Feature Request: Disable fediverse interactions (likes and reposts) in WP-admin

[rghedin]

I've noticed that a recent update on ActivityPub plugin enabled interactions from fediverse to show up in WP, and those likes and reposts appears as comments. These:

A few readers complained that they are getting this interactions as new comments notifications (from Subscribe to Comments Reloaded plugin). Since I don't expose fediverse interactions in my layout/template, I guess maybe adding an option to disable them could be offered?

[tante]

Yes please.

Currently you can only disable everything (by setting ACTIVITYPUB_DISABLE_INCOMING_INTERACTIONS=true) which is not fine granular enough. Likes and Reposts are conceptually something different than a comment and it should be possible to handle them differently.

[IAmDarthMole]

I'm new to the AP plugin, so I'm still learning everything. My apologies if my question seems off...

@rghedin @tante is the request to not have "Likes" and "Boosts" (reposts) appear on your WordPress site period or just not as comments in the Admin section?

There have been a couple of times now that I've noticed a "Like" and "Boost" (repost) by an account that was clearly a spam account (not a bot but some kind of crypto advert) that I was happy to be able to block from appearing on my WP site. Not sure how blocking the "comment" effects the wider fediverse but at least it isn't visible on my site.

[rghedin]

Just in the dashboard (admin), @IAmDarthMole. My blog doesn't show likes and reposts from fediverse on front-end.

[jeherve]

Also suggested in #1302 and #1111

[jeherve]

This was also brought up on the Fediverse:

Every time someone liked/boosted one of my blog pages, it created a comment for me to approve/reject, which got very annoying.

Maybe we could include a new discussion or ActivityPub setting, where site owners would opt not to display Reactions in wp-admin comments.
In such scenarios, I think those reactions should still be stored in the db, but just not returned in the comment list. I suppose a more hardcore approach would be to not store them at all.

@pfefferle I'd be curious to have your take on this.

[edent]

Here's some code you can put in your functions.php to remove Likes and Reposts

add_action( 'comment_post', 'check_comment_content', 10, 2 );
function check_comment_content( $comment_id, $comment_approved ) {
	$comment = get_comment( $comment_id );
	// Check if the comment is a like or repost
	if ( $comment->comment_type == "like" || $comment->comment_type == "repost" ) {
		// Set the comment status to 'trash'
		wp_delete_comment( $comment_id );
		//	Stop processing
		die();
	}
}

[rghedin]

Thanks, @edent! Does this code act retroactivelly (delete past likes and reposts) or it only works from now on?

[edent]

It isn't retroactive, sorry. The function runs every time a new comment comes in.

[pfefferle]

You can simply unhook the handlers for Like and Announce, then you will no longer receive interactions aside from comments.

\remove_action( 'activitypub_inbox_like', array( '\Activitypub\Handler\Like', 'handle_like' ) );
\remove_action( 'activitypub_inbox_announce', array( '\Activitypub\Handler\Announce', 'handle_announce' ) );

This is also not retroactive!