MSC2677: Annotations and reactions

proposals/2677-reactions.md

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+# MSC2677: Annotations and Reactions
+
+Users sometimes wish to respond to a message using emojis.  When such responses
+are grouped visually below the message being reacted to, this provides a
+(visually) light-weight way for users to react to messages.
+
+This proposal was originally part of [MSC1849](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1849).
+
+## Background
+
+As with [message
+edits](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/blob/main/proposals/2676-message-editing.md#background),
+support for reactions were landed in the Element clients and Synapse in May
+2019, following the proposals of
+[MSC1849](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1849) and then
+presented as being "production-ready", despite them not yet having been adopted
+into the Matrix specification.
+
+Again as with edits, the current situation is therefore that client or server
+implementations hoping to interact with Element users must simply follow the
+examples of that implementation.
+
+To rectify the situation, this MSC therefore seeks primarily to formalise the
+status quo. Although there is plenty of scope for improvement, we consider
+that better done in *future* MSCs, based on a shared understanding of the
+*current* implementation.
+
+In short, this MSC prefers fidelity to the current implementations over
+elegance of design.
+
+On the positive side: this MSC is the last part of the former MSC1849 to be
+formalised, and is by far the most significant feature implemented by the
+Element clients which has yet to be specified.
+
+## Proposal
+
+### `m.annotation` event relationship type
+
+A new [event relationship type](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#relationship-types)
+with a `rel_type` of `m.annotation`.
+
+This relationship type is intended primarily for handling emoji reactions, allowing clients to
+send an event which annotates an existing event.
+
+Another potential usage of annotations is for bots, which could use them to
+report the success/failure or progress of a command.
+
+Along with the normal properties `event_id` and `rel_type`, the
+[`m.relates_to`](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#definition-mrelates_to)
+property should contains a `key` that indicates the annotation being
+applied. For example, when reacting with emojis, the `key` contains the emoji
+being used.
+
+An event annotating another with the thumbs-up emoji would therefore have the following `m.relates_to` propperty:
+
+```json
+"m.relates_to": {
+    "rel_type": "m.annotation",
+    "event_id": "$some_event_id",
+    "key": "👍"
+}
+```
+
+When sending emoji reactions, the `key` property should include the unicode
+[emoji presentation
+selector](https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#def_emoji_presentation_selector)
+(`\uFE0F`) for codepoints which allow it (see the [emoji variation sequences
+list](https://www.unicode.org/Public/UCD/latest/ucd/emoji/emoji-variation-sequences.txt)).
+
+Any `type` of event is eligible for an annotation, including state events.
+
+### `m.reaction` event type
+
+A new message type `m.reaction` is proposed to indicate that a user is reacting
+to a message. No `content` properties are defined for this event type: it serves
+only to hold a relationship to another event.
+
+For example, an `m.reaction` event which annotates an existing event with a 👍
+looks like:
+
+```json
+{
+    "type": "m.reaction",
+    "content": {
+        "m.relates_to": {
+            "rel_type": "m.annotation",
+            "event_id": "$some_event_id",
+            "key": "👍"
+        }
+    }
+}
+```
+
+Since they contain no `content` other than `m.relates_to`, `m.reaction` events
+are normally not encrypted, as there would be no benefit in doing so. (However,
+see [Encrypted reactions](#encrypted-reactions) below.)
+
+### Interation with edited events
+
+It is not considered valid to send an annotation for a [replacement
+event](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#event-replacements)
+(i.e., a message edit event): any reactions should refer to the original
+event. Annotations of replacement events will be ignored according to the rules
+for [counting annotations](#counting-annotations).
+
+As an aside, note that it is not possible to edit a reaction, since replacement
+events do not change `m.relates_to` (see [Applying
+`m.new_content`](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#applying-mnew_content)),
+and there is no other meaningful content within `m.reaction`.  If a user wishes
+to change their reaction, the original reaction should be redacted and a new
+one sent in its place.
+
+### Counting annotations
+
+The intention of annotations is that they are counted up, rather than being displayed individually.
+
+Clients must keep count of the number of annotations with a given event `type`
+and annotation `key` they observe for each event; these counts are typically
+presented alongside the event in the timeline.
+
+When performing this count:
+
+ * Each event `type` and annotation `key` should normally be counted separately,
+   though whether to actually do so is an implementation decision.
+
+ * Annotation events sent by [ignored users](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#ignoring-users)
+   should be excluded from the count.
+
+ * Multiple identical annotations (i.e., with the same event `type` and
+   annotation `key`) from the same user (i.e., events with the same `sender`) should
+   be treated as a single annotation.
+
+ * It is not considered valid to annotate an event which itself has an
+   `m.relates_to` with `rel_type: m.annotation` or `rel_type:
+   m.replace`. Implementations should ignore any such annotation events.
