This document proposes a standard for managing viewership history across the Fediverse. It addresses the common issue of posts being repeatedly shown to users on different clients. The goal is to enable servers to track which posts have been viewed by individual users and ensure that clients do not display these posts again. This proposal aims to enhance user experience by preventing the redundant display of already seen posts, commonly requested as “Hide already seen posts” or “stop repeating already seen posts”.
When a user views a post, the server should create a record of this event. This record will include the following properties:
id (REQUIRED): the unique identifier of the viewership record.type (REQUIRED): the type of the object MUST be ViewershipRecord.actor (REQUIRED): the actor who viewed the post.object (REQUIRED): the unique identifier of the post that was viewed.published (RECOMMENDED): the date and time at which the post was viewed.Clients should query the server for viewership records to determine whether a post has been viewed by the user. The server should provide an endpoint for clients to fetch viewership records for a specific user.
When fetching posts, clients must filter out posts that have been viewed by the user based on the viewership records. This ensures that users are not shown the same posts repeatedly.
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
To the extent possible under law, the authors of this Fediverse Enhancement Proposal have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.