Socialize like it's 70s!

Today I was reading this awesome article:

The Boring Internet

The internet you grew up on isn’t dying. A commercial veneer glued on top of it is. A visual essay about what actually persists.

Terry GodierTerry Godier

When I reached to the point he talks about finger protocol, I directly wanted to try if that would work with ActivityPub handles. Unfortunately it didn't work.

I made a quick research and learned some details about how finger protocol works, differences between WebFinger which ActivityPub uses. Then started looking for options to make ActivityPub handles work with this old friend, finger. With the help of Claude, it didn't take long to write a finger to ActivityPub proxy server and make it live with a fancy landing page. And here it is:

finger.fedi.pub — Socialize like it’s 70s

Connect to ActivityPub actors via plain TCP port 79. No JavaScript. No tracking. Just text.

It's a few hundreds like of Python code listening 79 port, and responds with nice text based informations about the ActivityPub handles you query. Here an example response:

➜  ~ finger murat@muratcorlu.com@finger.fedi.pub
[finger.fedi.pub]
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  Murat Çorlu  (@murat@muratcorlu.com)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Type       : Person
  Profile    : https://muratcorlu.com/
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Bio:
  Software engineer and entrepreneur based in The Netherlands. Founder
  of synapsmedia.com, a Managed Hosting for Ghost CMS
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Recent posts (5 shown):

  [1] 2026-04-12 07:00 UTC  Article
    Ghost Theme Editor
    → https://muratcorlu.com/ghost-theme-editor/

  [2] 2026-04-12 00:07 UTC  Note
    Ah, what a night!
    → https://muratcorlu.com/.ghost/activitypub/note/af0f41f5-a2f9-478f-9412-b8352671434e

  [3] 2026-03-30 13:54 UTC  Note
    I'm listed as one of the 10 Most Influential People Shaping the
    Future of Business in 2026! ...Well, if I'm ok to pay $1000 for
    this. :(
    → https://muratcorlu.com/.ghost/activitypub/note/568b9211-0835-4eb5-8e64-eba1748242b1

  [4] 2026-03-20 11:28 UTC  Note
    I'm glad to start this with ThemeX. I love Trong's works, and
    now Synaps Media hosts demos of those awesome themes!
    https://www.synapsmedia.com/changelog/launching-free-ghost-
    theme-demo-hosting-starting-with-themex-studio/
    → https://muratcorlu.com/.ghost/activitypub/note/374196db-021f-4b7b-b8f1-7c229dc1983a

  [5] 2026-03-18 14:07 UTC  Note
    Anyone would like to have a menu bar app for Ghost? I needed
    this to check my social web timeline and quickly post notes.
    Would you have other use cases?
    → https://muratcorlu.com/.ghost/activitypub/note/8facef98-5e18-40a4-ac37-d346c45cc8e4
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

It's dynamically fetching requested handle from its WebFinger endpoints, parses them and generate text based responses.

finger command is already built-in on unix based systems like Linux and macOS. If you use one of them, just open a terminal and write:

finger murat@muratcorlu.com@finger.fedi.pub

Or any ActivityPub handles from any other Ghost sites, Mastodon accounts, Wordpress sites enabled ActivityPub.

It's definitely not something you will rely on daily, but to me, it's fascinating to see we can still make useful things with the protocols created 50+ years ago. This is the great side of open protocols, over company backed systems. They last forever, they are independent, and easy to rely on. Let's don't miss this and be aware of the importance of using decentralized protocols.