silverpill

Identity based on a pubic key is already not theoretical, it is supported by services that implement FEP-ef61.

I am not sure whether it makes sense to separate data hosting and feed generation, this will probably require a specific network architecture, similar to Bluesky, which tends to be centralized.

I doubt that it will be implemented in Lemmy, the application architecture needs to be different in order to support cryptographic identities.
But there are other implementations (they are listed near the end of the document).

That’s correct.

did: prefix is used to denote cryptographic identifiers, in theory one could even take a did:plc identifier from Bluesky and then use it as identity for an ActivityPub application:

https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/pull/3943

Yes, domain names can be replaced with cryptographic identifiers: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md

DID-based identity already exists in Fediverse: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md

We currently use did:key but in theory any DID method can be used, someone even tried to use did:plc: https://github.com/bluesky-social/atproto/pull/3943

It does not. That is as optional as fiat exchanges with cryptocurrencies.

Taler claims to be “not a currency”, that means it has to be used with existing currency such as Euro. That means an exchange is not optional. I guess it can be used with a cryptocurrency too, or fake money, but obviously this is not what people are interested in.

And the resulting tokens are like physical cash and can not be de-anonymized by the exchange or anyone else in the chain.

Again, according to the Taler website, the exchange tracks every transaction in order to prevent double spends. If it has a full view of the network, it can employ statistical analysis.

I think you should really inform yourself better before making yourself look really stupid by confidently spreading such non-sense.

Only you make unsubstantiated claims here.

If you believe Taler is decentralized, provide an example of it being used with a widely accepted peer to peer currency such as Bitcoin.
If you believe Taler is fully private, show us a security audit which confirms Taler’s resistance to statistical analysis.

It’s not centralized at all

It depends on the banking system with its proprietary APIs and centralized money issuance.

privacy for buyers, but not sellers

In order to spend money, you need to receive it first. I don’t know if it makes you a “seller” in Taler, but in any case, this partial protection probably makes de-anonymization of all transactions via statistical analysis much easier.

Potentially, maybe. Taler is centralized and has poor privacy protections, but if it ever takes off it might become a good option in jurisdictions where decentralized currencies are illegal.

Meanwhile, Monero already works for the Fediverse:

https://deadsuperhero.com/the-fediverse-and-content-creation-monetization/#honorable-mention-mitra

Blockchain is a bad choice for a social network, it’s expensive and all data is public. But since we’re talking about decentralization, let’s make a rough comparison.

Bitcoin: 24229 nodes (source: https://bitnodes.io/)
Fediverse: 30005 nodes (source: https://fedilist.com/)

Most of blockchain networks are much smaller than Bitcoin, so they don’t even come close to the Fediverse in terms of decentralization.

Yes, it is feasible and such instances already exist.

For example, you can run a Mitra instance on Tor, I2P or Yggdrasil. It is a lightweight micro-blogging server similar to Mastodon:

https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra

Tor / I2P docs:

- https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra/src/branch/main/docs/onion.md
- https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra/src/branch/main/docs/i2p.md

I mean event kinds: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips?tab=readme-ov-file#event-kinds

ActivityPub has Note and Follow, Nostr has 1 and 3.

I don’t know much about recent developments, but the early version of the protocol had several major flaws:

- Identity is based on a non-rotatable key, other types of identity are not supported.
- No privacy without encryption.
- Media attachments are not supported, all images are stored on a single server.
- Servers only store data and don’t do anything else, so they get abstracted away and everyone uses the same 5 relays (in Fediverse each server has a personality, and that creates a strong incentive to self-host).

There are also many minor things that I dislike, for example the use of numbers instead of human-readable names, unusual cryptography and so on.

By separating core protocol requirements and optional features.

The guide has a section titled “Protocol features”:

https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/commit/f1ee497085f56cde9860b9417eba8cd05cd1522a/guide.md#protocol-features

This is a place where information about optional features is collected, and soft deletion FEP could be mentioned there. A formal specification could be structured in a similar way.

>Currently it’s hard to read, there is no single document. No single source of truth.

We can make it happen.

I am currently working on this: https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/branch/main/guide.md. It’s a guide for developers, but in the future it may be used as a base for a more formal specification.

Sucks, right, because on the theadiverse, you’re not actually able to do that so easily.

Sounds like an unnecessary limitation of threadiverse software. Why limit a post to only one community? That doesn’t make any sense.

The person who made the post with multiple mentions clearly did it intentionally, and I would do the same because for every topic I am interested in there are 4-5 groups on different servers.

Every mentioned person gets addressed

In most cases, this is what a user wants. Some platforms support silent mentions, though (Friendica, if I remember correctly).

hashtag / community tag soup

I think this should be viewed as a moderation problem, not a protocol problem. If you don’t want to see mention soup, just limit the number of mentions per post on your instance.

It federates, I was told that it uses FEP-1b12. However, I haven’t yet gotten past the actor discovery because there is always some bug that prevents further interactions 😅

If the goal is normie-friendly social media with full ownership, it would be better to work on peer-to-peer Fediverse applications.

You can get to a point where you just install an app on your phone and it’s yours forever. The foundation for this is already being built: https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/branch/main/nomadpub.md

Self-hosting is nice but it requires an always-online, publicly accessible server and a domain name.

ActivityPub messages are not encrypted, but they could be signed. Signing doesn’t prevent edits and deletes.

Yes, if someone has unsubscribed they are unlikely to be notified about the deletion.

As I understand it ActivityPub uses a combination of push notifications at time of publishing and pull notifications at time of subscription/query for objects?

It’s a mix of pushing and pulling. When something happens, the server pushes a notification (“activity”) to other servers. But recipients often need to pull additional data, such as user profiles or related posts.

Duration of caching is set by the instance admin I take it?

Yes, and it also depends on the software. Some applications may keep cached objects forever and only prune cached media (because objects don’t require much space).

Regarding Authorship, if there wasn’t an issue then ATProtocol devs wouldn’t have made it the cornerstone feature of their network

Moving in ActivityPub world is difficult because authorship is tied to a specific server. We can solve this problem by using cryptographic identities and signing everything, like ATProto and Nostr do.

I’d like to know how delete requests propagate, when the “Object” is deleted does a request to clear cache go out to all federating instances?

Deletes and edits are usually sent to followers of a user or a community. Delivering them to all known instances is not practical.

The main advantage is efficiency. You don’t need to poll 1000 servers every minute to get fresh content because everything is delivered straight to your inbox.

the cost of broad redundancy of content and authorship issues

ActivityPub doesn’t have redundancy or authorship issues. An object only exists on the originating sever, other servers merely cache it. This is not different from what RSS readers do, for example.