The problem is not with ActivityPub, but the implementations. No one ever claimed that it should be only a push-based system, but it seems that everyone working on AP software can only think in terms of server-to-server interactions to get the data and then reinvent the wheel by developing their ad-hoc API.
AP is fine if we treat it as a messaging protocol and use it to power offline-first applications. The devices do not need to have all the network’s data, just the one that the user has actively interacted with.
The problem is not with ActivityPub, but the implementations. No one ever claimed that it should be only a push-based system, but it seems that everyone working on AP software can only think in terms of server-to-server interactions to get the data and then reinvent the wheel by developing their ad-hoc API.
AP is fine if we treat it as a messaging protocol and use it to power offline-first applications. The devices do not need to have all the network’s data, just the one that the user has actively interacted with.