Metabolizing mentions

Once more into the void! We're back with some fresh social web updates in Ghost. As we edge ever-closer to our summer release of Ghost 6.0 where ActivityPub will be available to everyone, we're continuing to refine and improve the experience.

Last week, we shipped moderation preferences to ActivityPub accounts, so you can keep track of users and domains that have been blocked, and make changes all in one place. Not the most exciting feature, but an important one!

What's new with ActivityPub?

Well, dear reader, while we've had replies working for a long time – we've been missing a crucial compatriot: @mentions.

You know the deal. If you publish a note including a username like @index@activitypub.ghost.org then you expect it to turn into a clickable link, and to send that user a notification that you mentioned them.

It's a slightly more involved feature than it might, on the surface. If you're inside a Social Web application, you expect that profile to open using your app's profile viewer. But if you see the post on the web, then you expect it to be a normal link that goes to the profile's origin; wherever that may be on the web.

Then you have to deal with receiving, ingesting, and creating notifications sent by others (which may, or may not, be in reply to one of your posts), and do the same thing in reverse, to send notifications to others.

The good news: We now have the first version of this working nicely in Ghost!

Now, if you spot a mention in your feeds, you can navigate straight to that person's profile. Also, if you write someone's username in a note, it'll turn into a link. When mentions are used, inbound or outbound, notifications follow.

We don't have autocomplete when typing @usernames, yet - though - that's a whole other kettle of dog biscuits.

If you're reading this and you've been following along with this newsletter for a while, send us a reply using ActivityPub and let us know: Who are your favorite accounts to follow? @mention them - so we can follow, too 🤗