I am sure it was discussed here before, but I can’t find a good way to search this community.

Are there any arguments against having a user’s identity federate, and be compatible across platforms?

For example, let us say I sign up with my instance, matcha_addict@lemy.lol

But what if I go on mastodon, and I want to have my own micro blog. Or maybe go to write freely and post some blog posts. I’d have to make a different account on each one.

What if mastodon or write freely could just let me log in with my lemmy account (or lets call it federated account). This has several benefits:

  • users don’t have to scratch their head on if I am the same person or not across these platforms
  • theoretically, someone following my feed can get updates on what I do on multiple platforms

Now I understand this would be difficult to implement and iron out all the edge cases, but am I missing anything on why it wouldn’t be a desirable feature, given it is implemented?

  • rglullisAEnglish
    19·
    11 days ago

    This is a controversial issue.

    Some people don’t care about having an unique identity and actually favor creating multiple accounts on each service, to present themselves with different avatars depending on who they are interacting with. They are not “attached” to their identities and see this an opportunity to stay pseudonymous online and protect their “real” identity.

    Some people think that the instance you join should be also somewhat indicative of your tribe and that they should be able to filter out who they talk about by checking the domain. This view is especially favored by the Mastodon crowd.

    And then some other people (I think I would include myself) would like to be able to not just “use” a single identity, but to have portable identity in the Fediverse as a way to ensure that we can remain sovereign over our online presence. I would personally love for Communick customers to be able to use their personal domain, because that would mean that if even if I closed down things tomorrow, they would be able to migrate easily and without depending on me.

    • matcha_addict@lemy.lolOPEnglish
      8·
      11 days ago

      Some […] favor creating multiple accounts on each service

      That’s fine, this feature wouldn’t prevent them!

      What you mentioned in your last paragraph is in line with what I want, but maybe more of a next step from there.

      • rglullisAEnglish
        3·
        11 days ago

        So far, the only Fediverse project that lets users with different domains (and identities) under the same server is Takahe, but its development is a bit stalled and it is only supporting Mastodon.

        Are you asking all these questions out of mere curiosity or are you willing to commit some type of effort and/or resources to see this happening?

        • matcha_addict@lemy.lolOPEnglish
          2·
          11 days ago

          It is regarding something I’m working on, but you may not find it interesting as it is not ActivityPub based (but a bridge will be implemented).

          • rglullisAEnglish
            2·
            11 days ago

            If it’s open source, yes I am (very) interested.

            • matcha_addict@lemy.lolOPEnglish
              2·
              11 days ago

              It will be yes! Right now I only have it locally and its messy, but the idea is like this:

              • Your home feed allows customizing the sorting algorithm. There’s a sensible chronological-based algorithm, but you can customize it more.

              • Content is organized into feeds.

              • By default, you have your own personal feed similar to a micro blogging platform.

              • but you have the ability to have multiple feeds. For example, maybe you’re into both technology and wood working, but not all followers are interested in both. So you have separate feeds, and users can follow one or the other.

              • A feed isn’t only for one person’s posts. For example, I might maintain a woodworking feed, but I’d “share” posts from other wood workers. In essence, I am a sort of “content curator”. I pick out the good woodworking content and put it in a single feed for you to follow!

              • A feed can be like a Lemmy community or a Facebook Group. So it can allow multiple posters, it can be open to anyone to post, or it can be approval-only (but submitted from anyone). It can also be private or public (though that’s a low priority feature)

              • A feed can use another feed as a source / baseline. This might mean that you get all the other feed’s posts, but maybe you as the maintainer filter it further, or add some of your own. Or you can use multiple feeds as the source, so maybe there are multiple good wood working feeds and I like them all, so I combine them

              In my opinion, this replaces automated algorithms with manual curation. It also replaces moderation, as you might like a community but wish it was differently moderated, there might be another feed that sources the first feed but with extra moderation!

              The project is still in its infancy and I don’t get too much time to work on it. But since you’re interested, I’ll try to get it into an open source-able state (albeit far from workable) and let you know when I do!

              • rglullisAEnglish
                2·
                11 days ago

                I might have good news for you: you don’t need to drop ActivityPub to do that. Maybe what you are looking for is very close to my idea of a social web browser, i.e, an ActivityPub-based application that is controlled by the client and not the server.

                What programming language are you working on?

    • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
      14·
      11 days ago

      At a more abstract level, inviting a bunch of people to play a game, and then changing the rules of the game, is a shitty thing to do.

      The fediverse has rules built into it. It has a way that it works. Changing that makes it something else.

      • rglullisAEnglish
        1·
        11 days ago

        I am not following. What rules do you think are being changed?

        • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
          12·
          10 days ago

          Identity belonging to an instance, changing to identity belonging to the fediverse as a whole.

          Identities containing @instance format.

          Identities being federated.

          • rglullisAEnglish
            1·
            10 days ago

            This is an implementation detail, it’s not required by any part whatsoever of the activitypub protocol.

            All that AP cares about is that actors have an URL for their inboxes and outboxes. You can have even servers to serve your actor id from a different domain in your instances.

            Hell, you can even have no “instance” at all. You can have just a bunch of static files to serve your webfinger queries and bio and even the outbox, regardless of the username that you have.

            I think it’s fine to have people trying to use a simplified mental model to understand new concepts. But it becomes a problem when people start taking these mental models and try to justify their opinions on incomplete abstractions.

            • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
              11·
              10 days ago

              The vast majority of people who use lemmy have not read the activitypub protocol, and signed up to use lemmy as it exists today

              • rglullisAEnglish
                1·
                10 days ago

                And web browsers were only meant to be a language for formatting documents, yet software engineers realized it could do a lot more than that.

                It’s not just because someone design things one way that automatically all other use cases become invalid. This argument makes no sense.