fep/fep/db70/fep-db70.md

slug, authors, status, dateReceived, discussionsTo, trackingIssue

slug	authors	status	dateReceived	discussionsTo	trackingIssue
db70	Fred Hauschel <@naturzukunft2026@mastodon.social>	DRAFT	2026-03-15	https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-db70-removeall-collection-activity/8569	https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/issues/784

FEP-db70: RemoveAll Collection Activity

Summary

This FEP defines a RemoveAll activity for batch-removing items from an ActivityPub collection. While the ActivityPub specification defines Remove for removing items from a collection, it requires the client to know the identity of every item to remove. RemoveAll fills this gap. It supports an optional FEP-34c1 filter to selectively remove items matching specific criteria (e.g. by type, by date, or by actor). Without a filter, all items are removed. RemoveAll is a generic collection operation — it can be used with any collection type, not just inboxes or notification collections.

Motivation

ActivityPub's Remove activity requires the client to know the identity of every object to remove from a target collection. For collections that can grow large, clients need a way to batch-remove items without sending individual Remove activities for each item. Common use cases include:

• "Mark all as read" in a notification collection (FEP-34ec)
• Clearing old items from a collection
• Removing all items matching a specific filter (e.g. all items of a certain type)

Without a batch operation, a client must first fetch all items, then send individual Remove activities — which is both slow and prone to race conditions.

Specification

1. The RemoveAll Activity

RemoveAll is a new activity type that removes multiple items from a target collection.

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    "https://w3id.org/fep/db70"
  ],
  "type": "RemoveAll",
  "actor": "https://example.com/actors/bob",
  "target": "https://example.com/actors/bob/notifications"
}

Properties

Property	Type	Required	Description
type	String	MUST	RemoveAll
actor	IRI	MUST	The actor performing the operation
target	IRI	MUST	The collection to remove items from
filter	FilterRequest	MAY	A FEP-34c1 filter to select which items to remove

Without a filter, the server MUST remove all items from the target collection.

2. Filtered RemoveAll (with FEP-34c1)

When a filter property is present, only items matching the filter are removed. The filter uses the FEP-34c1 FilterRequest format with TREE relations.

Remove all items matching a specific property value:

{
  "@context": [
    "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
    "https://w3id.org/fep/db70",
    "https://w3id.org/fep/34c1",
    "https://w3id.org/tree"
  ],
  "type": "RemoveAll",
  "actor": "https://example.com/actors/bob",
  "target": "https://example.com/actors/bob/some-collection",
  "filter": {
    "type": "FilterRequest",
    "relation": [
      {
        "type": "EqualToRelation",
        "path": { "@id": "rdf:type" },
        "value": { "@id": "as:Create" }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Remove all items older than a given date:

{
  "type": "RemoveAll",
  "actor": "https://example.com/actors/bob",
  "target": "https://example.com/actors/bob/some-collection",
  "filter": {
    "type": "FilterRequest",
    "relation": [
      {
        "type": "LessThanRelation",
        "path": { "@id": "as:published" },
        "value": { "@value": "2026-02-17T00:00:00Z", "@type": "xsd:dateTime" }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Combine multiple filter criteria (AND):

{
  "type": "RemoveAll",
  "actor": "https://example.com/actors/bob",
  "target": "https://example.com/actors/bob/some-collection",
  "filter": {
    "type": "FilterRequest",
    "relation": [
      {
        "type": "EqualToRelation",
        "path": { "@id": "rdf:type" },
        "value": { "@id": "as:Create" }
      },
      {
        "type": "LessThanRelation",
        "path": { "@id": "as:published" },
        "value": { "@value": "2026-02-17T00:00:00Z", "@type": "xsd:dateTime" }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Multiple relation entries are combined with AND — all criteria must match for an item to be removed.

3. Server Behavior

• The server MUST remove all matching items from the target collection
• The server MUST verify that the actor is authorized to modify the target collection
• If the target collection does not exist, the server MUST respond with 404 Not Found
• Unauthorized requests MUST be rejected with 401 Unauthorized
• Whether removed items are deleted or archived is determined by the collection's semantics (e.g. FEP-34ec specifies that removed notifications MUST be deleted)

4. Response

The server SHOULD respond with 200 OK and the number of removed items:

{
  "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "summary": "Removed 12 items from the collection"
}

Security Considerations

• RemoveAll without a filter removes all items from a collection. Servers SHOULD ensure that the actor is authorized for the target collection.
• Servers SHOULD implement rate limiting for RemoveAll operations.

Conformance

A conforming server MUST:

• Process RemoveAll activities targeting a collection owned by the actor
• Remove all items when no filter is present
• Remove only matching items when a FEP-34c1 filter is present

A conforming server SHOULD:

• Support FEP-34c1 FilterRequest in the filter property

Implementations

• ChangingGraph (reference implementation, in progress)

References

• Christine Lemmer-Webber, Jessica Tallon, Erin Shepherd, Amy Guy, Evan Prodromou, ActivityPub, 2018
• James M Snell, Evan Prodromou, Activity Streams 2.0, 2017
• naturzukunft, [FEP-34c1: Collection Filtering using TREE Hypermedia], 2025
• naturzukunft, [FEP-34ec: Notification Collection Endpoint], 2026
• TREE Hypermedia Vocabulary

Copyright

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.