Jupiter Rowland
Separating identity from instance was invented in 2011, first implemented in 2012, and it has been stable since 2013. Zot protocol, Red, Red Matrix, nowadays known as Hubzilla. It is called nomadic identity.
Separating identity from platform is a current WIP: Nomadic identity is to be introduced to ActivityPub and then made project-agnostic. The idea is to be able to clone your Lemmy account to Mastodon and Pixelfed and Mobilizon and Hubzilla and Funkwhale all the same. You won’t be able to use all features of everywhere everywhere (go ahead, try to edit a Hubzilla wiki or article or webpage on Lemmy, haha), but it’ll be the same identity. Still, it would require one account on each server on which you have an instance of your identity.
But what you’re talking about is full, unlimited user write access to over tens of thousands of instances of over 100 projects. Like, visiting any one of these tens of thousands of servers and being able to do absolutely everything a locally registered user can do, no exceptions, right away.
Like it or not, but this will require a local account. Even OpenWebAuth doesn’t grant you full local user write access, nor does it allow for drive-by, on-the-spot creation of full-blown local user accounts on any instance, regardless of registration of local user accounts is allowed or not. Like, you can’t just visit hub.netzgemeinde.eu and, within a split-second, have a local user account with the same login credentials as on lemy.lol and a nomadic clone of matcha_addict@lemy.lol so it’s the exact self-same Fediverse identity on Lemmy and Hubzilla.
So it’s either this. Immediate drive-by nomadic cloning of your logged-in Fediverse to any instance that you visit for the first time.
Or every Fediverse user must have a user account on every instance of every project out there, and their Fediverse identity must be nomadic everywhere and cloned to everywhere all the same.
Like, you register an account on lemy.lol. Simultaneously, the same account with the self-same credentials will be created on all other Fediverse instances out there. Immediately afterwards, whatever will contain your identity on Lemmy will automatically be cloned to all these other instances of everything. That way, you can immediately use all instances of all projects of the Fediverse just the same.
Or the Fediverse has only one central login server which controls the credentials for all instances of everything out there. You don’t register with lemy.lol, you register with this central behemoth. And all tens of thousands of Fediverse instances connect to this central server for login credentials. And, again, your identity with all your data will have to be cloned and mirrored all across the Fediverse.
By the way, I’ve cloned Hubzilla and (streams) channels before. One channel from one server to one other server. This can take multiple minutes even with not so much content. Guess how long it’ll take to clone one identity container from one Lemmy instance to 20,000++ other instances out there.
Reminds me of when Aeris Irides tried to connect (streams) (2021’s umpteenth fork-of-a-fork of 2010’s Friendica, to dumb it down) and OpenSimulator (free, open-source server application for 3-D virtual worlds very similar to Second Life, est. 2007, interconnected 2008).
Okay, this wasn’t to go as far as federating the OpenSim local chat or even only the OpenSim in-world instant messaging system via ActivityPub because both (streams) and OpenSim were to remain untouched. So you couldn’t post from OpenSim to Mastodon or vice versa.
But the planned features included
- tying together the creation of channels on (streams) and the creation of avatars in OpenSim
- forwarding notifications from (streams) to OpenSim as a message
- syncing the avatar profile picture in OpenSim with that on (streams) bidirectionally
- automatically uploading snapshots taken in OpenSim to the (streams) file space and generating image-only posts
Nothing came out of this, though. The HoloNeon (streams) instance is gone the HoloNeon grid is gone, and Aeris has moved to another OpenSim grid.
So neither the idea of interweaving the Metaverse with the Fediverse is new, nor is the free, open, decentralised Metaverse.
I don’t think it’s wise to start a Lemmy community and then ask for other people to moderate it while being absent for weeks myself.
In case you haven’t read, I’m not primarily a Lemmy user. I’m mostly on Hubzilla and second-mostly on (streams). It may actually occur that I’m not on Lemmy for multiple weeks in a row.
Also, I don’t really want to take care of rules and that stuff.
It’s basically like a Hubzilla channel which, in turn, is somewhat like a Friendica account. Which, again, is very vagely like a Mastodon account.
To my best knowledge, you can’t follow individual accounts outside the Threadiverse on Lemmy.
In addition, (streams) has recently switched to decentralised IDs as per FEP-ef61. This could be the reason why Lemmy can’t find my (streams) channels, but it can find my Hubzilla channels: It doesn’t understand DIDs.
It would just either have to be on a server that also offers all server applications covered by the Web client so that everything has the same domain.
Or you would have to tell people to register accounts on foo.social, bar.social and/or baz.social, but the Web UI is on qux.social. Bit confusing for newbies who only knew centralised silos five minutes ago.
Here’s some stuff that I’d meme about:
- Mastodon users thinking the Fediverse is only Mastodon
- Lemmy users thinking the Threadiverse is only Lemmy
- Mastodon users thinking the Fediverse started with Mastodon
- Mastodon being ridiculously underpowered in comparison to just about everything else, particularly Hubzilla and (streams)
- Mastodon users wishing Mastodon (or, better yet, “the Fediverse”) had certain features which are readily available just about everywhere outside of Mastodon
- Mobile apps built against only Mastodon
- Fediverse tools built against only Mastodon
- Pleroma being lightweight
- Mastodon’s culture which Mastodon users are trying to force upon the rest of the Fediverse
- Forkey antics such as “Speak as cat”
- Forkeys in general
- Forkeys inspired by Blåhaj vs Mastodon’s mastodon plushie
- Mastodon users still uploading videos to YouTube and not to PeerTube
- Hubzilla’s UI
- Sharkey’s infamously bad Mastodon API implementation
- Friendica federating with everything, especially juxtaposed with some Mastodon users not wanting to federate with anything that isn’t vanilla Mastodon
- Hubzilla’s ability to host Web pages
- Nomadic identity
- Bluesky’s AT protocol seeming like a cheap knock-off of the Zot and Nomad protocols in parts
- Self-proclaimed Fediverse experts who actually barely know anything about Mastodon and don’t know anything about the rest of the Fediverse
- Character limits
- Threads perhaps wanting to EEE the Fediverse vs Mastodon actively trying to EEE the Fediverse right now
- Mastodon’s poster-side content warnings set in stone in what they want to be the Fediverse culture vs Friendica’s, Hubzilla’s, (streams)’ and Forte’s automated, reader-side content warnings which have been around for longer
- Generally, the Fediverse being older than Mastodon
- Lemmy only barely federating with everything else
- /kbin essentially being dead
- Permissions on Hubzilla and (streams)
- “Conversations” on Mastodon vs conversations on Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams)
- Certain points in the Fediverse history
Granted, I guess almost all of this will fly even over most c/Fediverse users’ heads due to how detached Lemmy is from the rest of the Fediverse. But I don’t really expect that many more Mastodon users to understand it, and those who do may be offended. Oh well.
I’ve started a new (streams) channel for Fediverse memes, but I thought Lemmy could be another, even better place to post them.
I’ve already posted two creations of mine there, One does not simply implement FEP-ef61 with very extensive explanations and What if I told you the Fediverse is not only Mastodon? with only one link to explain it. I’m still trying to find the right amount of explanation for an audience that shall be mostly on Mastodon.
Beyond that, I’ve got loads of ideas. But I don’t want to post more of them here than on (streams). So I’ll first have to define my way of posting them on (streams) to what will be a largely Mastodon audience in a way that satisfies Mastodon’s accessibility requirements the best. I hope to speed up my meme-posting rate then.