Notices tagged with webmention

Tantek ()'s status on Monday, 13-Jan-2025 00:23:00 EST

Tantek

🎉 Eight years ago today, the #IndieWeb Webmention protocol was published as a W3C REC https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/

As a social web building block, #Webmention was designed to work with various other building blocks. Small pieces, loosely joined. Every year developers find new ways to work with Webmention, and new subtleties when combined with other building blocks.

The primary uses of Webmention, peer-to-peer comments, likes, and other responses across web sites, has long presented an interesting challenge with the incorporation and display of external content originally from one site (the Webmention sender), on another site (the Webmention receiver).

There are multiple considerations to keep in mind when displaying such external content.

Two examples of external content are images (e.g. people’s icons or profile images from the author of a comment) and text (e.g. people’s names or the text of their comments).

For external images, rather than displaying them in full fidelity, you may want to compress them into a smaller resolution for how your site displays the profile images of comment authors.

If you accept Webmentions from arbitrary sources, there’s no telling what might show up in author images. You may want to pixelate images from unknown or novel sources into say 3x3 pixel grids of color (or grayscale) averages to make them uniquely identifiable while blurring any undesirable graphics beyond recognition.

For external text, one thing we discovered in recent IndieWeb chat¹ is that someone’s comment (or in this case their name) can contain Unicode directional formatting characters, e.g. for displaying an Arabic or Hebrew name right-to-left. Text with such formatting characters can errantly impact the direction of adjacent text adjacent.

Fortunately there is a CSS property, 'unicode-bidi', that can be used to isolate such external text. Thus when you embed text that was parsed from a received Webmention, possibly with formatting characters, you have to wrap it in an HTML element (a span will do if you have not already wrapped it) with that CSS property. E.g.:

<span style="unicode-bidi: isolate;">parsed text here</span>

Though even better would be use of a generic HTML class name indicating the semantic:

<span class="external-text">parsed text here</span>

and then a CSS rule in your style sheet to add that property (and any others you want for external text)

.external-text { unicode-bidi: isolate; }

This is post 7 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #socialWeb #openSocialWeb

← https://tantek.com/2025/004/t1/micro-one-onramp-open-social-web
→ 🔮

Glossary

HTML class name
https://tantek.com/2012/353/b1/why-html-classes-css-class-selectors
IndieWeb chat
https://indieweb.org/discuss
pixelate
https://indieweb.org/pixelated
small pieces, loosely joined
https://www.smallpieces.com/
Unicode directional formatting characters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidirectional_text#Explicit_formatting
unicode-bidi CSS property
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/unicode-bidi

References

¹ https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2025-01-05#t1736092889120900

Tantek ()'s status on Saturday, 04-Jan-2025 23:48:00 EST

Tantek

The team @micro.blog have done it again.

They soft-launched https://micro.one yesterday¹.

This may be the most accessible onramp to the open social web ever.

Cost: $1 a month. Yes you read correctly.

This is the simplest and cheapest (where you are the customer, not the product) way to own your identity and content online².

Stop posting in someone else’s garage³.

Time to export your Twitter, and migrate your Mastodon handle to your own home on the web.

Of course you can bring your own domain name. Additionally:
* blog posts, naturally, both articles and microblogging notes
* photos
* podcasting
* custom themes
* web-clients and native mobile posting clients
* WordPress, Tumblr, Mastodon, Medium import
More details (and alternatives) at https://micro.one/about/pricing

And yes, it interoperates with the open #socialWeb, including:
* #ActivityPub support, #Mastodon and #fediverse compatibility
* #IndieAuth to sign-in to third-party apps
* #microformats support in all built-in themes
* #Webmention for sending and receiving replies across websites
* #Micropub standard posting API, supporting dozens of clients
* #Microsub standard timeline API, supporting social readers
More #indieweb support details at https://micro.one/about/indieweb

Did I mention the the superb micro.blog (and micro.one) Community Guidelines?
* https://help.micro.blog/t/community-guidelines/39

Well done @manton.org and team.

