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Re: WP Multilingual plugin + ActivityPub bug
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Actually, I think I know what's going on with the Vivaldi blog group actor - it's not necessarily NodeBB's fault. Inspecting the AP objects coming from vivaldi.com/blog, all the English-written blog posts have their `as:audience` field set to `https://vivaldi.com/?author=0`. Meanwhile, every other blog post that is written in a different language instead have it set to `https://vivaldi.com//?author=0`, so for Japanese blog posts, for example, it is `https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=0`. And all these URLs link to *different* group actors, **but all of them have the same value on the `preferredUsername` and `webfinger` properties:** `blog`, and `blog@vivaldi.com`. --- **EDIT:** Actually this also appears to be *all* actor objects coming from vivaldi.com/blog. E.g. if you start typing `[@ruari@vivaldi.com](https://community.nodebb.org/user/ruari%40vivaldi.com)` or [search for it](https://community.nodebb.org/search?in=users&term=ruari%40vivaldi.com), you can see it be suggested twice too. So my guess is that there are two person actors that NodeBB knows of that are claiming to be `ruari@vivaldi.com`: `https://vivaldi.com/?author=46` and `https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=46`. This is probably a bug with the [WPML+ActivityPub plugin combination](https://thomasp.vivaldi.net/2025/01/14/combining-wpml-activitypub/) they have going on. --- ### Screenshots  
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Actually, I think I know what's going on with the Vivaldi blog group actor - it's not necessarily NodeBB's fault. Inspecting the AP objects coming from vivaldi.com/blog, all the English-written blog posts have their `as:audience` field set to `https://vivaldi.com/?author=0`. Meanwhile, every other blog post that is written in a different language instead have it set to `https://vivaldi.com//?author=0`, so for Japanese blog posts, for example, it is `https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=0`. And all these URLs link to *different* group actors, **but all of them have the same value on the `preferredUsername` and `webfinger` properties:** `blog`, and `blog@vivaldi.com`. --- **EDIT:** Actually this also appears to be *all* actor objects coming from vivaldi.com/blog. E.g. if you start typing `[@ruari@vivaldi.com](https://community.nodebb.org/user/ruari%40vivaldi.com)` or [search for it](https://community.nodebb.org/search?in=users&term=ruari%40vivaldi.com), you can see it be suggested twice too. So my guess is that there are two person actors that NodeBB knows of that are claiming to be `ruari@vivaldi.com`: `https://vivaldi.com/?author=46` and `https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=46`. This is probably a bug with the [WPML+ActivityPub plugin combination](https://thomasp.vivaldi.net/2025/01/14/combining-wpml-activitypub/) they have going on. --- ### Screenshots  [@AltCode](https://community.nodebb.org/user/altcode) okay! Thanks for reporting, it sounds like there are two issues going on: 1. Categories losing their handle-to-id association * Frustratingly, this read very similarly to [#13283](https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13283), and both remote users and categories share similar logic. I have so far not been able to reproduce it at all on local development. 1. Separate users (different IDs) sharing the same `preferredUsername`. * This is an interesting one, and I am not entirely sure where the fault lies. I wonder how other software handles it?
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Actually, I think I know what's going on with the Vivaldi blog group actor - it's not necessarily NodeBB's fault. Inspecting the AP objects coming from vivaldi.com/blog, all the English-written blog posts have their `as:audience` field set to `https://vivaldi.com/?author=0`. Meanwhile, every other blog post that is written in a different language instead have it set to `https://vivaldi.com//?author=0`, so for Japanese blog posts, for example, it is `https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=0`. And all these URLs link to *different* group actors, **but all of them have the same value on the `preferredUsername` and `webfinger` properties:** `blog`, and `blog@vivaldi.com`. --- **EDIT:** Actually this also appears to be *all* actor objects coming from vivaldi.com/blog. E.g. if you start typing `[@ruari@vivaldi.com](https://community.nodebb.org/user/ruari%40vivaldi.com)` or [search for it](https://community.nodebb.org/search?in=users&term=ruari%40vivaldi.com), you can see it be suggested twice too. So my guess is that there are two person actors that NodeBB knows of that are claiming to be `ruari@vivaldi.com`: `https://vivaldi.com/?author=46` and `https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=46`. This is probably a bug with the [WPML+ActivityPub plugin combination](https://thomasp.vivaldi.net/2025/01/14/combining-wpml-activitypub/) they have going on. --- ### Screenshots  [@AltCode](https://community.nodebb.org/user/altcode) I forked this out to a new topic. I think it's time to loop [@pfefferle@mastodon.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/pfefferle%40mastodon.social) into the conversation (at the very least so this could be potentially escalated). Mattias, it seems that when the WPML and ActivityPub plugins are enabled together, notes federated out by the blog user in another language have different `id`s but the same `preferredUsername`. e.g. `ruari@vivaldi.com: https://vivaldi.com/?author=46` and `https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=46` NodeBB interprets this as two different users. Curiously, Mastodon does not, the second ID explicitly does not resolve. So there can be two solutions here: 1. The underlying issue can be fixed by WordPress, the solution of which is out of scope (for me at least) 2. NodeBB can adopt whatever mechanism Mastodon is using... which is _most likely_ that Mastodon does a two-way when asserting an ID, and ensures that the webfinger resource points to the ID.
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A ActivityPub shared this topic on
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The remaining questions here are: * whether `preferredUsername` is meant to be unique to the instance (in which case having multiple `id`s point to an identical `preferredUsername` would be a violation), and * what exactly AP software should do when it encounters this situation... store a list of "known alias" IDs? There are potential security issues to doing so.
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[@AltCode](https://community.nodebb.org/user/altcode) This should be fixed in the upcoming v4.3.0. https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB/issues/13352 It won't proactively remove the duplicates, but they'll be pruned out within ~7 days.
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Bit of a thought experiment here as to how to handle these duplicate accounts. (**tl;dr** two federated accounts with different IDs report the same webfinger handle, what do?) Let's say [@ruario@social.vivaldi.net](https://community.nodebb.org/user/ruario%40social.vivaldi.net) posts an English article under his account (and then is federated), and posts a translated Japanese one that is also federated, but under the _Japanese_ ID. What should NodeBB do when encountering the latter? Currently, it will try to assert the actor, fail the webfinger backreference check, and _probably_ drop the post. Not so good. One _could_ adjust the actor to the former (canonical ID), but that's not technically right either. That also opens up potential account impersonation possibilities, so that is something that would need addressing as well.
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[@pfefferle@mastodon.social](https://community.nodebb.org/user/pfefferle%40mastodon.social) just wanted to poke you about this issue again. The latest updates to NodeBB now do a webfinger backcheck to ensure that the actor has a valid webfinger entry for their purported handle. If it does not, then the user is not properly created. Mastodon also does this. This check is probably for security as well as for preventing handle collisions. The multilingual plugin in conjunction with the ActivityPub plugin creates users that share the same handle, and that causes issues with federated content. For example, [this article](https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/official-statement-regarding-the-eus-first-dma-antitrust-fines/) by [@jonvt@vivaldi.com](https://community.nodebb.org/user/jonvt%40vivaldi.com) will load up just fine in Mastodon, but [this japanese article](https://vivaldi.com/ja/blog/ios/ios-snapshots/ios-7-2-3617-4/) by [@akira@vivaldi.com](https://community.nodebb.org/user/akira%40vivaldi.com) will not, because that second article's `attributedTo` is `https://vivaldi.com/ja/?author=176`, which fails that check (the author's ID is actually https://vivaldi.com?author=176 as per the handle backcheck) cc [@AltCode](https://community.nodebb.org/user/altcode)
