Issue: Following Behavior Inconsistency

[Jiwoon-Kim]

When attempting to follow a threads.net profile using the blog profile (group actor) (e.g., @newsfeed@travel-in-busan.com), the follow request remains in a pending state and does not complete.

In contrast, when using a user profile (e.g., @thaumiel999@travel-in-busan.com) to follow the same threads.net profile, the follow request is processed successfully.

Additionally, when the user profile @thaumiel999@travel-in-busan.com attempts to follow the blog profile (group) @newsfeed@travel-in-busan.com, the request also remains pending. However, there is currently no way to approve this follow request from the blog profile in the Settings > ActivityPub > Followers admin interface.

[obenland]

I'm not sure that's a plugin issue and suspect that it's something where Threads might limit follows to Person actors.

[Jiwoon-Kim]

@obenland Is the current ActivityPub plugin also limiting follows to Person actors?
If so, then the behavior I observed and your explanation would make sense together as part of the same logic.

[obenland]

Is the current ActivityPub plugin also limiting follows to Person actors?

No, there is no restriction on actor type.

[Jiwoon-Kim]

I was curious whether following is somehow limited within the same instance because of this part:

Additionally, when the user profile @thaumiel999@travel-in-busan.com attempts to follow the blog profile (group) @newsfeed@travel-in-busan.com, the request also remains pending. However, there is currently no way to approve this follow request from the blog profile in the Settings > ActivityPub > Followers admin interface.

[obenland]

That might be a bug? Not sure

[obenland]

Looks like that's by design. Not sure if we want to change that for Follow activities.

[Jiwoon-Kim]

Yes, I tested this by creating two accounts on different sites and attempting to follow, and the requests are also set to pending. It seems like this is either intentional behavior or a bug.

[Jiwoon-Kim]

It’s possible that following behavior differs depending on whether it happens within the same instance or across instances.

When following a profile on the same instance, the request may be handled locally (without federation), which could cause it to remain in a pending state if the approval logic isn’t triggered.

In contrast, when following a remote profile, the request flows through the federation layer and is stored in the remote-related tables (e.g., followers table mapped to external actors), so the processing path is different.

👉 This difference in handling local vs. remote follow requests might explain why local follows remain pending while remote ones are processed normally.