This is post 6 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts #ownYourIdentity #ownYourData #openSocialWeb

← https://tantek.com/2025/003/t1/lastfm-year-in-review-playback24
→ 🔮

Glossary

IndieAuth
https://indieweb.org/IndieAuth
microformats
https://microformats.org/wiki/microformats
Micropub
https://indieweb.org/Micropub
Microsub
https://indieweb.org/Microsub
Webmention
https://indieweb.org/Webmention

¹ https://www.manton.org/2025/01/03/microone-was-effectively-a-softlaunch.html
² https://tantek.com/2025/001/t1/15-years-notes-my-site-first
³ https://tantek.com/2023/022/t2/own-your-notes-domain-migration

Tantek ()'s status on Sunday, 13-Oct-2024 16:37:00 EDT

Tantek

No I did not block you on the #fediverse / #Mastodon / #Misskey etc.

If you were following me @tantek.com on your client/server/instance of choice but noticed you were no longer doing so, that was due to a recent software bug in my fediverse provider which accidentally caused everyone’s #ActivityPub servers to unfollow me (bug details below).

No it’s absolutely not your fault, you did nothing wrong.

We need a variant of Hanlon’s Razor¹ like:

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by a software bug.”

Take another look at my posts if you want (directly on @tantek.com or try searching for that on your instance) and if you like what you see or find them otherwise informative and useful, feel free to refollow. If not, no worries!

Also no worries if you ever unfollow/refollow for any reason. I mean that.

I always assume people know best how to manage their online reader/reading experiences, everyone’s priorities and likes/dislikes change over time, and encourage everyone to make choices that are best for their mental health and overall joy online.

Bug details:

This was due to a #BridgyFed bug² that deleted my profile (“ActivityPub actor”) from (nearly?) all instances, making everyone’s accounts automatically unfollow me, as well as remove any of my posts from your likes and reposts (boosts) collections. It also removed my posts from any of your replies to my posts, leaving your replies dangling without reply-contexts. Apologies!

The bug was introduced accidentally as part of another fix about a month ago³, and was triggered within the following week⁴.

Anyone following me before ~2024-09-22 was no longer following me. A few folks have noticed and refollowed. Any likes or reposts of my posts before that date were also undone (removed).

Ryan (@snarfed.org) has been really good about giving folks a heads-up, and apologizing, and quickly doing what he can to fix things.

Bugs happen, yes even in production code, so please do not post/send any hate.

I’d rather be one of the folks helping with improving BridgyFed, and temporary setbacks like this are part of being an early / eager #IndieWeb adopter.

This bug has also revealed some potential weaknesses in other ActivityPub implementations. E.g. deleting an “actor” should be undoable, and undoing a delete should reconnect everything, from follows to likes & reposts collections, to reply-contexts. Perhaps the ActivityPub specification could be updated with such guidance (if it hasn’t been already, I need to double-check).

To be clear, I’m still a big supporter of #BridgyFed, #ActivityPub, #Webmention, and everyone who chooses to implement these and other #IndieWeb related and adjacent protocols as best fits their products and services.

All of these are a part of our broader open #socialWeb, and making all these #openStandards work well together (including handling edge-cases and mistakes!) is essential for providing #socialMedia alternatives that put users first.

References:

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
² https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1379
³ https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/commit/4df76d0db7b87cabbd714039546c05b3221169be
⁴ https://chat.indieweb.org/dev/2024-09-22#t1727028174623700

This is post 26 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

← https://tantek.com/2024/285/t1/io-domain-suggested-steps
→ 🔮

Tantek ()'s status on Tuesday, 23-Jan-2024 20:20:00 EST

Tantek

@snarfed.org posted a great overview of thoughtful (and sometimes heated) discussions across blogs and the #fediverse about how freely should “public” posts & comments on the web flow across sites:

“Moderate people, not code” (https://snarfed.org/2024-01-21_moderate-people-not-code)

If you are designing or creating any kind of publishing or social features on the web, this post is for you.

It touches on topics ranging from #contextCollapse to #federation to #moderation and everything in between.

Does your choice of publishing tool set expectations about where your content might propagate, or whether it will be indexed by search engines? Should it?

