Mentions of bridged users in the fediverse sometimes link to actor id JSON

[cybeardjm]

I found & followed my bridged BS account (@didiermary.fr@bsky.brid.gy) from Pixelfed.
If I do a search for it in Pixelfed, it appears properly and I can view an empty profile (https://pixelfed.social/i/web/profile/692539545976601408).
But on this empty profile, if I click on the settings cog and select "view remote profile", I get a JSON page: https://bsky.brid.gy/ap/did:plc:l2uv6ivfedhsjjmfmndx7p26

[snarfed]

Interesting! And unfortunate. That's the ActivityPub actor. Looks like Pixelfed is using the actor's id as the remote profile URL, when it should be using url (https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/didiermary.fr) instead, which works fine, and which other fediverse servers use. @dansup want us to file a Pixelfed bug?

[snarfed]

#1395 inspired me to look at this again. For a second, I thought the problem was multi-valued urls, but no. https://fed.brid.gy/snarfed.org has a bare string url value, and Pixelfed still links to its id instead, eg https://piconic.co/i/web/profile/505878279501544052 (requires login).

[snarfed]

Also, oddly, Mastodon does this too, but only for the bot users like @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy? Eg https://mastodon.social/@tantek.com@tantek.com handles that fine and links you to the first value, but https://mastodon.social/@bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy links to the id value instead. Grr.

[snarfed]

cc @edent @jfietkau

[snarfed]

^ More reports of this, in Mastodon. Ugh. Updated the description.

It still seems like the fediverse servers are doing the wrong thing here and linking users to the actors' id instead of url. However, an easy band-aid on Bridgy Fed's side would be to do conneg on fetches of actor ids, and if they're not asking for AS2, redirect them to the original account profile instead.

[Tamschi]

I'll remove the blocked label since Bridgy Fed could work around this issue somewhat straightforwardly.

[snarfed]

Fixed! I think. Should be deployed in ~7m.

[Tamschi]

It works 👍
(Tested with the JSON link in the OP.)

[jfietkau]

Congrats, I've run into this problem a few times and this will help avoid confusion. 👍

With that cleared up, I believe there is something else going on in #1441 (and #1429) that might warrant another look. In both cases, the links in the posts were mentions that were supposed to lead to a local profile view on the user's server and not to the Bridgy Fed web view at all (the JSON response was just incidental). The submitter of #1429 is currently continuing his investigation of the cause.

The local server is supposed to transform the tag into a local link, so the question is why it isn't doing that and whether anything about Bridgy Fed's AP output is the reason.

[snarfed]

@jfietkau yes! We've struggled with fediverse @-mentions in Bridgy Fed for many years #959, #493. (Hashtags were a similar years-long struggle, fwiw.) You're right, when BF bridges an @-mention into the fediverse, right now the receiving server only sometimes translates it into a local link to the profile, not always. I don't know why yet.

The next thing to try is probably #887. That seems maybe promising. However, honestly, this isn't a high priority for me right now, especially given how difficult and finicky it was to get @-mentions working in the fediverse (mainly Mastodon) at all.

Feel free to jump into #887 if you're interested though!