    "https://bb.devnull.land/category/2/followers"
  ],
  "object": {
    "id": "https://bb.devnull.land/topic/2#activity/delete/1759851369554",
    "type": "Delete",
    "actor": "https://bb.devnull.land/uid/1",
    "to": [
      "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
    ],
    "cc": [
      "https://bb.devnull.land/category/2/followers"
    ],
    "origin": "https://bb.devnull.land/category/2",
    "object": "https://bb.devnull.land/post/2"
  }
}

Am I missing something?

[silverpill@mitra.social]

@julian

Delete(Context)? This is very unusual because other collections are not created or deleted, they are server-generated views.

I assume this problem arises when you create a topic for a remote post? Perhaps deletion of such topics shouldn't be federated?

Or you can generate

Announce(Remove(object: root, target: Context))

It would be valid from the authorization point of view.

[julian@community.nodebb.org]

Well, the whole idea behind them being resolvable is so that when they are acted upon (by the context owner), they can be queried.

For example if I receive a Delete(Context), I'll resolve it to find the root level post, and from there find my local representation, and delete it, assuming the actor was allowed to delete it.

They're only server generated views per current usage... but why do they have to be constrained to that usage?

[silverpill@mitra.social]

@julian Client generated collections are impractical. Collections are dynamic by nature, they can be paginated, filtered.
That's why there is no Create(Collection), Update(Collection) and Delete(Collection).

[julian@activitypub.space]

rimu@piefed.social I think it might have been ignored because I don't serve a moderator collection as per 1b12.

I'll try to get that set up this week and test again

[rimu@piefed.social]

Try doing a bare delete (no announce wrapper), with the actor being the moderator who deleted the post.

Federation

(join-lemmy.org)

[julian@activitypub.space]

Thanks Rimu. Will give this a shot.

Upon reflection, since Deletes aren't wrapped in an Announce, then I would recommend that any Move activity we use not be wrapped in Announce either.

[rimu@piefed.social]

Yes I'm fine with that. It doesn't make much difference in the end.