Do the limitations of your server (e.g. js;dr) imply limitations of where your posts go, or whether they can be searched or archived? Should they?

When you post something publicly, are you truly posting it for a global audience for all time, or only for one or a few more limited #publics for an ephemerality?

When you reply to a post, do you expect your reply to only be visible in the context you posted it, or do you expect it to travel alongside that post to anywhere it might propagate to?

On the #IndieWeb, especially for public posts, some of these questions have easier and more obvious answers, because the intent of nearly all public IndieWeb posts is to interact across the web with other posts and sites, typically via the #Webmention protocol. However there are still questions.

Are the expectations for a blog and blogging different from a social media site, whether a silo or an instance on a network?

Is a personal website with posts still just a blog, or does it become something new when you start posting responses from your site, or receiving (e.g. via Webmention) and displaying responses from across the web to your posts on your site? Or is it now a “social website”?

If you have a social website, what is your responsibility for keeping it, well, social? Do you moderate Webmentions by default? Do you use the Vouch extension for some automatic moderation?

Are #POSSE & #backfeed different from federation or are they the same thing from a user-perspective, with merely different names hinting at different implementations?

Do you allow anyone from any site to respond or react to your posts? Or do you treat your social website like your home, and follow what I like to call a "house party protocol", only letting in those you know, and perhaps allowing them to bring a +1 or 2?

I have many more questions. Each of these deserves thoughtful discussions, documentation of what different tools & services do today that we can try out, learn from, and use to make considered decisions when creating new things to post on and across websites.

This is post 4 of #100PostsOfIndieWeb. #100Posts

← https://tantek.com/2024/022/t1/indiewebcamp-brighton-planned
→ 🔮

Post glossary:

backfeed
https://indieweb.org/backfeed

blog
https://indieweb.org/blog

blogging
https://indieweb.org/blogging

comments
https://indieweb.org/comments

context collapse
https://indieweb.org/context_collapse

ephemerality
https://indieweb.org/ephemerality

js;dr
https://indieweb.org/js;dr

moderation
https://indieweb.org/moderation

POSSE
https://indieweb.org/POSSE

posts
https://indieweb.org/posts

publics
https://indieweb.org/publics

reply
https://indieweb.org/reply

Vouch
https://indieweb.org/Vouch

Webmention
https://indieweb.org/Webmention

Tantek ()'s status on Friday, 27-Oct-2023 19:23:00 EDT

Tantek

Inspiring mix of perspective expanding and personal talks at border:none (https://border-none.net/ @border_none) the past two days. Thanks speakers, volunteers, and especially organizers @marcthiele.com (@marcthiele@mastodon.social @marcthiele) and @jkphl.is (@jkphl@mastodon.social @jkphl).

Looking forward to the next two days at #IndieWebCamp Nürnberg @tollwerk.de (@tollwerk@mastodon.social @tollwerk) of personal site demos, brainstorming sessions, and making, creating, & hacking things from UX to protocols to improve & interconnect our websites, with each other ( #Webmention ), #fediverse ( #BridgyFed & #ActivityPub ), and others ( #POSSE #backfeed ).

Still a few spots if you’re in town or can hop on a train and join us Saturday & Sunday!

🎟 Tickets: https://ti.to/beyondtellerrand/bordernone-2023/with/kqyaidtq92k
🗓 Event: https://events.indieweb.org/2023/10/indiewebcamp-nuremberg-2023-DmXe4dYdfagc
ℹ️ More info: https://indieweb.org/2023/Nuremberg

#bordernone #bono23 #IndieWeb

Tantek ()'s status on Monday, 23-Oct-2023 20:30:00 EDT

Tantek

Great article on #POSSE by David Pierce (@davidpierce@mastodon.social @pierce) @Verge:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/23/23928550/posse-posting-activitypub-standard-twitter-tumblr-mastodon

Several key points of POSSE explained in the article:

First, post on your own site:

“In a POSSE world, everybody owns a domain name, and everybody has a blog. (… a place on the internet where you post your stuff and others consume it.)”

