Relevance check for inbox forwarding mistakenly refers to "object being forwarded" instead of "activity being forwarded"

[trwnh]

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/clarification-re-inbox-forwarding/4239/2

https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#inbox-forwarding

When Activities are received in the inbox, the server needs to forward these to recipients that the origin was unable to deliver them to. To do this, the server MUST target and deliver to the values of to, cc, and/or audience if and only if all of the following are true:

• This is the first time the server has seen this Activity.
• The values of to, cc, and/or audience contain a Collection owned by the server.
• The values of inReplyTo, object, target and/or tag are objects owned by the server. The server SHOULD recurse through these values to look for linked objects owned by the server, and SHOULD set a maximum limit for recursion (ie. the point at which the thread is so deep the recipients followers may not mind if they are no longer getting updates that don't directly involve the recipient). The server MUST only target the values of to, cc, and/or audience on the original object being forwarded, and not pick up any new addressees whilst recursing through the linked objects (in case these addressees were purposefully amended by or via the client).

This section refers to an Activity being received for forwarding, but the emphasized section erroneously refers to an object being forwarded (instead of an activity being forwarded).

Resolution

Errata: "the original object being forwarded" -> "the original activity being forwarded"

[ap-socialhub]

This issue has been mentioned on SocialHub. There might be relevant details there:

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/clarification-re-inbox-forwarding/4239/2

[evanp]

Absolutely reasonable, this is an error in the text that can be misleading. I've created an erratum here:

https://www.w3.org/wiki/ActivityPub_errata/Proposed

Which reads: In section 7.1.2, the sentence The server MUST only target the values of to, cc, and/or audience on the original object being forwarded should read The server MUST only target the values of to, cc, and/or audience on the original activity being forwarded.

We can review at our next CG meeting and if accepted add it to the errata and the editor's draft.