Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   James M. (jamesmarshall@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jan-2023 07:44:05 JST James M.

   • Christine Lemmer-Webber
   • Evan Prodromou

   From the #ActivityPub spec, it seems like servers must know your social graph as an inherent part of the protocol. Is this correct?

   I'm writing a privacy-centric social media app that hides your social graph, and I'd like to adapt it to AP but that seems impossible. Possible approaches include:

   a) embed an AP server in the client app to do the AP server role (is this realistic?)

   b) continue with my own protocol and build a bridge to AP

   Any other ideas? All thoughts welcome!

   @evan
   @cwebber

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jan-2023 07:44:04 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Christine Lemmer-Webber

     @jamesmarshall @cwebber they need to know your social graph to do the distribution to followers. Is that what you mean?

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jan-2023 07:55:55 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @jamesmarshall you could do that on the client side, but there are some tricky bits like the HTTP signatures. And handling fanout on a client! It is an interesting challenge, I have to admit.

   • Embed this notice
     James M. (jamesmarshall@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jan-2023 07:55:56 JST James M.

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan yeah, that's the question, thanks.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@prodromou.pub)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jan-2023 08:19:11 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     @jamesmarshall so, in this case I would probably model the distribution as 1-to-1 messages.

   • Embed this notice
     James M. (jamesmarshall@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jan-2023 08:19:12 JST James M.

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan my app has the client encrypt messages in layers to hide non-adjacent nodes from each other, kinda like Tor but at a higher protocol layer, and with multiple recipients. Replies and reactions to a post have to be routed through the OP's device, which then distributes them to the OP's friends. In this way, the social graph is hidden from servers.

   • Embed this notice
     James M. (jamesmarshall@sfba.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jan-2023 08:19:12 JST James M.

     in reply to

     • Evan Prodromou

     @evan servers do little but pass encrypted messages among themselves and clients.