How to start_activity with intent of opening a url with Python?

Honestly I don’t understand what you mean, the command and parameter of the appium’s startActivity method are the same. Now I don’t understand why you inserted a link to the Android documentation that helps you learn how to develop android apps in your question, do you know what an intent is? I think you are trying to do something similar to this question:

java - Open a Facebook post URL in android Facebook app programmatically - Stack Overflow

If so, do you know how to program for android? You have to understand what this code does to replicate it in another language