Following: posts and boosts from accounts I follow do not appear in third-party app's main request

[jeherve]

When I installed this plugin, alongside Friends and ActivityPub, I expected posts from Fediverse accounts I follow (either by entering their handle in Friends' wp-admin settings or by hitting Follow in a third-party app) to appear in my timeline in third-party apps.

However, the api/v1/timelines/home endpoint the third-party application (Semaphore, for example) seems to call does not return posts from folks I follow. It returns activity from my site.

I do see posts from people I follow in the /friends/ page on my site, though.

How could I debug this further?

[jeherve]

does not return posts from folks I follow. It returns activity from my site.

Looking into this further, here is an example of an item returned by the endpoint:

First item returned in the JSON response

{
	"id": "736",
	"created_at": "2024-08-13T06:26:20.000Z",
	"spoiler_text": "",
	"visibility": "public",
	"uri": "https://herve.bzh/?enable-mastodon-apps=reblog-of-731",
	"content": "Reblog of 731",
	"url": null,
	"language": null,
	"in_reply_to_id": null,
	"in_reply_to_account_id": null,
	"text": null,
	"edited_at": null,
	"sensitive": false,
	"favourited": false,
	"reblogged": false,
	"muted": false,
	"bookmarked": false,
	"pinned": false,
	"filtered": [],
	"media_attachments": [],
	"mentions": [],
	"tags": [],
	"emojis": [],
	"replies_count": 0,
	"reblogs_count": 0,
	"favourites_count": 0,
	"card": null,
	"poll": null,
	"account": {
		"id": "0",
		"username": "",
		"acct": "jeremy",
		"url": "https://herve.bzh/friends//",
		"display_name": "",
		"note": "<p>WordPress, TV Series, music, kids, and board games. I think that's probably the best way to define me in a few words. 🙂</p>\n<p>I work at Automattic on the Jetpack plugin and its infrastructure. You'll consequently find me talking about WordPress things a lot, but also about all things open source in general.</p>\n<p>I am French and live in Brittany, so I will post in French from time to time, as well as share pictures of our beautiful Brittany. 🙂</p>\n",
		"avatar": "",
		"avatar_static": "",
		"header": "",
		"header_static": "",
		"locked": false,
		"bot": false,
		"group": false,
		"discoverable": true,
		"noindex": false,
		"suspended": false,
		"limited": false,
		"statuses_count": 101,
		"followers_count": 20,
		"following_count": 0,
		"source": {
			"privacy": "public",
			"sensitive": false,
			"language": "fr_FR",
			"note": "",
			"fields": []
		},
		"fields": [
			{
				"name": "Blog",
				"value": "<p><a rel=\"me noopener\" title=\"https://herve.bzh/\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://herve.bzh/\">herve.bzh</a></p>"
			},
			{
				"name": "Profil",
				"value": "<p><a rel=\"me noopener\" title=\"https://herve.bzh/author/jeremy/\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://herve.bzh/author/jeremy/\">herve.bzh</a></p>"
			},
			{
				"name": "Homepage",
				"value": "<p><a rel=\"me noopener\" title=\"https://jeremy.hu/\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://jeremy.hu/\">jeremy.hu</a></p>"
			},
			{
				"name": "My other Fediverse account",
				"value": "<p><a href=\"https://fedi.jeremy.hu/@jeremy\">@jeremy@fedi.jeremy.hu</a></p><p></p>"
			}
		],
		"emojis": [],
		"created_at": "2024-08-13T08:56:37.000Z",
		"last_status_at": "2024-08-13"
	},
	"reblog": null
},

At first, I thought this was a boost of one of my posts. However, I was wrong. When I click on that first item, I see this in my client:

However, in parallel the client does a request to https://herve.bzh/api/v1/statuses/736 to fetch that specific item, and it returns the following:

