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10:17:36 <breakout-bot> RRSAgent, do not leave
10:17:37 <breakout-bot> RRSAgent, this meeting spans midnight
10:17:37 <breakout-bot> RRSAgent, make logs public
10:17:38 <breakout-bot> Meeting: Browser experience of ActivityPub social networking
10:17:38 <breakout-bot> Chair: Evan Prodromou
10:17:38 <breakout-bot> Agenda: https://github.com/w3c/breakouts-day-2025/issues/4
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10:17:39 <breakout-bot> Zakim, clear agenda
10:17:39 <Zakim> agenda cleared
10:17:39 <breakout-bot> Zakim, agenda+ Pick a scribe
10:17:41 <Zakim> agendum 1 added
10:17:41 <breakout-bot> Zakim, agenda+ Reminders: code of conduct, health policies, recorded session policy
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10:17:41 <breakout-bot> Zakim, agenda+ Goal of this session
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10:17:42 <breakout-bot> Zakim, agenda+ Discussion
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10:17:43 <breakout-bot> Zakim, agenda+ Next steps / where discussion continues
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10:17:44 <breakout-bot> Zakim, agenda+ Adjourn / Use IRC command: Zakim, end meeting
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13:02:09 <bumblefudge> blarg forgot to write down the zoom ps
13:02:10 <bumblefudge> pw
13:02:40 <eprodrom> https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/3c15ca06-8876-442e-a385-8eab2b64a55c/
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13:03:40 <eprodrom> Zakim, start meeting
13:03:40 <Zakim> RRSAgent, make logs Public
13:03:42 <Zakim> please title this meeting ("meeting: ..."), eprodrom
13:03:48 <eprodrom> present+
13:03:55 <marie> present+
13:04:01 <eprodrom> meeting: Browser experience of ActivityPub social networking
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13:04:11 <marie> chair: Evan
13:05:22 <bumblefudge> present+
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13:05:45 <dmitriz> present+
13:05:52 <marie> present+ pfefferie
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13:06:17 <marie> present+ krosyligth
13:06:25 <marie> present+ emeyer
13:11:09 <marie> scribe: dmitriz
13:14:08 <bumblefudge> at _least_ one wg! hehe
13:20:20 <dmitriz> scribe+
13:21:02 <dmitriz> eprodrom: (going through the slides, going over what ActivityPub is, and a few of the browser experience challenges)
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13:22:10 <dmitriz> ... main challenges: following (or interacting with an Actor profile), interacting with a post (like, etc) on a different server pops up complicated UI of "let's get you logged in on your home server"
13:23:12 <dmitriz> ... what are some ways to improve this? Outlined in: https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-html-discovery
13:23:50 <dmitriz> ... `url` property, Link Header, Content Negotiations
13:24:23 <dmitriz> ... sets up two-way linking between an HTML page and the JSON-LD data object
13:24:31 <dmitriz> ... step 3: ActivityPub API client in the browser
13:25:45 <dmitriz> ... Why? 1) gets credentials from home server, 2) Uses them throughout the web, 3) Does not lose context moving from server to server, 4) Re-centers the social web on the person at the keyboard
13:26:42 <dmitriz> ... How? 1) Browser extensions (SocialWebFoundation working with Vivaldi). (Focus on Vivaldi first - they have their own Mastodon server). Many other browsers use the same architecture for extensions
13:28:40 <dmitriz> ... UX challenge: a browser extension would add their own Follow button, but the HTML page still has the original Follow button too
13:29:01 <dmitriz> ... possible fix: Declarative format for some activity types
13:29:15 <dmitriz> ... "This button is for following the person referred to by this page"
13:29:26 <dmitriz> ... (this way, extension can recognize that element, capture the click, etc)
13:29:46 <dmitriz> ... Another option: Provide a JS API for the browser. "navigator.social.follow("evan@..."))"
13:30:13 <dmitriz> ... yet another: better support for the 'acct:' URL format (used by Webfinger)
13:31:17 <bumblefudge> doesn't better support for webfinger URIs mean a protocol handler that browser extensions and/or external apps could register?
13:31:25 <bumblefudge> by analogy to mailto: links?
13:31:54 <bumblefudge> ah ok, one less hand to raise, haha
13:32:42 <dmitriz> bumblefudge: what are the most desired kinds of feedback (from the group on this call)?
13:33:12 <dmitriz> eprodrom: to start with, "did those slides / this conversation make sense in general?"
13:33:29 <dmitriz> ... as in, have you run into this UX friction. Other suggestions for alternate solutions, etc
13:34:10 <dmitriz> ... is there other work happening in this area?
