Is there or should there be a distinction between the original and the mirrors? We have a conversation owner at the thread level (which is either the forum, subforum, forum category, or person who created the top level post, depending on the software). They determine the official moderated version of the thread since they can remove comments (although mirrors don't have to honor that). If we show that conversation on another server, technically that is a mirror of that thread, especially if you are throwing it in a category or displaying it under a hashtag. Should we be indicating that a particular thread was started on a particular forum (or category within a forum)? Should we be honoring the moderated version of the conversation from the original thread? The concept of mirroring threads across platforms is great for participation and censorship resistance, but it does make it unclear about who owns the thread from a moderation perspective.

Hey rimu@piefed.social thanks for responding (and sorry for the late reply!) I am not married to the Announce([Article|Note|Page]) approach, so I am definitely open to Create([Article|Note|Page]) with a back-reference. I think I went the former direction because there is a known fallback mechanism — the Announce is treated as a share/boost/repost as normal. However, sending the Create also is fine I think. However, do we need a backreference? In my limited research, it seems that Piefed, et al. picks the first Group actor and associates the post with that community. If I sent over a Create(Article) with two Group actors addressed, could Piefed associate the post with the first, and initiate a cross-post with the remaining Group actors? Secondly, is how to handle sync. 1b12 relies on communities having reciprocal followers in order for two-way synchronization to be established. On my end since I know it is cross-posted I will now send 1b12 activities to cross-posted communities, but can Piefed, et al. send 1b12 activities back as well, in the absence of followers? cc andrew_s@piefed.social nutomic@lemmy.ml melroy@kbin.melroy.org bentigorlich@gehirneimer.de

@trwnh@mastodon.social sure, makes sense. That to/cc already exist in the wild as arrays means one less thing to worry about with multiple cross posts.