ActivityPub native support: WordPress Federation

[rebelc0de]

I believe WordPress could be the perfect driving force to bring back the initial values of Internet: in particular decentralisation.

WP is running +38% of the Internet (​https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management) and has built in support for open protocols like RSS, which is great, but not enough to compete with social network (most of people think socials are the only way to follow updates).

In fact WP is not really a network (even if wordpress.com gives some "social abilities") but more a constellation of small data silos which don't talk to each others. Wouldn't be amazing to make them able to reach each others directly and share data?

WHAT IF...
From each WP instances I could connect with other WP instances, with the same kind of data, and search from one place the entire network (or at least the part with the instance shares common ground)? This is already happening in the Fediverse with self hostable platforms like Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed...WordPress could join the party anytime!

Here are some use cases:

FEDERATED ARTICLES & COMMENTS
There're already 2 plugins able to federate articles and comments:
​https://wordpress.org/plugins/activitypub/
​https://github.com/pterotype-project/pterotype (sadly archived)
They could interact with Mastodon nodes and other compatible platforms.

FEDERATED IMAGES
Every image posted could (or not) be part of the Fediverse, so people could find content visually (PixelFed is the best example) without passing by search engines or centralised social networks.

FEDERATED VIDEOS
Every website could became part of the PeerTube network, breaking the habit to post all videos in 1 or few servers. This could make videomakers able to really own their contests and their followers, getting financed directly to produce and stream contents.

FEDERATED EVENTS
Plugins like Events Manager could use WP Federated APIs to make events part of a network, creating with just an update an alternative to Fb Events (which is monopolising the events market nowadays).

FEDERATED MAPS POI, PRODUCTS TO BUY...AND MUCH MORE!
Like events, a lot of structured data is stored in our WP silos, but it's hard to find without external indexing services like search engines. It's just a matter of building a bridge and give to WP admins the ability to inter-connected their websites and amazing things could happen.

A HOPE FOR A BETTER INTERNET AND A LESS POLARISED WORLD
I think that social networks and websites are going to merge into "networked websites", ActivityPub is just the first step into this process.

[desrosj]

Hi @rebelc0de,

Welcome to Trac!

This is an interesting idea, but it's mostly speculative and I don't think it's ready for consideration yet. I'm going to close this ticket out as a maybelater. Conversation is always welcome to continue on closed tickets (and is encouraged).

In order to endorse the effort required to work on a feature like this, the ActivityPub plugin would need to see much wider adoption. Right now, I would not say that this feature meets the 80/20 rule defined in the ​project's philosophies.