13:34:34 <dmitriz> aarongray: I'm looking at an Electron solution (a node running behind a browser)
13:34:40 <dmitriz> ... I know it's an install solution...
13:35:02 <dmitriz> ... I haven't looked at the AP HTML Discovery doc yet -- will it work on a domain/subdomain etc, via regex?
13:35:06 <dmitriz> ... (path based)
13:35:10 <dmitriz> eprodrom: yes, it should
13:37:36 <eprodrom> https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qr_rDgdWPR9yZjg_PyjTNJqs3x6-nKXzIYtwtUkip1Q/edit?usp=sharing
13:38:47 <pfefferle> but sadly custom-protocols are not really widely used/supported
13:38:59 <dmitriz> dmitriz: I like this work, going in the direction. we may want to create a JS polyfill for the API
13:39:21 <dmitriz> ... I know the main friction is the acct: protocol handlers in browsers. I wonder if we can start with 'web+acct:'?
13:39:30 <dmitriz> eprodrom: yes, in fact this demo here does exactly that!
13:40:11 <pfefferle> it is not supported by every browser and mastodon removed it because of the "bad user experience"
13:40:14 <dmitriz> ... so we can start web+acct:, and also work on improving support for the RFC's acct:
13:40:53 <dmitriz> bumblefudge: this reminds me of the declarative payment link approach that the cryptocurrency community experimented with over the years
13:41:05 <dmitriz> ... Ethereum did the Browser API route (vs declarative).
13:41:29 <dmitriz> ... you can sort of think of the acct: extension as an identity wallet. a separate agent, a trusted extension
13:42:13 <dmitriz> ... in the Crypto space, what happened with the window.ethereum polyfill -- it was designed (a little too) trustfully -- a bunch of extensions have a race condition to capture the polyfill's invocation
13:42:21 <dmitriz> ... extensions try to impersonate each other.
13:42:33 <dmitriz> ... basically, in the end, Metamask abandoned it as irrecoverable.
13:43:11 <dmitriz> ... instead, they're using to Manifest v3, basically being able to reference each extension (like Metamask) by a hash or signature
13:43:29 <dmitriz> ... It won't be as bad in the ActivityPub space, but it's just one data point
13:43:55 <dmitriz> ... the browser and page needs to be able to know exactly which polyfill / extension they're talking to
13:44:12 <dmitriz> eprodrom: yes. challenge here is - there's a tension between the website and the extension, as to who can control the experience
13:44:19 <dmitriz> ... we know the Web is the wild wild west etc
13:44:29 <dmitriz> ... so of course we'll need to build in the necessary confirmations / guard rails
13:45:08 <dmitriz> ... other questions?
13:45:09 <bumblefudge> (here the analogy to crypto wallets is good, because the webpage needs confirmation/error handling from the agent BUT WITHOUT DEANONYMIZING IT)
13:46:20 <dmitriz> aarongray: I'm not familiar with the 'web+' notation
13:46:33 <dmitriz> eprodrom: yes, that gets into the world of registering custom protocol handlers
13:48:43 <dmitriz> bumblefudge: out of curiosity -- I know WebFinger predates ActivityPub. what sort of use case did they intend, for the acct: handler?
13:48:56 <dmitriz> eprodrom: I think a general account URL type
13:50:07 <eprodrom> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7565 for acct: URI scheme
13:50:28 <dmitriz> eprodrom: if there are no more questions, we can wrap up!
13:50:45 <dmitriz> ... So, we have a task force focusing on discovery,
13:50:56 <dmitriz> ... but we don't have a TF for in-browser experience in general
13:51:02 <dmitriz> ... so that might be an area to explore
13:51:18 <dmitriz> ... things like the declarative markup, JS apis and polyfills, etc
13:52:16 <dmitriz> dmitriz: I think that's a great idea. We can also widen the remit of the Discovery task force to be 'Discovery + Browser Experience'
13:52:30 <dmitriz> eprodrom: yeah, it's the source of much tears in implementers.
13:52:47 <dmitriz> ... there's some good prior art and patterns we can follow already, such as those used for RSS Feeds
13:52:51 <dmitriz> ... that we can incorporate into this work
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13:53:17 <marie> thank you evan and dmitri
13:53:22 <marie> rrsagent, make minutes
13:53:24 <RRSAgent> I have made the request to generate https://www.w3.org/2025/03/26-activitypub-browser-minutes.html marie
13:53:34 <bumblefudge> https://www.w3.org/community/socialcg/join
13:53:46 <eprodrom> Hey, that was great, thanks dmitriz!
13:53:55 <dmitriz> heyyy my pleasure! great session!
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22:57:31 <tidoust> RRSAgent, bye
22:57:31 <RRSAgent> I see no action items