We are making a big mistake in the #Fediverse when we ask people to sign up for Mastodon.

Johannes Ernst

@ShadSterling @damon I think we need to get to the point where each instance operator communicates directly with their prospective user where their prospective users are likely going to hang out. Say: libraries for instances focused on literature, or furry conferences for instances focused on furries. Avenues through something like joinmastodon.org (which are software-focused) should be secondary at best.

damon

@j12t
Same point. It’s not so much use different software, it’s recommend an instance it doesn’t have to be Mastodon and it doesn’t not have to be Mastodon. But, to spread the Fediverse it needs to go beyond Mastodon and to get people to try & stay it needs to be instances that are being recommended

damon

@ShadSterling

We have some but there is work to be done. Instances.social, https://fedidb.org/network

Jupiter Rowland

@damon @ShadSterling @Johannes Ernst Ideally, an instance picker would help pick a project along with the instance.

But what we have right now seems to be

either "Choose a project, then we'll go from there"
or railroading to Mastodon because only Mastodon instances can be recommended

Just about everyone who has joined the Fediverse in the last two years was railroaded to Mastodon and not being told what the Fediverse actually is. Some of them it took months to learn that there's stuff in the Fediverse that's connected to Mastodon but so very much not Mastodon itself. And when they learned it, some of them were shocked out of their minds. Others still don't know, sometimes after well over a year.

It cannot continue this way. We must no longer sweep everything under the rug that doesn't have an Inc. and a CEO.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #NotOnlyMastodon #FediverseIsNotMastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse

ShadSterling

@j12t @damon choosing an instance specific to one of the many subjects that interest me is contrary to how I relate to those communities. I’m not here for a community bulletin board that allows crossposting, I think we’d need a different interaction paradigm for me to want community features, and it wouldn’t involve tying my whole fediverse identity to a single community. What’s supposed to happen if I joined my hometown library’s instance and then moved away?

Johannes Ernst

@ShadSterling @damon We need to get to identities that aren't tethered to particular instances. Various approaches have been discussed, all more or less valid IMHO, we just need to get them implemented.

Then, if you can log into @ShadSterling with [email protected] or [email protected], is your concern still valid?

ShadSterling

@j12t @damon I’m not sure what you mean by “log in to @ShadSterling”; that still looks like a fediverse identity tethered to a particular instance, if that instance recognizes multiple email addresses for me to log in, that’s… probably not what you mean?

Johannes Ernst

@ShadSterling @damon I guess I need to write this up. Not sure anybody has done that yet end-to-end...

ShadSterling

@j12t @damon I’d like to decouple identities from instances entirely, and can imagine some of how that could work along the lines of how identities work in named-content networking, but I think we’d still need something like instances to ensure persistence and propagation (at least on the current internet), so I’m interested to know what you have in mind

Jupiter Rowland

@Johannes Ernst

We need to get to identities that aren't tethered to particular instances. Various approaches have been discussed, all more or less valid IMHO, we just need to get them implemented.

We have had one working implementation for 13 years now. In the Fediverse. In stuff that's federated with Mastodon.

@Mike Macgirvin

️, creator of Friendica (2010), creator of Hubzilla (2015), creator and maintainer of the streams repository (2021) and, most recently, creator and maintainer of Forte (all four are being actively maintained, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon), invented the concept of nomadic identity in 2011.

The same year, he implemented it in his own Zot protocol. Zot came to use first in 2012 in a Friendica fork named Red, later the Red Matrix, which became Hubzilla in 2015. Hubzilla still uses the latest stable version of the Zot protocol that's still called Zot. Everything that Mike did since 2012, with the exception of the first Osada from 2018, featured nomadic identity, including (streams) which is based on an "offspring" of Zot called Nomad.

I'm writing to you from a Hubzilla channel that simultaneously resides on two server instances. Not in the shape of a dumb copy, but in the shape of a real-time, bidirectional, live, hot backup.

It's basically what Bluesky has claimed to be a revolutionary new and never-done-before feature in the AT protocol, only that a) it's even more advanced, b) it's older than Bluesky, c) it has been proven to actually work in daily use, and d) it is in daily use.

Right now, Mike is working on implementing nomadic identity using only ActivityPub, specifically FEP-ef61. Even this has advanced beyond theoretical. (streams) has it implemented already. All channels created on accounts that were registered on versions 24.07.20 and newer are made compatible with nomadic ActivityPub. I have two such channels, although neither has a clone yet.

In fact, it could be that at least Forte, which is in a very early stage right now, will have Nomad and maybe even support for Zot6 removed and go nomadic using only ActivityPub. Mike said he wants to sunset Nomad and Zot6 once nomadic identity via ActivityPub is ready for prime time.

@silverpill is working closely together with Mike to implement nomadic identity via ActivityPub on the Fediverse microblogging project Mitra. It has taken the switch to nomadic ActivityPub itself.

Just because Mastodon doesn't have it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

CC: @ShadSterling @damon

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mitra #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61 #NomadicIdentity

damon

@ShadSterling @j12t This makes sense. This is what Nostr does but it’s poor in that it manually has users in charge of their key pairs, which isn’t good for the everyday person. Plus handing over your private key to multiple clients. I do believe on the Fediverse side #ActivityPods will resolve this https://activitypods.org/