Steve Bate

https://social.technoetic.com/@steve

American living in Southern France.

Blog: https://www.stevebate.net
Code: https://github.com/steve-bate
Code: https://codeberg.org/steve-bate/mastodon-verification
BlueSky: @stevebate.social

Public Key

npub1p9lkf4ca85sd4yqzyln5jyfjy6avqtrsj876agep5n26prp6tmzshel05x

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqjlmy6uwn6gx6jqpz0e6fzyezdwkq93cfrldw5vs6f4dq3sa9a3gprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnt8ruj6g

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub1p9lkf4ca85sd4yqzyln5jyfjy6avqtrsj876agep5n26prp6tmzshel05x

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-07-24 08:14:00 GMT

How does tags.pub have 143,000 monthly active users (based on fedidb.com)? I know each hashtag is an actor in the tags.pub design, but are there that many unique hashtags in the Fediverse (> 500,000 total "accounts"). Is this artificially inflating the number of accounts and MAU in the FediDB statistics? Just curious...
/cc @npub1764…nuj0

2026-06-28 16:48:34 GMT

- reply

> Who had “hashtag apartheid” anywhere on their lists of reasons the Fediverse didn’t work?
👋

2026-06-01 16:18:58 GMT

- reply

Speaking for myself, I'm not interested in compelling powers. I think MUST is valuable not because it forces developers to behave, but because it defines the behavioral contract we can test, reason about, and build on (with interoperability guarantees).

2026-06-01 13:26:21 GMT

- reply

Maybe we need a read-only and write-only subprofiles? But what about an C2S server that doesn't allow reading the inbox nor posting to the outbox (like Mastodon) but still satisfies the MUST requirements in the profile?

2026-06-01 12:53:04 GMT

- reply

An actor not being able to read their own inbox disqualifies it as a C2S API for me (even a read-only one).

2026-06-01 12:46:57 GMT

- reply

I wasn't thinking of something instead, although I can imagine implementations that use pre-shared "app tokens" or HTTP Basic Auth (as examples). The motivation for the question is the C2S list maintained by @npub12sq…6w0r. It seems like most of those are not what I'd think of as C2S (Social API) servers.

2026-06-01 08:33:09 GMT

- reply

Thanks. I knew there were some related git issues, but I didn't know Evan had created a document for his proposals. Based on that document, servers that don't support OAuth2 auth code grants would not be considered C2S (Social API) servers. It's interesting to me that there's no requirement for outbox POST or inbox GET. It seems like Mastodon would satisfy these C2S server requirements (OAuth2 auth code grants, bearer tokens, 429 rate limits, etc.), but that doesn't seem correct to me.

2026-06-01 07:59:34 GMT

What would you consider the minimal features to be considered an #ActivityPub C2S server? Support for inbox GET, outbox POST, OAuth2, proxy endpoint, ... ?

2026-04-24 08:48:46 GMT

- reply

Just saw this...
> except Takahē and BandWagon suggests it's hard to find
Other multitenant-capable sofware (not the same as BYOD), are Fedify, FIRM, and Vocata.

2026-03-17 06:12:00 GMT

Fun! I just implemented vector search in my Mastodon instance. Now, I can search the posts in my instance (about 11 million of them) in a split second using semantic queries. It seems to work very well so far. The next step is create semantic timelines rather than relying on unreliable hashtags.

2026-02-24 14:56:39 GMT

What if... you had one Fedi account on a generic headless #ActivityPub server that simply hosts and federates your data... and had C2S UIs for microblogging, long form writing, media editing and sharing, link aggregation, games, fitness tracking, and so on, that all used that same Fedi account. Technically, it's a similar concept as ATProto (but no relay and app view) and Solid Pods (but no RDF).
It seems possible... if we can improve the AP C2S API/protocol sufficiently.

2025-07-08 06:56:40 GMT

- reply

Vocata, ActivityPods, rdf-pub, …

2025-07-06 13:27:14 GMT

- reply

Those workarounds for the undermined extensibility don't negate my point and will not generally interoperate. According to the ActivityPub book, "One point to note is that correctly parsing and interacting with AS2 objects with extended properties requires a JSON-LD-aware parser." I agree this isn't absolutely true (in special cases) but try sending expanded "toot" context term URIs and see how well it works 😉 (since all servers AFAIK expect those terms to be compacted).