Second, syndicate elsewhere, appropriately for each destination:

“Then, your long blog post might be broken into chunks and posted as a thread on X and Mastodon and Threads. The whole thing might go to your Medium page and your Tumblr and your LinkedIn profile, too. If you post a photo, it might go straight to Instagram, and a vertical video would whoosh straight to TikTok, Reels, and Shorts. Your post appears natively on all of those platforms,”

You can use Bridgy Publish (https://brid.gy/) to POSSE to many destinations, and Bridgy Fed (https://fed.brid.gy/) to #federate to #Mastodon and other #fediverse destinations, directly from your site instead of posting a copy on yet another account on yet another server.

Third, and this is a key piece that distinguishes proper POSSE setups, with original post perma(short)links back to your posts on your domain:

“typically with some kind of link back to your blog.”

All copies link to (your) home.

"And your blog becomes the hub for everything, your main home on the internet."

You have power over your domain (name), not outside silos.

David embedded a screenshot of one of my posts, a reply post:

in which I posted a reply *on my own site*¹ to @Zeldman.com’s tweet (itself a reply to a POSSE copy of one of my posts), and POSSEd my reply to Twitter so it would thread with his reply.

This illustrates another important detail of a proper POSSE setup:

Fourth, post *replies* and other responses from your own site, whether to other #IndieWeb sites, or to others’s silo posts (tweets etc.).

Own your data means owning your replies as well.

David also noted several challenges and good questions about POSSE. Some of these have answers & established practices, others are areas of exploration. E.g.

"The first is the social side of social media: what do you do with all the likes, replies, comments, and everything else that comes with your posts?"

The short answer is #backfeed: https://indieweb.org/backfeed

Backfeed is a concept I first wrote about as “reverse syndication”².

As you syndicate your posts out to #socialMedia silos, you reverse syndicate any responses there back to your original post.

Your site can do this with a service like #Bridgy, which uses the #Webmention standard to forward such silo responses back to your site, and #BridgyFed which does same for responses from Mastodon to your #federated posts.

David asked many other questions, which are deserving of their own posts to help answer, so I’ll leave you with just one more:

"The most immediate question, though, is simply how to build a POSSE system that works."

The short answer is: just start³.

Even if you have to do it manually (until it hurts), even if you have to edit your posts on a static GitHub site (behind your domain name of course), and then copy & paste to your silo(s) of choice, just start.

By practicing POSSE, even manually, you will learn what aspects of POSSE & backfeed matter the most to you, what aspects actually involve reaching & responding to friends and others you care about.

By doing so you will naturally focus on setting up & making what you need, and you too can join the future of web publishing, today.

Questions? Join us in the chat: https://chat.indieweb.org/ (also on Discord, IRC, and Slack⁴)

This is day 46 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days

← Day 45: https://tantek.com/2023/289/t1/bridgyfed-webmention-like-fediverse
→ 🔮

Post glossary:

backfeed / reverse syndication
https://indieweb.org/backfeed
Bridgy
https://brid.gy/
make what you need
https://indieweb.org/make_what_you_need
manual (until it hurts)
https://indieweb.org/manual_until_it_hurts
original post link
https://indieweb.org/original_post_link
own your data
https://indieweb.org/own_your_data
own your replies
https://indieweb.org/own_your_replies
permalink
https://indieweb.org/permalink
permashortlink
https://indieweb.org/permashortlink
POSSE
https://indieweb.org/POSSE
silo
https://indieweb.org/silo
social media
https://indieweb.org/social_media
static site
https://indieweb.org/static_site
start
https://indieweb.org/start
Webmention
https://indieweb.org/Webmention

¹ https://tantek.com/2023/253/t2/
² https://tantek.com/2010/034/t2/diso-2-personal-domains-shortener-hatom-push-relmeauth
³ https://tantek.com/2023/001/t1/own-your-notes
⁴ https://indieweb.org/discuss

Tantek ()'s status on Monday, 16-Oct-2023 21:16:00 EDT

Tantek

Implemented liking/favoriting of #Mastodon posts via Bridgy Fed on my site! (Actually of any post on any site that #BridgyFed can discover an #ActivityPub endpoint to send likes to.)

