Building a Mastodon Compatible Java Server for ActivityPub
Sean Nian, Angela Huang, Ben Reed

TL;DR
This paper presents the development of a Java-based Mastodon-compatible server implementing ActivityPub, facilitating interoperability within the Fediverse and expanding the options for decentralized social networking server development.
Contribution
The paper introduces a novel Java Spring Boot implementation of ActivityPub compatible with Mastodon, demonstrating interoperability within the Fediverse.
Findings
Successfully built a Mastodon-compatible server in Java
Achieved interoperability with existing Mastodon servers
Provided a foundation for further Java-based Fediverse development
Abstract
ActivityPub is a decentralized social networking protocol that has gained significant attention from the media for its ability to communicate through the Fediverse, short for the federated web. Servers such as Mastodon implement the ActivityPub protocol to communicate over the Fediverse. In this paper, we deconstruct the core protocols used to build the distributed servers of the Fediverse. We explore Mastodon's complex implementation of ActivityPub and created our own Mastodon instance using Java Spring Boot and ActivityPub to interoperate with Mastodon servers.
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Taxonomy
TopicsMultimedia Communication and Technology · Data Visualization and Analytics · Software System Performance and Reliability
