If you thought slashing tariffs by 115% to ease global tensions around an impending recession was good news, just wait till you hear what we've got in store for you this week when it comes to ActivityPub.

Last week, we shipped the ability to block individual users with ActivityPub, so you can limit interactions from people you would rather not engage with. We also touched on the idea that thoughtful moderation can't be achieved with a single feature, but rather is something that requires a collection of tools.

What's new with ActivityPub?

Building on that collection, this week we shipped support for blocking domains with ActivityPub. Domain blocking is a powerful way to limit entire servers in the fediverse, rather than just a single user.

Now, if you get spam or abuse from @bob@spam.com , @sally@spam.com, and @bot@spam.com, you don't have to go and block each user manually. Instead, you can block the entire @spam.com domain to limit interactions from all users on that server.

Once a domain is blocked, you'll no longer see posts or notifications from any of those users, and they won't be able to interact with your profile.

In the upcoming week, we'll also add new setting screens to allow you to easily look up all your blocked users and domains and make changes to it if needed.

Notifications improvements

A small but significant design improvement also went out last week, making it much easier to spot when someone sends you a reply using ActivityPub.

While follows, likes, and reposts are useful signals that your content is getting engagement, we wanted to highlight even more clearly when you get a reply or comment on something you've posted – so you never miss out on a conversation.

If you visit the explore section, you'll also see that this week (for the first time since this newsletter started) we are no longer the most popular user of ActivityPub on Ghost!

404Media have overtaken us and moved into the number 1 slot as the largest website sending out all their newsletters with ActivityPub, and they've been getting some great conversations going in the replies on their posts.

If you haven't already followed, they're a great example to take a look at.

By the way, we're tweaking and updating the list of sites featured in the Explore section each week. Our sorting is based on a combination of popularity and activity. People using ActivityPub the most are the most likely to get featured!

Finally, we know there are still some issues with custom usernames and Bluesky sharing. We haven't gotten to the bottom of it just yet, but we're working on it.