Tested it by liking @evanp.me (@evan@cosocial.ca @evanpro)’s reply¹ confirming that he received a notification from my prior post². I sent a #Webmention from my like post³ to Bridgy Fed, and it #federated the like to Evan’s server, which subsequently showed up in the "favourites" list of Evan’s post:

https://cosocial.ca/@evan/111237962392745000/favourites

Every step that connects heterogenous #socialWeb systems & protocols feels like progress.

This is day 45 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days #IndieWeb #like #likes #fediverse #favorite #favourite #favourites

← Day 44: https://tantek.com/2023/234/t1/threads-supports-indieweb-rel-me
→ 🔮

¹ https://cosocial.ca/@evan/111237962392745000
² https://tantek.com/2023/287/t1/federating-mentions
³ https://tantek.com/2023/289/f1

Tantek ()'s status on Monday, 11-Sep-2023 19:06:00 EDT

Tantek

going to the #SocialWeb CG meeting @W3C #w3cTPAC tomorrow (2023-09-12) at 09:30 CEST.

Looking forward to seeing @evanp.me (@evan@cosocial.ca @evanpro) and many others!

So many advances in #ActivityPub, #Webmention, Micropub, #IndieAuth etc. that it may be time to restart the #SocialWebWG to officially update all our active specifications.

We can & should also reach out to #Bluesky & #Nostr communities to work together on shared semantics and bridging protocols to continue growing a heterogenous #fediverse built on the #OpenWeb.

We know it is possible. We worked hard in the Social Web working group to align a lot of semantics across #ActivityStreams and #microformats2. The fruitful results of that are services like http://fed.brid.gy/ which I myself use to send a Webmention when I make a new post (like this one) and have #BridgyFed automatically federate it via ActivityPub using my personal site identity to #Mastodon followers and others.

@snarfed.org wrote up a recent comparison of top #decentralized #socialProtocols that can help inform a lot of this discussion: https://snarfed.org/2023-09-04_50856

Tantek ()'s status on Saturday, 22-Apr-2023 20:40:00 EDT

Tantek

One of the pretty neat innovations from #Mastodon has been actual, functional, and fairly reliable (from all accounts I’ve seen) distributed system account migration, with the notable exception of post migration, which has additional challenges worth exploring.

To be clear, as far as I know, no other blogging (or chat) software, system, or even protocol comes close to achieving the level of functionality described in Mastodon’s documentation:

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#migration

In short, moving:
* all your profile information
* moving all your followers & followings, transparently
* redirecting your old account to your new one

More at that link. From the docs, it’s clear that quite a bit of thought & consideration went into the design & implementation.

Once I had setup #BridgyFed to #federate posts from my own site¹, I myself made use of the this Mastodon feature to migrate from my try-it-out @t@xoxo.zone account to my #IndieWeb @tantek.com (move destination handled by BridgyFed).

For me the migration experience was 100%, because I had not posted anything @t@xoxo.zone.

The challenge of post migration is not unique to Mastodon, though I believe it goes beyond “simple” export & import support, which is still a good place to start.

Mastodon has two forms of posts “export” currently:
* RSS feeds, which will get you some number of recent posts, by adding ".rss" to the end of any Mastodon profile URL, e.g. https://indieweb.social/@tchambers.rss
* Activity Streams 2.0 JSON, per https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#export (note: it currently says “ActivityPub JSON format”, but there is no such thing, #ActivityPub uses the #ActivityStreams 2.0 JSON format and I’ve filed a PR² to fix this in the docs)

Lots of software & services import RSS, e.g. #WordPress.

As far as I know, nothing (not even Mastodon itself) actually supports importing Activity Streams 2.0.

There is a more complete format (with specification!) for exporting & importing blog content:

Blog Archive Format (.bar), first specified here with example file:
* https://www.manton.org/2017/11/24/blog-archive-format.html
More details and another example file:
* https://www.manton.org/2021/12/27/importing-blog-archive.html

Blog Archive Format has the very nice features of:
* portable HTML feed (h-feed) and JSON Feed
* photos and other media
* locally browsable post archive

Naturally, https://micro.blog/ supports both exporting & importing Blog Archive Format.

