ActivityPub is an

open Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999 * ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001 * ''Open'' (YF ...

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

protocol Protocol may refer to: Sociology and politics * Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states * Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state * Etiquette, a code of personal behavior Science and technolog ...

based on

Pump.io Pump.io (pronounced "pump eye-oh") is a general-purpose activity streams engine that can be used as a federated social networking protocol which "does most of what people really want from a social network". Started by Evan Prodromou, it is a fo ...

ActivityPump Pump.io (pronounced "pump eye-oh") is a general-purpose activity streams engine that can be used as a federated social networking protocol which "does most of what people really want from a social network". Started by Evan Prodromou, it is a fo ...

protocol. It provides a client/server

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

for creating, updating, and deleting content, as well as a federated server-to-server

for delivering notifications and content.

Project status

ActivityPub is a standard for the Internet in the Social Web Networking Group of the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

(W3C). The standard was co-authored by

Evan Prodromou Evan S. Prodromou (born 14 October 1968) is a software developer and open source advocate. His major contributions have been Wikitravel (with Michele Ann Jenkins), Identi.ca, and StatusNet. In 2015, he launched Fuzzy.ai, an artificial intell ...

, creator of StatusNet (now known as GNU social). At an earlier stage, the name of the protocol was "ActivityPump", but it was felt that ActivityPub better indicated the cross-publishing purpose of the protocol. It learned from the experiences with the older standard called

OStatus OStatus is an open standard for federated microblogging, allowing users on one website to send and receive status updates with users on another website. The standard describes how a suite of open protocols, including Atom, Activity Streams, Web ...

. It is the most widely supported standard (by some margin) in the

Fediverse The fediverse (a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe") is an ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web publishing (i.e. social networking, microblogging, blogging, or websites) and file hosting, but which, wh ...

. In January 2018, the

(W3C) published the ActivityPub standard as a Recommendation. The W3C Social Community Group organizes a yearly free conference called ''ActivityPub Conf'' about the future of ActivityPub. Former

Diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...

community manager Sean Tilley wrote an article that suggests ActivityPub protocols may eventually provide a way to federate Internet platforms.

Notable implementations

Federated (server-to-server) protocol

Friendica Friendica (formerly Friendika, originally Mistpark) is a free and open-source software distributed social network. It forms one part of the Fediverse, an interconnected and decentralized network of independently operated servers. Features Friendi ...

, a piece of social networking software, implemented ActivityPub in version 2019.01. *

Libervia Libervia (formerly Salut à Toi or SàT) is a multifunctional communications application and decentralized social network published under the AGPL-3.0-or-later license. Initially made for instant messaging and chat, Libervia developed additional ...

(in beta ) *

Mastodon A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of th ...

, a piece of social networking software, implemented ActivityPub in version 1.6, released on 10 September 2017. It is intended that ActivityPub offers more security for private messages than the previous

protocol does. * Micro.blog, a

blogging A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

microblogging Microblogging is a form of social network that permits only short posts. They "allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links",. Retrieved June 5, 2014 which may be the major reason for ...

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...

hosting, and photoblogging social network, added support for ActivityPub in 2018. Deeper integration with the

has continued a
Micro.blog
since and with effect from October 2022 ActivityPub has been enabled by default for new users. Micro.blog's creator
Manton Reece
has a chapter in his book, Indie Microblogging, discussing ActivityPub. *

Nextcloud Nextcloud is a suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services. Nextcloud provides functionally similar to Dropbox, Office 365 or Google Drive when used with integrated office suite solutions Collabora Online or Onl ...

, a federated service for file hosting. *

PeerTube PeerTube is a free and open-source, decentralized, ActivityPub federated video platform powered by WebTorrent, that uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers when viewing videos. Started in 2017 by a programmer known a ...

, a federated service for video streaming. *

Pixelfed Pixelfed is a free and open-source image sharing social network service. It is decentralized, therefore user data is not stored on a central server, unlike other platforms. Pixelfed uses the ActivityPub protocol which allows users to interact ...

, a piece of social networking software which resembles Instagram, is a software service implementing ActivityPub. *

Pleroma Pleroma ( grc-koi, πλήρωμα, literally "fullness") generally refers to the totality of divine powers. It is used in Christian theological contexts, especially in Gnosticism. The term also appears in the Epistle to the Colossians, which is t ...

, a lightweight fediverse server that implements ActivityPub as of its first release. * In November 2022,

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

announced that they will be adding support.

References

{{W3C standards 2018 introductions Distributed computing Microblogging software Social software Fediverse Web applications

Project status

Notable implementations

Federated (server-to-server) protocol

See also

References