this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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Are Flipboard collections(?) AP groups? (community.nodebb.org)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hey @[email protected], are Flipboard collections (or are they magazines? I forget the term!) federating out as as:Group? I'm wondering whether it would be possible for NodeBB to load them in as categories, and be able to browse them natively...

I'm just not able to easily find them in the Flipboard UI right now, but I'm relatively new at using the app :)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

@julian Something seems to be wrong. I've been following a few Flipboard magazines from NodeBB, but it seems like they are not correctly federating with the 4.3.0 beta.

Take a look at [Tech News by @[email protected]](https://community.nodebb.org/category/[email protected]), I've been tracking this remote category for almost a month now, but here on NodeBB, it is still empty. Meanwhile, on Mastodon I see new posts daily.

For the record, this is what an activity created by the group actor looks like:

{
   "@context":[
      "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
      "https://w3id.org/security/v1",
      {
         "Hashtag":"as:Hashtag",
         "toot":"http://joinmastodon.org/ns",
         "discoverable":"toot:discoverable",
         "indexable":"toot:indexable",
         "alsoKnownAs":{
            "@id":"as:alsoKnownAs",
            "@type":"@id"
         }
      }
   ],
   "type":"Announce",
   "id":"https://flipboard.com/magazines/cPVtLWiDRgi0_eWFp_CJVA:m:43611565/activity/DpM9mVh1Qk2oScowFAN8DA:a:43611565",
   "actor":"https://flipboard.com/magazines/cPVtLWiDRgi0_eWFp_CJVA:m:43611565",
   "published":"2025-04-22T09:51:50Z",
   "to":[
      "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
   ],
   "cc":[
      "https://flipboard.com/users/theverge",
      "https://flipboard.com/magazines/cPVtLWiDRgi0_eWFp_CJVA:m:43611565/followers"
   ],
   "object":"https://flipboard.com/users/theverge/statuses/DpM9mVh1Qk2oScowFAN8DA:a:43611565"
}
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

@AltCode I think it's just Flipboard, right?

It might be because of the issue mentioned upthread where items shared by those groups don't have a back reference to the itself so it isn't slotted in it.

They might all just be uncategorized instead. Can you find those items when you search their url or id in the NodeBB search bar?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

@julian Yeah, seems to just affect Flipboard.

> Can you find those items when you search their url or id in the NodeBB search bar?

Yes, I'm still able to find them, e.g. https://community.nodebb.org/post/https%3A%2F%2Fflipboard.com%2Fusers%2Ftheverge%2Fstatuses%2FDpM9mVh1Qk2oScowFAN8DA%3Aa%3A43611565

It's uncategorised, just as you said.

Slight tangent, no one seems to be following @[email protected] here on the forum.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

@AltCode that user and the category are (I think) separate actors. I'm not sure what the user does, shares its own posts, possibly... but like you said, nobody follows that user so I suppose that's why there's not much shown as shared either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

> that user and the category are (I think) separate actors.

@julian Yes, they are indeed separate actors. To be clear, [Tech News by @[email protected]](https://community.nodebb.org/category/[email protected]) is the group actor, while @[email protected] is the person actor/remote user, sorry if I caused any confusion.

> I'm not sure what the user does, shares its own posts, possibly...

As I understand Flipboard, users there can create as many magazines as they want, and any post they create must always be in a magazine. It is not possible to create a post that does not belong to a magazine.

When federating this means that each magazine that a user creates is discoverable as @[email protected]; any post that user creates will tag the magazine the post was made into, and the group actor representation of that magazine will boost/share/announce the post.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

@AltCode right, I think the issue here is that the posts themselves do not contain a backreference to the magazine they were posted to.

So for example, their latest post has addressed the following:

...
  "to": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams#Public"
  ],
  "cc": [
    "https://flipboard.com/users/theverge/followers"
  ],
...

... note that the magazine itself is not included, and so when NodeBB receives the object, it does not know to slot the topic into the appropriate category.

cc @[email protected] again about this one :smile:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@julian

So when the initial post come out doe you expect the group to be in the "cc"?

Normally what happens is the magazine "boosts" the post so you will get the post and then the boost of the post from the group actor. I'd be glad to make a change if If i knew what that was.

In mastodon, the magazine will always be empty unless some explicitly follows the magazine.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

@[email protected] yes, that's right.

If a Flipboard post is organized within magazines, then including the magazine in the cc will allow recipient software to correctly slot the post with the magazine.

So not only would it fix the issue for NodeBB, it'd also fix it for Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin, etc.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It looks like they are indeed AP groups: https://community.nodebb.org/category/[email protected]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@AltCode aww, heck yeah!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

@julian
Magazines are represented as an #ActivityPub Group. The magazine actor boosts the original post from the profile into the group.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 weeks ago

Thanks for the confirmation @[email protected], any chance we could have the post list the magazine as a recipient, so that a backreference is established?

See: https://community.nodebb.org/post/104013

@[email protected] mentioned you, but a typo got in the way :smile: