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Mastodon (with an o, an often made mistake) has an API, which most alternatives (pleroma, gotosocial etc) also implement, partly. Several frontends, including e

by berkes 3y ago

Mastodon (with an o, an often made mistake) has an API, which most alternatives (pleroma, gotosocial etc) also implement, partly. Several frontends, including extremely lightweight clients exist for this API. Mastodon furthermore implements the whole server-server ActivityPub standard, which can be used for some actions, like following someone, just fine. This is a very well described standard. Mastodon doesn't implement ActivityPub server-client standard, instead it has the aforementioned selfbrewn "rest" API. Which, IMO is a shame, and has caused all clients (mobile, web, etc) to rely on this nonstandard API. Edit: the point being:there are several ways to get content from Mastodon, depending on usecase and needs. You really don't need to scrape or parse or load the JS cliënt.

calgarymicro 3y ago
> Mastodon doesn't implement ActivityPub server-client standard To be fair to Mastodon, the main developer did give a reason for this. > The ActivityPub Client-to-Server spec assumes a thin server and thick client. By which I mean, the client, like an e-mail app, has to download and manage most data from the server. From my understanding that's the only way to make anything like search or username autocomplete or even a notifications tab to work with the C2S at all. In my experience, app developers are generally not excited to do that kind of legwork, and we're entering the kind of P2P territory which comes with its own challenges like the ease of hopping from one device to another, or the fact that to have the same functionality in iOS, Android, and Web, you would need to recreate the heavy-lifting fundamental boilerplate in each separately. For that reason, I am not particularly interested in the C2S part of ActivityPub. https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/zqfr4h/comment/j12coxq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/zqfr4h/comment/j1...

by berkes 3y ago

calgarymicro 3y ago

> Mastodon doesn't implement ActivityPub server-client standard To be fair to Mastodon, the main developer did give a reason for this. > The ActivityPub Client-to-Server spec assumes a thin server and thick client. By which I mean, the client, like an e-mail app, has to download and manage most data from the server. From my understanding that's the only way to make anything like search or username autocomplete or even a notifications tab to work with the C2S at all. In my experience, app developers are generally not excited to do that kind of legwork, and we're entering the kind of P2P territory which comes with its own challenges like the ease of hopping from one device to another, or the fact that to have the same functionality in iOS, Android, and Web, you would need to recreate the heavy-lifting fundamental boilerplate in each separately. For that reason, I am not particularly interested in the C2S part of ActivityPub. https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/zqfr4h/comment/j12coxq/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/zqfr4h/comment/j1...