Today, the World Wide Web gained a new standard: ActivityPub. The recommendation has been published by the responsible W3C workgroup after 3 years of work, started in no small part by Christopher Lemmer Webber, founder of the Mediagoblin project. Nextcloud uses ActivityPub, implementing it to handle Activity federation between servers, crucial for our Global Scale architecture.
And indeed, you may already be using ActivityPub now without realizing it.
–Christopher Lemmer Webber
Nextcloud implements ActivityPub to inform users about changes to their files, new calendar and so on between users on different Nextcloud servers since Nextcloud 12. This makes ActivityPub part of what makes Nextcloud Global Scale work!
The Activity app which implements ActivityPub will continue to be improved, as its role has expanded over the years to inform users about a lot of things beyond file changes. Its core developer, Joas, blogged earlier about his todo list for the year, including changes to the Activity App.
Illustration of how ActivityPub works from W3.org
The origins of ActivityPub trace back to microblogging technology StatusNet, the former Laconia which was first widely implemented at identi.ca. Identi.ca has since migrated to pump.io, the successor to OStatus and the protocol it implements is essentially the base of ActivityPub. Evan Prodromou, the original author of Laconia and pump.io, designed the new protocol to use Activity Streams for commands and transfer data via a simple REST inbox API. The best place to get started to learn more about the protocol is on the W3.org website.
Christopher Lemmer Webber wrote a guest post on the Free Software Foundation blog explaining some history and features of the protocol. It provides a server-server protocol for federation and a client-server protocol for users to connect to a server. The core idea of ActivityPub is to bring together decentralized social networks, gaining critical user mass while keeping data on separate servers.
The popular Twitter alternative Mastodon is a prominent user, same goes for Mediagoblin which aims more at sharing photos and videos. And, then, Nextcloud of course!
The landing page for our upcoming Nextcloud Hub release is now live! On September 27, 2025, at 10AM (CEST), we will present the latest Nextcloud Hub live from the Nextcloud Community Conference in Berlin, Germany. And you can be part of it, too, by signing up for the online launch! While you’re registering, you might […]
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Discover the Microsoft 365 alternative by Nextcloud and IONOS: the Nextcloud Workspace office suite, launching in the course of 2025.
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Nextcloud has been recognized with the World Summit Award Germany that selects and promotes local digital innovation improving society, aiming to contribute to the United Nations' agenda of sustainable development goals.
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Nextcloud has been awarded Platinum at the IT Awards 2024. Today, we celebrate this win together!
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The first ethical, open-source AI assistant that can get a multitude of tasks done for you without compromising your data.
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MagentaCLOUD’s migration to Nextcloud in 2021 resulted in a fully equipped Online Storage with an integrated online office suite that further improves the user experience, flexibility and security for customers.
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Today, US-based file sync & share vendor Kiteworks announced their acquisition of ownCloud and Dracoon. Kiteworks points out that their customers now have access to their file-sharing application. It is to be expected they will not maintain 3 similar products, but customers will have to migrate to the US firms’ platform or look for another […]
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Nextcloud founder and CEO Frank Karlitschek earns the honorary SFS Award at the 20th annual SFSCON taking place in South Tyrol, Italy.
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As part of Schleswig-Holstein's state digitization strategy, the state chancellery has announced they will work with Nextcloud to develop AI for working with government documents. This comes just after we announced the first private AI assistant last weekend with Hub 6. The German state already uses Nextcloud and their AI strategy aligns with our work on ethical, local AI technologies.
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Over the last year, AI has become a popular topic. Some is hype, some is substance. Some is good, some is bad. We want to give you the good, not the bad, and ignore the hype! AI has a ton of opportunity – but also risk. So we put you in control – off by […]
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The countdown is on. On September 27 and 28 we are meeting up in Berlin, Germany, for the annual Nextcloud Community Conference 2025. Get ready for two full days of workshops, talks, and networking with contributors, developers, and open source enthusiasts from around the world. Do you want to deepen your technical skills? Explore the […]
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With the EU law proposal “Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse” — more commonly know as the EU Chat Control Law — our democracy is threatened from the inside: by our own governments. Citing child protection as the reason, the EU wants to backdoor end-to-end encryption, so they can access and read any […]
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Join our workshops on September 27 and 28 as we come together in Berlin, Germany, for the Nextcloud Community Conference: a weekend of connecting, sharing, and building together. This year, we’re excited to bring you a series of hands-on workshops designed to help you sharpen your skills, explore new ideas, and collaborate with experts. From […]
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