It's even worse than it appears..
Wednesday July 9, 2025; 9:31 AM EDT
Why I want RSS ==> ActivityPub#
  • I've been asked by a number of people why I want a bridge from RSS to ActivityPub. Fair question. Here's why. #
  • WordPress has demonstrated that most of the features of the web in regard to documents also work in Mastodon, via ActivityPub. #
  • To demonstrate here's a WordPress post, and because there is a bridge between it and ActivityPub, you can read the same post in Mastodon, which also supports ActivityPub. #
  • To really nail that down: WordPress version, Mastodon version.#
  • Pretty remarkable, yes?#
  • Here's a list of the features I was using in that demo.#
    • The post has a title (it's optional).#
    • Simple styling: bold, italic, numbered lists, bulleted lists.#
    • Hyperlinks, the defining feature of the web.#
    • I can edit my post. #
    • No character limit.#
  • These are most of the features of textcasting, a spec I published in 2022 to list the features of the web I wanted from the twitter-like services, that call themselves part of the web, which is fairly dishonest because they don't support most of the basic features of the web. But Mastodon does support them. #
  • But so far they are only accessible via WordPress. And as much as I love WordPress, and am thankful it exists, that is not enough. #
  • So here's the punchline: Why I want the RSS to ActivityPub bridge. #
  • As a developer, I can easily create apps that generate RSS feeds. I just want Mastodon to understand those feeds as well as they understand WordPress. And that means we need a bridge for developers that supports all these features. #
  • Hope that helps! :-)#

© copyright 1994-2025 Dave Winer.

Last update: Wednesday July 9, 2025; 12:29 PM EDT.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)