Feature Request: Display blog-actor boosts as comments and allow admin rules to manage them #1965
Description
What
Display Blog-Profile Boosts as Comments and Provide Opt-Out Control
When both the user profile and blog actor are enabled in the ActivityPub plugin, the blog actor automatically boosts posts made by local users. I believe this boost activity should be visible as a comment or activity-type entry in the comment thread of the original post.
Additionally, there should be a way for the site administrator to:
- Cancel or undo such automated boosts
- Set rules to prevent the blog actor from boosting certain user posts (e.g., by user role, tag, category, etc.)
I'm not sure whether this is a design question, a bug, or a missing feature — so I'm filing it as a feature request for now.
I'm not sure how exactly this is implemented internally, but I believe that these boost activities should be displayed as comments or mentions on the original post, rather than being silently handled.
Additionally, I think there should be a setting or filter hook to disable automatic boosts from the blog-profile, or to allow the site administrator to opt-out of such behavior per user or globally.
Why
This would provide more transparency to the federation activity occurring on the post, especially when the post is being promoted by the blog actor. It would also give administrators finer control over automated federation behavior — which may be important in multi-user or editorial environments where not every post should receive equal visibility.
How
For example:
- Provide a filter hook to let developers define custom rules for auto-boosting (e.g.,
activitypub_should_auto_boost( $post_id )). - Add a checkbox or toggle in the admin UI under Settings > ActivityPub > Blog Profile to disable auto-boosting.
- Optionally, allow per-user opt-in/out via User > Profile > ActivityPub settings.