2025-07-06 12:02:57 GMT

To follow up on my #ActivityPub C2S post from a few days ago, I wrote a blog article on my thoughts about improving the C2S protocol and a description of some related experimentation I've been doing.
https://www.stevebate.net/activitypub-client-api-a-way-forward/

2025-05-11 07:18:31 GMT

Just for fun... try this #ActivityPub quiz to test your knowledge of the protocol.
https://apquiz.stevebate.dev/

2025-03-20 10:25:33 GMT

- reply

Announcing Jaseur, an #ActivityPub server in C++, written by AI agents. Still in the early stages, but it already has several interesting features. See the git repo for more details.
https://github.com/steve-bate/jaseur

2025-03-19 08:16:38 GMT

- reply

The latest update on the AI-generated #ActivityPub server in C++... it now supports publishing signed messages and actors can be configured to autorespond. One autoresponder will use a local LLM (ollama) to generate responses to direct messages. Overall, the experiment has been useful. The code is not the greatest, but it works, which really surprises me. However, I'm seeing the agent having more issues as the complexity of the code increases. I may need to step in and write some code myself. 😮

2025-03-17 16:04:13 GMT

- reply

The AI agent-developed C++ #ActivityPub server now has about 2000 SLOC (all written by AI) and can process Follow/Accept and Create/Note (inbox/federated) and Create/Note delivery (outbox/C2S) with HTTP signatures and a good set of unit tests. Having the AI write unit tests has been key because it often creates regressions when adding features. The agents do a surprisingly good job of diagnosing compiler and unit test failures and fixing the problem automatically.

2025-03-15 15:46:15 GMT

I've been playing with the experimental GitHub Copilot agent mode in vscode. I've asked it to start from an empty directory and create an #ActivityPub server in C++, directed only by prompts (no human coding). So far, it has created a C++ project and implemented WebFinger, resource persistence, resource retrieval and a decent set of unit tests. At this point, Mastodon is able to discover our actors. The AI is currently implementing Follow processing. I'm curious to learn how far I can push this.

2025-01-18 08:05:53 GMT

I dream of the day when I'm not forced to choose between decentralization and a good user (or developer) experience. #ActivityPub (P.S. if there are replies to this post, you probably won't see most of them on your instance.)

2025-01-08 08:51:09 GMT

The "Social Web" (#ActivityPub) Foundation's support from Meta and their links to Meta and X are even more dubious after Zuck's policy announcement. I think they should remove the links (and the associated accounts).

2024-10-23 06:03:45 GMT

I submitted a draft FEP describing the Mastodon and LitePub/Pleroma #ActivityPub relay protocols. Comments and corrections are welcome.
https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ae0c/fep-ae0c.md

2024-10-15 08:52:08 GMT

Does anybody know which #ActivityPub relay implementation is the most widely deployed?

2024-09-29 13:37:38 GMT

Is the Fediverse only #ActivityPub? Here's an example where ChatGPT is smarter than some humans/Foundations. "No, the Fediverse is not limited to ActivityPub, though ActivityPub is one of the most widely used protocols within it. The Fediverse is a collection of interconnected social networks, blogs, and other platforms that use various decentralized protocols to communicate with each other." Nice! 👏

2024-09-26 06:35:22 GMT

For me, the Fediverse is about diversity and inclusion, not the homogeneity and exclusion being promoted by the Foundation (should be called the #ActivityPub Foundation). If this were *just* Meta, it would be expected. However, I'm disappointed that the other participants support this misinformation campaign in the name of "education" (and the possibility of Meta sending some pocket change their way).

2024-09-14 06:23:32 GMT

I see discussions sometimes about developing recipe applications for #ActivityPub/AS2. In that spirit, I wrote a blog post describing how to use the schema.org Recipe type in an AS2 conformant manner. It's mostly a thought exercise about possibilities since most AP implementations won't render an AS2 conformant recipe correctly, if at all.
https://www.stevebate.net/extending-activitypub-a-recipe/

2024-05-10 12:58:16 GMT

If you're a #fedidev working on an #ActivityPub/Mastodon-compatible server, don't forget that the WebFinger JRD media type is "application/jrd+json" and not "application/json". The early @npub1h7k…94tx test results show this is a common mistake.