When I moved to a static blog, I also removed comments. Or maybe I did it while I still used Wordpress, I'm not sure. The point is I didn't remove them for technical reasons, I removed them because even in 2012, hosting a comments section had already started being less rewarding than it used to be: the ratio of comments I wanted to read to comments that contributed little — disingenuous, malicious, or just clueless ones — kept getting worse.

But it's nice for a blog to provide feedback mechanisms. I see it when I read something on my RSS reader, and I want to like, or leave a short comment to let the author know I appreciate what they wrote, or give them feedback on the topic they cover.

Enter listnr.

listnr is a ActivityPub "bridge":

• it maintains a Fediverse identity (an ActivityPub actor that anyone on Mastodon can follow), like @blog@vrypan.net
• it watches my RSS feed and publishes new posts as they appear
• it provides a simple API that a small js widget can use to show likes, boosts and comments under each post.

It is built as a single executable (written in Go) and for a blog with moderate traffic, it can be hosted on a very small VPS ¹.

Why ActivityPub and not ATProto, or Farcaster or something else?

I want self-sovereignty. I don't want to depend on any external resource or service². ATProto requires me to depend on third-party relays. A Farcaster node on the other hand, requires a VPS that will cost much more³, and my RPi5/16GB at home probably couldn't handle the task.

Using ActivityPub was the only solution I could trivially self-host at home, or on a VPS for a very small amount —something I would be ok paying for even during periods I don't post much.

I’ll keep exploring options, and I may expand listnr to support more protocols if it makes sense, but for now this is the only direction that gives me self-sovereignty I can afford.