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To be honest, I hope that the Fediverse can be expanded to support W3C DID for identities. It's challenging to pick a set of tradeoffs that make the most sense

by jchw 2y ago

To be honest, I hope that the Fediverse can be expanded to support W3C DID for identities. It's challenging to pick a set of tradeoffs that make the most sense for this sort of thing, but other than that I don't think it's impossible. For example, if you just wanted DIDs for verification, I reckon you could go the route of having DIDs be represented as [DID]@[ActivityPub service domain] and treat each ActivityPub service as a different type of PDS. I don't think AT Proto/Bluesky will wind up killing the Fediverse, at least not any time soon, so I think it would make sense to try to figure out ways to take some of the more interesting applicable ideas and try to figure out how they could work.

lxgr 2y ago
> I don't think AT Proto/Bluesky will wind up killing the Fediverse I think it might just, if the Fediverse can't find a way to detach identities from instances/servers. It's baffling to me how people have been flocking away from Twitter, to at least some extent because they are unhappy about how the new owner runs things, to a system that gives exactly the same power to the people running each individual instance.
- solarkraft 2y ago
  I used to dismiss this argument entirely because you’re free to choose who gets these power’s through your choice of instance! But I do realize that it’s important to be able to change your mind. Currently this means having to create a new identity, which does suck.
  - jchw 2y ago
    Although it sucks, I think the reason why it won't kill the Fediverse is because there is a large part of the Fediverse that is not really an alternative to what Twitter was or is, and is not really being competed on by Bluesky. These are smaller websites and smaller communities, at least in scope if not also members. They may be more or less strict, but either way they will have more thorough (and specific) moderation in general. That said, I also expect that some people will remain on Mastodon.social using it basically as a Twitter alternative, too, for the same reason that some people will basically never leave Twitter either, until it goes offline.
- immibis 2y ago
  Well, you have the power to not use a bad instance, which you don't have on Twitter. Or on Bluesky. If your instance isn't bad but you want to move, there's a migration mechanism. And nobody is stopping you from having multiple accounts. The whole internet used to work that way, where you'd have a separate account for every niche-topic forum.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Yes, but I don't have the power to predict the future and know which instance that's good today will turn bad at some point, so does it really matter? > The whole internet used to work that way, where you'd have a separate account for every niche-topic forum. True, and I'm personally happy it's not like that anymore. And you can still create a new identity per topic/interest if you want to, so arguably federated identities are the best of both worlds.
- jeromegv 2y ago
  You still somewhat own your identity on the fediverse as you can decide to migrate to another server and all your followers will be migrated. Sure you lose the content you posted. And it’s an important point. But your identity, is migrated.

by jchw 2y ago

lxgr 2y ago

> I don't think AT Proto/Bluesky will wind up killing the Fediverse I think it might just, if the Fediverse can't find a way to detach identities from instances/servers. It's baffling to me how people have been flocking away from Twitter, to at least some extent because they are unhappy about how the new owner runs things, to a system that gives exactly the same power to the people running each individual instance.

solarkraft 2y ago
I used to dismiss this argument entirely because you’re free to choose who gets these power’s through your choice of instance! But I do realize that it’s important to be able to change your mind. Currently this means having to create a new identity, which does suck.
- jchw 2y ago
  Although it sucks, I think the reason why it won't kill the Fediverse is because there is a large part of the Fediverse that is not really an alternative to what Twitter was or is, and is not really being competed on by Bluesky. These are smaller websites and smaller communities, at least in scope if not also members. They may be more or less strict, but either way they will have more thorough (and specific) moderation in general. That said, I also expect that some people will remain on Mastodon.social using it basically as a Twitter alternative, too, for the same reason that some people will basically never leave Twitter either, until it goes offline.
immibis 2y ago
Well, you have the power to not use a bad instance, which you don't have on Twitter. Or on Bluesky. If your instance isn't bad but you want to move, there's a migration mechanism. And nobody is stopping you from having multiple accounts. The whole internet used to work that way, where you'd have a separate account for every niche-topic forum.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Yes, but I don't have the power to predict the future and know which instance that's good today will turn bad at some point, so does it really matter? > The whole internet used to work that way, where you'd have a separate account for every niche-topic forum. True, and I'm personally happy it's not like that anymore. And you can still create a new identity per topic/interest if you want to, so arguably federated identities are the best of both worlds.
jeromegv 2y ago
You still somewhat own your identity on the fediverse as you can decide to migrate to another server and all your followers will be migrated. Sure you lose the content you posted. And it’s an important point. But your identity, is migrated.