Write.as Development @writeas_dev@abunchtell.com

Now I'm working on making blogs on custom domains discoverable in the fediverse , then adding a setting for all users to enable #federation.

Turns out boosting does work, just not on #writingexchange for certain accounts of mine I was testing with and broke on that instance (like @matt@write.as).

Only major bug I've found was with following multiple Write.as blogs -- the second or greater blog you followed didn't save in our database correctly.

That's fixed now, and I've reconstructed the missed follows via the server logs, so you should still be subscribed. Still, please double-check the blogs you're following, and if you see an hourglass icon where the follow button normally is, do the ol' unfollow/follow-again to get things right.

Now you can see how many #ActivityPub followers your blog has on your Stats page (though we don't divulge who individuals are -- again, goal is #privacy for readers, too)

@geekgonecrazy 👍 Yep, unfortunately that's how it works. But I'm making a new post tomorrow, so everyone should see the post then.

Noticing some failed follow attempts from... Hubzilla? I believe. Going to see what I can do about supporting these other platforms next.

An account like @blog@write.as should work though...

Just kidding, I just had the IDs still pointed to the dev server, so @matt@write.as didn't work on certain instances (unfortunately including mastodon.social). Going to try deleting the account on dev and maybe that'll cause it to refresh the account?

Changes deployed, all looks good except follows are not being received. Looking into this now...

Soo not really sure if I need to do anything extra to get Announces (boosts) to work at this point. They do show up on my profile here when I boost, but don't appear to show up on my followers' timelines.

Otherwise everything seems solid. One last test and then I'll deploy the changes.

The easiest way to slowly roll this out will be to only have it available to users with Public blogs (a relatively small group of people). After a couple days of that, anyone will be able to enable federation.

Yep, that worked. Now I can search for accounts, but following doesn't work -- probably need to debug what headers Pleroma is sending. Will fix that in another iteration.

Was wondering why #Pleroma wasn't working (i.e. finding Write.as accounts) -- looks like it doesn't include acct: in the webfinger request. Going to see if removing the requirement for that scheme on our end fixes it.

Once boosting is in there, things will be good enough to go.

I think I'm going to roll out federation slowly so I can catch any catastrophic issues early and before they affect more people.

I think I know how to implement boosting... doing that next.

Had forgotten to support deletion of federated posts -- that's in there now.

Also on the topic of #privacy, I'm building it so that readers get privacy by default, too.

Individual follows, boosts, and favorites are not shown to the author. In the future, if anything, authors will see a sum of each of these in their normal blog stats (e.g. "You have 46 followers in the fediverse")

Also because of this fact, federation will be opt-in.

Public blogs will automatically be discoverable via #webfinger and have their outboxes accessible. And since this is a paid feature and I want federation to be free, I'll add an option to let free users enable federation on their Unlisted blogs.

#ActivityPub implementation really is bare-bones, but more right now is unnecessary. There are many unanswered questions, especially around privacy.

For example, what happens when a user changes their blog from Public to Private or Password-protected? The existence of an account in the fediverse gives away information we don't otherwise divulge on Write.as.

Okay, going to try to kick this federation out the door tomorrow.

The robustness I wanted isn't worth setting things back as much as it's going to. Essentially, it'll mean some statuses won't be retried if an instance isn't available to receive them. But all data will be there, messages will be verified, etc.