ActivityPub Federation: Channels Should Not Use the Group Type

[ch0ccyra1n]

Describe the current behavior

My apologies if this isn't really a bug per se but I feel this is the best format to present my issue.

PeerTube channels are of the type Group, which seems unusual since typically groups tend to be used for collectives of actors rather than for this particular use-case. This is also iterated in the ActivityStreams vocabulary. I believe it would be best to replace this with a different type, such as Organization which in my opinion seems more fitting for this. As for why, this is because some other ActivityPub software such as most notably Friendica categorize groups separately, and so it causes channels to be grouped in with actual groups such as Lemmy communities or Friendica groups.

Steps to reproduce

1. run curl to get the ActivityStreams JSON for a channel, e.g.

curl -H 'Accept: application/activity+json' https://framatube.org/c/joinpeertube/videos | jq

2. Within the output:

"type": "Group",

Describe the expected behavior

I'm not entirely sure what the Actor type of a channel should be, but I think it would be better to use a different type that is more reflective of what a channel really is.

Additional information

• PeerTube instance:

  • URL: https://framatube.org
  • Version: 6.0.3
  • NodeJS version: unknown
  • Ffmpeg version: unknown

• Browser name, version and platforms on which you could reproduce the bug: curl 8.6.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

• Link to browser console log if relevant:

• Link to server log if relevant (journalctl or /var/www/peertube/storage/logs/):

[Chocobozzz]

Hi,

Channels are group because we plan to implement #699 in the future. If a channel can be managed by multiple users, is it a valid usecase for other fedi-software?

[ch0ccyra1n]

I personally would answer no to your question, since channels aren't really the same as either a forum or Facebook-style group, even in light of #699

[erikkemp]

Another reason why the group type is maybe not the most suitable is that you cannot get notifications for a new video from a PeerTube channel currently from a Mastodon-account. I convert RSS-feeds to new ActivitiyPub actors for some PeerTube channels where I want to get a new notification from, and I don't necessarily want to get a notification for each video the PeerTube account (who might own multiple channels) publishes. Subscribing to a PeerTube channel should (I think) really be subscribing to a publisher.