There’s an interesting opportunity here for an open source converter
* from Activity Streams 2.0
* to Blog Archive Format

Such a library would make an excellent drop-in addition to any #ActivityPub implementation, allowing both export of posts, and also a browsable archive format, so you could visually double check when importing to another service that these were the old posts you were looking for.

This would be a good first step, using an open standard, towards Mastodon itself supporting post migration³.

Ideally, similar to account migration, the old posts server should also at least:
* redirect old permalinks to the new permalinks
* redirect any replies being delivered by ActivityPub to the new location
* provide #Webmention discovery forwarding from the old URLs to the new URLs (e.g. using HTTP LINK headers)
for some amount of time.

Want to add support for Blog Archive Format or got questions or feedback?

Join in the development conversations: https://chat.indieweb.org/dev

This is day 39 of #100DaysOfIndieWeb. #100Days

← Day 38: https://tantek.com/2023/110/t2/beyond-mastodon-indieweb-own-domain
→ 🔮

Glossary

account migration
https://indieweb.org/account_migration
blog archive format
https://indieweb.org/blog_archive_format
h-feed
https://microformats.org/wiki/h-feed
JSON Feed
https://www.jsonfeed.org/
post migration
https://indieweb.org/post_migration
Webmention
https://indieweb.org/Webmention

References

¹ https://tantek.com/2022/301/t1/twittermigration-bridgyfed-mastodon-indieweb
² https://github.com/mastodon/documentation/pull/1202
³ https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/12423

Tantek ()'s status on Sunday, 12-Jan-2020 10:14:00 EST

Tantek

🎉🎂 Happy 3rd birthday #Webmention! https://indieweb.org/Webmention
@W3C Recommendation published 2017-01-12 with a still live robust test suite, Webmention has more interoperable implementations than any other federated peer-to-peer social web protocol, API, or standard, and continues growing with new implementations:

https://indieweb.org/Webmention#Publishing_Software

Want to implement Webmention your own site?

See: https://indieweb.org/Webmention-developer

Chat: https://chat.indieweb.org/dev

Tantek ()'s status on Friday, 15-Feb-2019 21:22:00 EST

Tantek

#IndieWebCamp#Austinis next weekend!
Get a #website, #ownyourdata, cut back #socialmedia, or hack on #dweb#webstandards.
Join@manton2(@microdotblog)@aaronpk(#indieauth #webmention)@dshanske(#WordPress #IndieWeb) & more!

RSVP:https://2019.indieweb.org/austin

Tantek ()'s status on Thursday, 25-Jan-2018 04:02:00 EST

Tantek

The@SocialWebWGpublished three@W3CNOTEs this month
@Indie_Auth: identity via #OAuthhttps://www.w3.org/TR/2018/NOTE-indieauth-20180123/
#JF2:simple #JSONfor posts, lists of
https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/NOTE-jf2-20180110/
@PostTypeDisc: #Webmention—> reply, like, repost, etc
https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/NOTE-post-type-discovery-20180118/

MMN-o ✅⃠ (mmn)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Jul-2017 15:07:49 EDT

MMN-o ✅⃠

Ooh, yes. Make the #WebMention (LinkBack) plugin work properly in !GNUsocial. _THAT_ is my vacation project. Oh how I've wanted to do this. I will make @kevinmarks proud.

MMN-o ✅⃠ (mmn)'s status on Sunday, 18-Jun-2017 05:05:19 EDT

MMN-o ✅⃠

Björn Schießle

@bes Implementing #WebMention in federated social software (and for you to be able to receive these, which requires some added metadata to your static HTML pages) would solve this issue. WebMention is an improved form of the "pingback" system bloggers may be used to. Pingbacks could work as well probably.

And cross-posting is not necessary if you have an RSS/Atom feed, since they can be subscribed to via any WebSub/PuSH hub (you don't have to run it on your server, an external service can take care of WebSub/PuSH).

Tantek ()'s status on Thursday, 12-Jan-2017 13:47:15 EST

Tantek