In response to Bray’s toot, Evan Prodromou — one of the creators of ActivityPub, who is currently writing an O’Reilly book about the protocol — noted that this “is also the argument for using the ActivityPub API.” He described the API as “an open, extensible API that can handle any kind of activity type — not just short text.”

This gets to the nub of the issue. The fact that I can’t use my Mastodon identity to, for example, sign up to Pixelfed is not actually an ActivityPub issue — it’s because the two applications, Mastodon and Pixelfed, each require you to create an account on their respective products. What Prodromou is suggesting is that, technically, you can use the ActivityPub API for account access.

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[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 23 points 7 months ago (13 children)

Serious question - why is this considered a problem? I don't get it.

It doesn't seem to be for convenience, since you'd still have to sign up for and sign in to different sites separately (which is obviously unavoidable - the alternative would be centralization, which is exactly what we're trying to get away from).

Is it an ego thing? So that people can conveniently establish a sort of identity brand in the fediverse? Is it all about accomodating would-be influencers?

Or is it some sort of psychological thing? Like people just feel uncomfortable with separate identities spread around the fediverse? Like they're somehow disjointed and fragile?

I can't make sense of it. I have easily a dozen accounts spread around the fediverse, mostly but not all under the same name, and I have no issue with that. I don't see a problem that needs to be solved. To the contrary, if anything, I'm wary of the idea of consolidating them - that just feels too much like moving back to centralization, just by a different scheme.

I just don't get it.

[–] bobbytables@discuss.tchncs.de 34 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I think it is a convenience thing first and a privacy thing second.

Convenience as in: just look how successful "log in with Google/Apple/etc" is. Just imagine you go to a fediverse site, click "log in with ActivityPod" and you don't need a new password, a new user name, no email back and forth for confirmation etc etc.

Privacy would also increase because you could control every aspect of you identity and what you want to share with a service. It could be a little as just your user name or as much as you want.

With a well made concept like this you could almost carelessly hop from service to service, test the waters here or there, and never have the hassles of creating new accounts.

[–] kernelle@lemmy.world 10 points 7 months ago

convenience thing first and a privacy thing second

This is convenience and privacy, with a SolidPod you decide who stores the data. It could be you, it could be any federated instance, but that data is encrypted and you decide which application can use which data. They use a WebID (see this as a hash of your unique profile) to identify the user and this would be the only data that is shared between you and any federated instance.

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Just imagine you go to a fediverse site, click “log in with ActivityPod”

It makes me nauseous just thinking about it.

That's where the whole thing went wrong. When things started getting centralized, the internet started turning into a walled, commodified, ad-infested, bot-generated shithole controlled by a handful of loathsome megacorporations.

That's exactly the sort of shit I want to get away from, and I rhought that getting away from that sort of shit was the exact point of ActivityPub.

Privacy would also increase because you could control every aspect of you identity

I don't think that's true.

I see no possible way that a centralized identity can be more private that an array of separate ones. And rather obviously, with a centralized identity, you don't control every aspect of it, because it's an established fact - when you go to a new site and sign up with that identity, it is exactly and only what it's already been established to be, and it's immediately tied in with all the others that use the same identity.

On the other hand, when I go to a new site and create a new identity from scratch - one that only exists on that site - I actually do control every aspect of my identity. It's whatever I make it right there on the spot, and it shares exactly as much or as little detail with my other identities as I want it to.

Granted that I'm very cynical, I just can't escape the feeling that all of this is cover for the real goal, which is simply to centralize the fediverse, so that a new group of opportunists can squat on top of another piece of the internet and extract rent from ir. We're being told that this "problem" needs to be "solved" because "solving" it will, so they hope, create the next Google.

[–] kernelle@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You're going to love SolidPods, honestly. From the website:

Solid is a specification that lets individuals and groups store their data securely in decentralized data stores called Pods. Pods are like secure web servers for data. When data is stored in a Pod, its owners control which people and applications can access it.

I see no possible way that a centralized identity can be more private that an array of separate ones.

Check out the specifications as well, using Pods you could have seperate accounts on every platform linked only by the ability to login using your Pod.

[–] Rottcodd@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago

"If you're thinking of taking the tribe cross-country, this is the automobile you should be using - the Wagonqueen Family Truckster!"

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 3 points 7 months ago

Creating different accounts is the only way to have privacy in the first place. Different logins makes you look like you are different people. Which is the point.

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