3 ms·

Your identity can be separate from the community servers.

by rglullis 3y ago

xenomachina 3y ago
How?
- rglullis 3y ago
  You can follow a community from any software that speaks ActivityPub. So you can be on Mastodon and post/comment to any Lemmy community. Alternatively, if you want to use lemmy's interface, you can create your own instance and use it only to subscribe to remote communities. This way, your identity is one place but the commuities is in another.
  - tourmalinetaco 3y ago
    The unfortunate problem being that anything beyond downloading a program and making an identity is too high of a bar for the average person on the Internet. So as long as this friction of choice exists within AP software, mass adoption is impossible and authoritarian social media like Meta and Reddit will continue to thrive.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      Then it's our job to: - lower the bar by improving the software - supporting those that want to try but still are struggling to migrate - actively rejecting participation in the legacy networks to reduce the value of that network (https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...)
- throwanem 3y ago
  If similar to other fediverse services, by running your own.
Terr_ 3y ago
AFAIK the only option is to run your own instance, which is a rather high bar. In contrast, imagine a system where you could use a private key to sign things, thus proving "author Bob on Instance X is the same as the prior author Bob on now-defunct Instance Y". You'd still be sunk if you lose the key (or it gets leaked) but at least your identity as an author wouldn't be at the mercy of the Mali government.
- rglullis 3y ago
  > imagine a system where you could use a private key to sign things This is how things work now, the issue is that most (if not all) of existing AP software the server is generating and abstracting the keys away from the users. But (in theory) there is nothing stopping a system where the server (e.g, mastodon.example.com) works for clients (actor in AP vocabulary) with a different domain, and requesting the actor to sign the messages before accepting in the inbox.

Your identity can be separate from the community servers.

xenomachina 3y ago

How?

rglullis 3y ago
You can follow a community from any software that speaks ActivityPub. So you can be on Mastodon and post/comment to any Lemmy community. Alternatively, if you want to use lemmy's interface, you can create your own instance and use it only to subscribe to remote communities. This way, your identity is one place but the commuities is in another.
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  The unfortunate problem being that anything beyond downloading a program and making an identity is too high of a bar for the average person on the Internet. So as long as this friction of choice exists within AP software, mass adoption is impossible and authoritarian social media like Meta and Reddit will continue to thrive.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    Then it's our job to: - lower the bar by improving the software - supporting those that want to try but still are struggling to migrate - actively rejecting participation in the legacy networks to reduce the value of that network (https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15 https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...)
throwanem 3y ago
If similar to other fediverse services, by running your own.

Terr_ 3y ago

AFAIK the only option is to run your own instance, which is a rather high bar. In contrast, imagine a system where you could use a private key to sign things, thus proving "author Bob on Instance X is the same as the prior author Bob on now-defunct Instance Y". You'd still be sunk if you lose the key (or it gets leaked) but at least your identity as an author wouldn't be at the mercy of the Mali government.

rglullis 3y ago
> imagine a system where you could use a private key to sign things This is how things work now, the issue is that most (if not all) of existing AP software the server is generating and abstracting the keys away from the users. But (in theory) there is nothing stopping a system where the server (e.g, mastodon.example.com) works for clients (actor in AP vocabulary) with a different domain, and requesting the actor to sign the messages before accepting in the inbox.