+
+ * When an annotation is redacted, it is removed from the count.
+
+### Push rules
+
+Since reactions are considered "metadata" that annotate an existing event, they
+should not by default trigger notifications.  Thus a new [default override
+rule](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#default-override-rules)
+is to be added that ignores reaction events:
+
+```json
+{
+    "rule_id": ".m.rule.reaction",
+    "default": true,
+    "enabled": true,
+    "conditions": [
+        {
+            "kind": "event_match",
+            "key": "type",
+            "pattern": "m.reaction"
+        }
+    ],
+    "actions": []
+}
+```
+
+The rule is added between `.m.rule.tombstone` and `.m.rule.room.server_acl`.
+
+(Synapse implementation: [base_rules.rs](https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/blob/157c571f3e9d3d09cd763405b6a9eb967f2807e7/rust/src/push/base_rules.rs#L216-L229))
+
+### Server support
+
+#### Avoiding duplicate annotations
+
+Homeservers should prevent users from sending a second annotation for a given
+event with identical event `type` and annotation `key` (unless the first event
+has been redacted).
+
+Attempts to send such an annotation should be rejected with a 400 error and an
+error code of `M_DUPLICATE_ANNOTATION`.
+
+Note that this does not guarantee that duplicate annotations will not arrive
+over federation. Clients and servers are responsible for deduplicating received
+annotations when [counting annotations](#counting-annotations).
+
+#### Server-side aggregation of `m.annotation` relationships
+
+`m.annotation` relationships are *not* [aggregated](https://spec.matrix.org/v1.6/client-server-api/#aggregations)
+by the server. In other words, `m.annotation` is not included in the `m.relations` property.
+
+## Alternatives
+
+### Encrypted reactions
+
+[matrix-spec#660](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/issues/660)
+discusses the possibility of encrypting message relationships in general.
+
+Given that reactions do not rely on server-side aggregation support, an easier
+solution to encrypting reactions might be not to use the relationships
+framework at all and instead just use a keys within `m.reaction` events, which
+could then be encrypted. For example, a reaction could instead be formatted as:
+
+```json5
+{
+    "type": "m.reaction",
+    "content": {
+       "event_id": "$some_event_id",
+       "key": "👍"
+    }
+}
+```
+
+### Extended annotation use case
+
+In future it might be useful to be able to annotate events with more
+information, some examples include:
+
+  * Annotate commit/PR notification messages with their associated CI state, e.g.
+    pending/passed/failed.
+  * If a user issues a command to a bot, e.g. `!deploy-site` the bot could
+    annotate that event with current state, like "acknowledged",
+    "redeploying...", "success", "failed", etc.
+  * Other use cases...?
+
+However, this doesn't really work with the proposed grouping, as the aggregation
+key wouldn't contain the right information needed to display it (unlike for
+reactions).
+
+One way to potentially support this is to include the events (or a subset of the
+event) when grouping, so that clients have enough information to render them.
+However this dramatically inceases the size of the parent event if we bundle the
+full events inside, even if limit the number we bundle in. To reduce the
+overhead the annotation event could include a `m.result` field which gets
+included.
+
+This would look something like the following, where the annotation is:
+
+```json
+{
+  "type": "m.bot_command_response",
+  "content": {
+    "m.result": {
+      "state": "success",
+    },
+    "m.relates_to": {
+      "type": "m.annotation",
+      "key": ""
+    }
+  }
+}
+```
+
+and gets bundled into an event like:
+
+```json
+{
+  "unsigned": {
+    "m.relations": {
+      "m.annotation": [
+        {
+          "type": "m.bot_command_response",
+          "key": "",
+          "count": 1,
+          "chunk": [
+            {
+              "m.result": {
+                "state": "success",
+              },
+            }
+          ],
+          "limited": false,
+        }
+      ]
+    }
+  }
+}
+```
+
+This is something that could be added later on. A few issues with this are:
+
+  * How does this work with E2EE? How do we encrypt the `m.result`?
+  * We would end up including old annotations that had been superceded, should
+    these be done via edits instead?
+
+## Security considerations
+
+Clients should render reactions that have a long `key` field in a sensible
+manner. For example, clients can elide overly-long reactions.
+
+If using reactions for upvoting/downvoting purposes we would almost certainly want to anonymise the
+reactor, at least from other users if not server admins, to avoid retribution problems.
+This gives an unfair advantage to people who run their own servers however and
+can cheat and deanonymise (and publish) reactor details.  In practice, reactions may
+not be best used for upvote/downvote as at the unbundled level they are intrinsically
+private data.
+
+Or in a MSC1228 world... we could let users join the room under an anonymous
+persona from a big public server in order to vote?  However, such anonymous personae
+would lack any reputation data.