Mastodon (and similar software) as an ActivityPub Client

[HelgeKrueger]

The goal of this issue is to create a better separation between "ActivityPub Server", i.e. bovine, and "ActivityPub Client, e.g. Mastodon. This will be done by "forwarding" activities to the "ActivityPub Client", so it can process the activity through its internal ActivityPub Server.

Goal

If one can succesfully implemented this, one should be able to separate the ActivityPub Actors from the user accounts on Mastodon. This means one can create a setup where a Pixelfed, Mastodon account result in the same Fediverse handle, e.g. helge@mymath.rocks. Similarly, this Fediverse handle can then be used to send encrypted messages ...

First Implementation

• The script in https://github.com/HelgeKrueger/bovine/blob/dev/bovine_core/examples/mastodon_bridge.py uses the event_source provided by Bovine to forward all incoming traffic to Mastodon. It shows up on the federated timeline.
• The commit HelgeKrueger/mastodon@d50e57c disables HTTP Signature checking

Why I stopped

Running Mastodon in the vagrant box generated a lot of CPU load / network traffic. This seemed unnecessary. I lack the knowledge of Mastodon to fix this.

The posts appearing in the federated timeline do not create the experience, I expect ... So it was not fun to work on. I don't think getting the posts into the home screen would help, as I'm used to seeing full conversations by now.