On centralized platforms, user data and follower graphs are locked inside proprietary servers. The primary appeal of the open web has always been digital sovereignty—the guarantee that your identity, publishing history, and relationships belong to you rather than a platform operator.

However, migrating across ActivityPub platforms (like Mastodon, Pixelfed, or Firefish) today relies on a basic Move activity that transfers follower links while leaving historical posts, likes, and media stranded on the old host.

With the World Wide Web Consortium's newly chartered Social Web Working Group (2026–2028) putting LOLA (Live, Online Portability) on the official W3C Recommendation track, we put together an in-depth technical analysis exploring:

1. The Migration Bottleneck: Why current follower-only redirects create operational risks for creators and self-hosters.
2. How LOLA Works Under the Hood: The 4-phase synchronization model using authenticated data exports, public-key cryptographic proofs, outbox re-indexing, and WebFinger permanent redirects.
3. Architectural Comparison: ActivityPub + LOLA (domain-centric identity transfer) vs. AT Protocol + PDS (DID identity layer routing).

Read the full post here: https://opensocialbiz.com/articles/right-to-leave-w3c-lola-fediverse-account-migration

Would love to hear thoughts from instance admins and protocol devs on server-to-server state transfer vs separating identity from hosting!

I'm trying to set up an activity pub relay, based on this in a docker container:

[https://github.com/yukimochi/Activity-Relay\](https://github.com/yukimochi/Activity-Relay)

However, I'm not getting the appropriate responses from the server. Below is an example of me trying to hit the end points (/inbox, /actor) but not getting a 200 response. Testing from my friendica and mastodon instances also fail. I went round and round with Grok, but that didn't go anywhere.

`root@nidhoggur:~/docker/activity-relay# curl -I` [`http://127.0.0.1:8080\`\](http://127.0.0.1:8080)

`HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found`

`Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8`

`X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff`

`Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:11:03 GMT`

`Content-Length: 19`

`root@nidhoggur:~/docker/activity-relay# curl -I` [`http://127.0.0.1:8080/inbox\`\](http://127.0.0.1:8080/inbox)

`HTTP/1.1 405 Method Not Allowed`

`Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:11:07 GMT`

`root@nidhoggur:~/docker/activity-relay# curl -I` [`http://127.0.0.1:8080/actor\`\](http://127.0.0.1:8080/actor)

`HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request`

`Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:11:11 GMT`

The server seems to be otherwise ok:

`erver-1 | WARN[0000] RELAY_ICON: INVALID OR EMPTY. THIS COLUMN IS DISABLED.`

`server-1 | WARN[0000] RELAY_IMAGE: INVALID OR EMPTY. THIS COLUMN IS DISABLED.`

`server-1 | Welcome to Activity-Relay 2.0.10 - API Server`

`server-1 | - Configuration`

`server-1 | RELAY NAME : ARGENT WOLF Relay Service`

`server-1 | RELAY DOMAIN :` [`relay.argentwolf.org`](http://relay.argentwolf.org)

`server-1 | REDIS URL : redis://redis:6379`

`server-1 | BIND ADDRESS :` [`0.0.0.0:8080`](http://0.0.0.0:8080)

`server-1 | JOB_CONCURRENCY : 50`

`server-1 |`

`server-1 | INFO[0000] Starting API Server at` [`0.0.0.0:8080`](http://0.0.0.0:8080)

I'd appreciate any further troubleshooting help.

As i understand it, Mastodon.social blocks not only the instances it wants to (which is fine), it also blocks instances that don't themselves block certain instances.

Am I mistaken?

I’ve been watching this spec and all the implementations for about two years now and it’s getting rather frustrating to see all these clones of existing services pop up.

ActivityPub is a pretty generic spec where you can publish ANY activity (Tweet, Article, Video, anything) and your subscribers clients can decide what they can handle; yet we have PeerTube, Mastodon, PixelFed, and so forth. These each require a unique login, forcing us to fragment our identity.

I’m trying not to rant code and work on my own implementation, but we need an ActivityPub server that’s single user and stores anything, implements C2S, and we need people to build these social clones as front-ends (not backends).

Am I wrong? Am I the only person that sees this? I feel like I’m going mad 😅

If this exists, please please educate me. I seen CommonsPub tried this and then pivoted to BonFire, but progress over there seems wildly slow.

Because there is NO this follow the whole instance relay function in Mastodon,

​

Which lead to PEOPLE CAN’T get all of your instance posts in their KnownNetwork timeline even they followed your relay.(But it’s your freedom to turn it off if you installed Pleroma.)

​

Mastodon is going to let your instance with far lower visibility, especially when you try to start it. The thing can predict is, people will likely to join and stay in big and old Mastodon instance, because they got most post, small instance will become unattractive. Then the fediverse is going to recentralize.

​

​

​

(if you have a Mastodon instance already, you can find [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) (fediverse ID) to ask how to change it to be Pleroma.)

(This post is being removed on r/Mastodon, therefore I post it here)