The ActivityPub protocol is a decentralized social networking protocol.
In ActivityPub, a user is represented by âactorsâ via the userâs accounts on servers. Userâs accounts on different servers correspond to different actors.
Used to be called OStatus which was the basis for Mastadon
Based on ActivityStreams, a social data syntax.
Each actor has:
- AnÂ
inbox
:Â How they get messages from the world - AnÂ
outbox
:Â How they send messages to others
Hereâs how sending and reading messages work
- You can POST to someoneâs inbox to send them a message (server-to-server / federation only⊠this is federation!)
- You can GET from your inbox to read your latest messages (client-to-server; this is like reading your social network stream)
- You can POST to your outbox to send messages to the world (client-to-server)
- You can GET from someoneâs outbox to see what messages theyâve posted (or at least the ones youâre authorized to see). (client-to-server and/or server-to-server)
Messages made by clients get posted to their own serverâs outbox and the server then posts that to the receiverâs inbox.