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Are Flipboard collections(?) AP groups? (community.nodebb.org)

submitted 4 months ago by julian@community.nodebb.org to c/activitypub@community.nodebb.org

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Hey @mike@flipboard.social, are Flipboard collections (or are they magazines? I forget the term!) federating out as as:Group? I'm wondering whether it would be possible for NodeBB to load them in as categories, and be able to browse them natively...

I'm just not able to easily find them in the Flipboard UI right now, but I'm relatively new at using the app :)

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[–] altcode@community.nodebb.org 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

@julian Yeah, seems to just affect Flipboard.

> Can you find those items when you search their url or id in the NodeBB search bar?

Yes, I'm still able to find them, e.g. https://community.nodebb.org/post/https%3A%2F%2Fflipboard.com%2Fusers%2Ftheverge%2Fstatuses%2FDpM9mVh1Qk2oScowFAN8DA%3Aa%3A43611565

It's uncategorised, just as you said.

Slight tangent, no one seems to be following @theverge@flipboard.com here on the forum.

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

@AltCode that user and the category are (I think) separate actors. I'm not sure what the user does, shares its own posts, possibly... but like you said, nobody follows that user so I suppose that's why there's not much shown as shared either.

[–] altcode@community.nodebb.org 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

> that user and the category are (I think) separate actors.

@julian Yes, they are indeed separate actors. To be clear, [Tech News by @theverge@flipboard.com](https://community.nodebb.org/category/tech-news-theverge@flipboard.com) is the group actor, while @theverge@flipboard.com is the person actor/remote user, sorry if I caused any confusion.

> I'm not sure what the user does, shares its own posts, possibly...

As I understand Flipboard, users there can create as many magazines as they want, and any post they create must always be in a magazine. It is not possible to create a post that does not belong to a magazine.

When federating this means that each magazine that a user creates is discoverable as @-@flipboard.com; any post that user creates will tag the magazine the post was made into, and the group actor representation of that magazine will boost/share/announce the post.

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

@AltCode right, I think the issue here is that the posts themselves do not contain a backreference to the magazine they were posted to.

So for example, their latest post has addressed the following:

...
  "to": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
  ],
  "cc": [
    "https://flipboard.com/users/theverge/followers"
  ],
...

... note that the magazine itself is not included, and so when NodeBB receives the object, it does not know to slot the topic into the appropriate category.

cc @jsonculverhouse@flipboard.social again about this one :smile:

[–] JsonCulverhouse@flipboard.social 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

@julian

So when the initial post come out doe you expect the group to be in the "cc"?

Normally what happens is the magazine "boosts" the post so you will get the post and then the boost of the post from the group actor. I'd be glad to make a change if If i knew what that was.

In mastodon, the magazine will always be empty unless some explicitly follows the magazine.

[–] julian@community.nodebb.org 1 points 3 months ago

@jsonculverhouse@flipboard.social yes, that's right.

If a Flipboard post is organized within magazines, then including the magazine in the cc will allow recipient software to correctly slot the post with the magazine.

So not only would it fix the issue for NodeBB, it'd also fix it for Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin, etc.