julian on Nostr: Does anyone know if there are guidelines for the Follow/Accept flow outside of that ...
Does anyone know if there are guidelines for the Follow/Accept flow outside of that prescribed in the AP protocol?
The reason why I ask is because there seems to be a little logical hole that people fall into where a Follow activity is sent, but the relationship then rests in an indeterminate state:
<li>The Follow is pending acceptance</li>
<li>The Follow was already seen and subsequently ignored</li>
<li>Something was wrong with the activity (e.g. signature failure, missing id, etc.) and it was ignored</li>
Receipt of an Accept is asynchronous, so the approach as seen in the wild is to assume a "pending" follow state. The problem is that if the flow doesn't follow that happy path (instant-accept or pending), then you don't know there is a problem.
Furthermore it seems that there are no existing recommendations regarding handling of a Follow to an Actor who believes you are already following them. Do you send back an Accept? Ignore the activity?
The reason why I ask is because there seems to be a little logical hole that people fall into where a Follow activity is sent, but the relationship then rests in an indeterminate state:
<li>The Follow is pending acceptance</li>
<li>The Follow was already seen and subsequently ignored</li>
<li>Something was wrong with the activity (e.g. signature failure, missing id, etc.) and it was ignored</li>
Receipt of an Accept is asynchronous, so the approach as seen in the wild is to assume a "pending" follow state. The problem is that if the flow doesn't follow that happy path (instant-accept or pending), then you don't know there is a problem.
Furthermore it seems that there are no existing recommendations regarding handling of a Follow to an Actor who believes you are already following them. Do you send back an Accept? Ignore the activity?