{
  "id": "736",
  "created_at": "2024-08-13T06:26:20.000Z",
  "spoiler_text": "",
  "visibility": "public",
  "uri": "https://hci.social/@juliagersey/112951946184373958",
  "content": "<p>Switching over from Twitter today…\u2029👋🏻 I’m Julia, an incoming ECE PhD student at the University of Michigan. My research focuses on using embedded sensing systems to help communities &amp; the environment. 2 weeks til classes start! <br />\u2029<a href=\"https://hci.social/tags/academia\" class=\"mention hashtag\" rel=\"tag\">#<span>academia</span></a> <a href=\"https://hci.social/tags/phd\" class=\"mention hashtag\" rel=\"tag\">#<span>phd</span></a></p>",
  "url": null,
  "language": null,
  "in_reply_to_id": null,
  "in_reply_to_account_id": null,
  "text": null,
  "edited_at": null,
  "sensitive": false,
  "favourited": false,
  "reblogged": false,
  "muted": false,
  "bookmarked": false,
  "pinned": false,
  "filtered": [],
  "media_attachments": [],
  "mentions": [],
  "tags": [],
  "emojis": [],
  "replies_count": 0,
  "reblogs_count": 0,
  "favourites_count": 0,
  "card": null,
  "poll": null,
  "account": {
    "id": "10000000202",
    "username": "juliagersey",
    "acct": "jeremy",
    "url": "https://hci.social/users/juliagersey",
    "display_name": "juliagersey",
    "note": "<p>WordPress, TV Series, music, kids, and board games. I think that's probably the best way to define me in a few words. 🙂</p>\n<p>I work at Automattic on the Jetpack plugin and its infrastructure. You'll consequently find me talking about WordPress things a lot, but also about all things open source in general.</p>\n<p>I am French and live in Brittany, so I will post in French from time to time, as well as share pictures of our beautiful Brittany. 🙂</p>\n",
    "avatar": "https://storage.googleapis.com/hci-social-storage/accounts/avatars/112/951/262/199/494/207/original/9e93d8976bccd7fc.png",
    "avatar_static": "https://storage.googleapis.com/hci-social-storage/accounts/avatars/112/951/262/199/494/207/original/9e93d8976bccd7fc.png",
    "header": "https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/003/134/405/original/04060b07ddf7bb0b.png",
    "header_static": "https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/003/134/405/original/04060b07ddf7bb0b.png",
    "locked": false,
    "bot": false,
    "group": false,
    "discoverable": true,
    "noindex": false,
    "suspended": false,
    "limited": false,
    "statuses_count": 28,
    "followers_count": 20,
    "following_count": 0,
    "source": {
      "privacy": "public",
      "sensitive": false,
      "language": "fr_FR",
      "note": "<p>CTO, founder of <span class=\"h-card\" translate=\"no\"><a href=\"https://mementomori.social/@dude\" class=\"u-url mention\">@<span>dude</span></a></span>, admin of many servers like this one. Web developer, CSS wizard, *nix user, an advocate for open and ethical Internet. Creator of the Mastodon Bird UI. I do WordPress and open source for a living.</p>",
      "fields": []
    },
    "fields": [
      {
        "name": "Blog",
        "value": "<p><a rel=\"me noopener\" title=\"https://herve.bzh/\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://herve.bzh/\">herve.bzh</a></p>"
      },
      {
        "name": "Profil",
        "value": "<p><a rel=\"me noopener\" title=\"https://herve.bzh/author/jeremy/\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://herve.bzh/author/jeremy/\">herve.bzh</a></p>"
      },
      {
        "name": "Homepage",
        "value": "<p><a rel=\"me noopener\" title=\"https://jeremy.hu/\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https://jeremy.hu/\">jeremy.hu</a></p>"
      },
      {
        "name": "My other Fediverse account",
        "value": "<p><a href=\"https://fedi.jeremy.hu/@jeremy\">@jeremy@fedi.jeremy.hu</a></p><p></p>"
      }
    ],
    "emojis": [],
    "created_at": "2024-08-12T15:44:26.000Z",
    "last_status_at": "2024-08-13"
  },
  "reblog": null
}

The content is more interesting here ; I get the actual content of the post. It appears to be a post from someone I do not follow, but I see that that post was boosted by someone I follow ; this is how it got into my timeline.

When I hit return in my client, the post content has been replaced from Reblog of 731 to the correct information:

If I keep clicking on each "Reblog of" item, each post appears.

• Would it be possible for the posts' content to appear right away, in the api/v1/timelines/home request?
• Would it be possible for the posts to be displayed as boosts, so I can understand why they're in my timeline?
• Some of the content in the api/v1/statuses/736 call doesn't seem correct. account.acct, account.note, account.source.language seem to return info about my own instance, maybe others.

[akirk]

Thanks for the debugging, I think you made some important findings there. The home timeline and the status should go through the same filters, I think I haven't tested the case for your own reblogs yet.
So would you say the original issue remains like you put it or is the issue most about your own reblog?

[jeherve]

I think I haven't tested the case for your own reblogs yet.

To clarify, these are not my own reblogs. They're posts that people I follow have boosted.

So would you say the original issue remains like you put it or is the issue most about your own reblog?

I adjusted the title a bit, hopefully to make that clearer.

[pfefferle]

I am not sure if the Friends plugin supports boosts and likes, but ActivityPub does not (yet). We are currently implementing it behind a feature flag.

[akirk]

Ok, I think I understand this better now. For the statuses/id endpoint, it does an ActivityPub request to the remote server, for the home timeline it doesn't but it would be too costly to do this for each item in the timeline. So I suppose the best way to solve this is in the Friends plugin to fetch this additional information already when the Reblog is received.

[jeherve]

@akirk I think it may be worth reopening this issue because athough I now don't see boosts anymore in my timeline, I still do not see posts from folks I follow via the Friends plugin. The api/v1/timelines/home?limit=20 call only returns my own posts as well as comments on my posts.

I'm happy to debug this further if you need more info. It may only be happening to me if this hasn't been reporting by others until now.

[akirk]

@jeherve I think we ended up finding out that you didn't have the right post types selected for the particular app and adjusting this fixed it?

[jeherve]

Yes, correct.