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So as I understand it, Mastodon is a Ruby on Rails web server that speaks to other instances using the ActivityPub protocol in a technical sense. You register
by spondyl 4y ago
So as I understand it, Mastodon is a Ruby on Rails web server that speaks to other instances using the ActivityPub protocol in a technical sense.
You register with a given Mastodon instance which speaks ActivityPub to other servers which may or may not be Mastodon instances as well.
Now your home Mastodon instance also serves a React frontend which is technically acting as an OAuth2 client that speaks to the backend via REST APIs, compared to say: Server-side rendered HTML
Similarly, mobile apps connecting to your preferred instance are also OAuth2 clients.
In that sense, you can use a different frontend to speak directly to the REST APIs offered by your Mastodon instance of choice.
This all being one level above ActivityPub itself of course.
- Timja 4y agoIf I register with a Mastdodon instance, then why do I need a "home Mastodon instance"? Wouldn't I just use the web frontend the instance I registered with provides?
- spondyl 4y agoYour content is federated but your account is not so in order to actually perform actions, you need to make calls back to your home instance. In a literal sense, your username and password / authentication tokens live on that server and is unknowable to other servers. You might imagine that if there was federation of accounts than any random user could simply eat up passwords/password hashes. That said, you can presumably use any client as long as it uses the APIs of the home instance. You can browse other instances and do a remote follow however where that instance calls back to your home instance to initiate the follow action but it requires you telling the remote server what your full ID is (@Timja@home.instance) so it knows where to call back to