ActivityPub Support

As FurryNetwork seeks feedback for different approaches for social media integration, I would recommend implementing ActivityPub support. ActivityPub is a recent standard by a working group of the W3C, as a federated social networking protocol, as a simpler, cleaner successor to OStatus. It would allow the ability to federate with emerging networks such as Mastodon, and anyone else that chooses to adopt it.

It can be implemented in a simple broadcast-only fashion, if desired, such as for having a means of artists being able to publish to any subscribers of any newly posted content. Or go even further, with allowing fully federated commenting (of course, anti-spam concepts can be implemented, such as with having server whitelists/blacklists, moderation queue, etc).

Secondarily, it would also provide a standardized protocol for accessing updates on FurryNetwork from third-party mobile clients, in the same style of a Twitter client.

ActivityPub is a fairly minimal JSON API, which has both a client-to-server protocol (for having a mobile/desktop client) and server-to-server protocol (for federation), using a basic metaphor of an inbox and outbox. There's also considerations for efficiently delivering updates, such as sending a message once to a remote server, for all subscribers on that other server, versus individually sending the same message to each subscriber on the same remote server individually, and so on. It's also a fairly extensible protocol, as it follows JSON-LD syntax, thus you can add any vendor-specific extensions, if needed.

To find more information on the spec, you can find it at: https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/

If there's any questions about specifics with the protocol, feel free to discuss directly. The working group that's in charge of developing the standard is also fairly contactable via IRC/WebChat as well (especially for feedback on the standard).