diff --git a/src/activitypub/actors.js b/src/activitypub/actors.js
index 3c7f11d0c4..250afc4fc9 100644
--- a/src/activitypub/actors.js
+++ b/src/activitypub/actors.js
@@ -19,6 +19,16 @@ Actors.assert = async (ids, options = {}) => {
 	// Filter out uids if passed in
 	ids = ids.filter(id => !utils.isNumber(id));
 
+	// Translate webfinger handles to uris
+	ids = await Promise.all(ids.map(async (id) => {
+		if (id.includes('@')) {
+			({ actorUri: id } = await activitypub.helpers.query(id));
+		}
+
+		return id;
+	}));
+
+
 	// Filter out existing
 	if (!options.update) {
 		const exists = await db.isSortedSetMembers('usersRemote:lastCrawled', ids.map(id => ((typeof id === 'object' && id.hasOwnProperty('id')) ? id.id : id)));
diff --git a/src/user/index.js b/src/user/index.js
index b518c78abf..971a2ab10d 100644
--- a/src/user/index.js
+++ b/src/user/index.js
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ const db = require('../database');
 const privileges = require('../privileges');
 const categories = require('../categories');
 const meta = require('../meta');
+const activitypub = require('../activitypub');
 const utils = require('../utils');
 
 const User = module.exports;
@@ -111,7 +112,8 @@ User.getUidByUserslug = async function (userslug) {
 	}
 
 	if (userslug.includes('@')) {
-		return (await db.getObjectField('handle:uid', userslug)) || 0;
+		await activitypub.actors.assert(userslug);
+		return (await db.getObjectField('handle:uid', userslug)) || null;
 	}
 
 	return await db.sortedSetScore('userslug:uid', userslug);