Hey rimu@piefed.social question to you about post removal...

If a remote user posts to a local community, and the local mod deletes it (let's say it's spam of off topic), does the local community federate a delete out?

Technically you're not deleting the content, just removing it from the community.

Is there a different action Piefed takes?

Hey rimu@piefed.social question to you about post removal...

If a remote user posts to a local community, and the local mod deletes it (let's say it's spam of off topic), does the local community federate a delete out?

Technically you're not deleting the content, just removing it from the community.

Is there a different action Piefed takes?

Yes, a Delete activity is sent to all instances with actors that follow the category/community. Those instances then delete their local copy. In Lemmy/PieFed there is no distinction between deletion and removal.

The deletes are soft so it is possible to un-delete by sending an Undo activity. PieFed keeps soft-deleted posts (topics, in NodeBB language) for a few days then after a week deletes the content from the database.

All of these activities are enclosed in an Announce and the http POST is signed using the community key. So in a way the content 'belongs' to the community, not to the original author. With that model of ownership the idea of removal redundant - a post without a community is not a post.

Tangentially - it would be good to come up with a way to move a topic to another category and federate that so the move can happen on other instances, too. We could go off-piste and create a Move activity, or use Remove (from old topic/comm) followed by Add (to new topic/comm) to do the same thing. I feel more inclined to go with Move as it's a single atomic operation that either succeeds or fails, despite it not being in the spec.

The AP spec is so badly stretched by various implementation-specific differences that I don't think it's worth being ideological about adherence to it it anymore.

There are lots of other uses for Move. A community whole could move instances, a user could move instances, etc.

Yes, a Delete activity is sent to all instances with actors that follow the category/community. Those instances then delete their local copy. In Lemmy/PieFed there is no distinction between deletion and removal.

The deletes are soft so it is possible to un-delete by sending an Undo activity. PieFed keeps soft-deleted posts (topics, in NodeBB language) for a few days then after a week deletes the content from the database.

All of these activities are enclosed in an Announce and the http POST is signed using the community key. So in a way the content 'belongs' to the community, not to the original author. With that model of ownership the idea of removal redundant - a post without a community is not a post.

Tangentially - it would be good to come up with a way to move a topic to another category and federate that so the move can happen on other instances, too. We could go off-piste and create a Move activity, or use Remove (from old topic/comm) followed by Add (to new topic/comm) to do the same thing. I feel more inclined to go with Move as it's a single atomic operation that either succeeds or fails, despite it not being in the spec.

The AP spec is so badly stretched by various implementation-specific differences that I don't think it's worth being ideological about adherence to it it anymore.

Yes, a Delete activity is sent to all instances with actors that follow the category/community. Those instances then delete their local copy. In Lemmy/PieFed there is no distinction between deletion and removal.

The deletes are soft so it is possible to un-delete by sending an Undo activity. PieFed keeps soft-deleted posts (topics, in NodeBB language) for a few days then after a week deletes the content from the database.

All of these activities are enclosed in an Announce and the http POST is signed using the community key. So in a way the content 'belongs' to the community, not to the original author. With that model of ownership the idea of removal redundant - a post without a community is not a post.

Tangentially - it would be good to come up with a way to move a topic to another category and federate that so the move can happen on other instances, too. We could go off-piste and create a Move activity, or use Remove (from old topic/comm) followed by Add (to new topic/comm) to do the same thing. I feel more inclined to go with Move as it's a single atomic operation that either succeeds or fails, despite it not being in the spec.

The AP spec is so badly stretched by various implementation-specific differences that I don't think it's worth being ideological about adherence to it it anymore.

@rimu Still, I think it would be nice to deprecate Delete and slowly migrate to Remove(target: context), since both PieFed and Lemmy implement the context collection now.

My server rejects Delete if its actor is different from object's owner, and I have to treat Announce(Delete) as a special case where the normal processing logic doesn't apply.

Possibly although the differences of federation between the threadiverse and the rest of the fediverse go way beyond deletes. FEP 1b12 is a whole thing, chipping away at it piece by piece would be slow going.

Personally I think 1b12 doesn't need to be changed or hacked around. It doesn't specifically call for federating out deletes so I'd think any solution we come up with together would work with that FEP, not go against it.

cc silverpill@mitra.social (if your app notifies you of new replies without a direct mention I'll stop tagging you too)