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   Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 01:32:44 JST Evan Prodromou

   Identities, explained:

   - ActivityPub identities are https: URLs
   - Nobody uses them
   - We use username@domain Webfinger addresses instead
   - Bluesky identities are another kind of URI called a DID
   - Nobody uses those either
   - They use a domain name that looks like an https: URL instead

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 01:33:04 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     HTH

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 01:58:23 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Dennis Nunes

     @nunesdennis isn't there some kind of mechanism for providing readable aliases?

   • Embed this notice
     Dennis Nunes (nunesdennis@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 01:58:24 JST Dennis Nunes

     in reply to

     @evan What do you think about Nostr that uses pub key and sec keys?

   • Embed this notice
     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 03:13:07 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to
     @evan Effectively because people will reach for the most readable and writable identifier.
     
     And in a way, BlueSky DID failed hard at being a good solution to Zooko's Triangle.
   • Embed this notice
     Richard MacManus (ricmac@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 04:52:46 JST Richard MacManus

     in reply to

     @evan Can you explain what you mean re Bluesky — I had to add my DID into my domain host when setting up my domain as URL. Or are you just saying nobody uses the DID as a public ID?

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 04:52:46 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Richard MacManus

     @ricmac yes, you're correct and I'm exaggerating for comic effect. I don't know enough about Bluesky to say if it's possible to use the DID for anything else (can you at-did someone...?).

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 05:03:04 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Astro

     @astro yes, essentially!

   • Embed this notice
     Astro (astro@c3d2.social)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 05:03:07 JST Astro

     in reply to

     @evan I assumed we were implicitly using the `acct:` scheme.

   • Embed this notice
     Richard MacManus (ricmac@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 05:09:18 JST Richard MacManus

     in reply to

     @evan I believe developers use it to authenticate users, etc, as it’s the canonical ID for users.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 05:09:18 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Richard MacManus

     @ricmac yeah, we use ActivityPub actor IDs (the URLs) under the covers, too.

     I feel like we're kind of ruining the humour here, btw.

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 05:13:03 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Richard MacManus

     @ricmac There wasn't any. I was just pointing out that both stacks have a canonical ID, and a more usable ID, and it's funny that the canonical ID of one is the usable ID of the other.

   • Embed this notice
     Richard MacManus (ricmac@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 05:13:04 JST Richard MacManus

     in reply to

     @evan Sorry, I actually wasn’t sure if you were being serious or not :) I may have missed some of the context…

   • Embed this notice
     Richard MacManus (ricmac@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 06:03:05 JST Richard MacManus

     in reply to

     @evan Ahhh, ok. I think my brain didn’t make that connection because I always think of a URL as an address, whereas a DID is an identity. Or maybe I just need to be more alert to web witticisms!

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 06:03:05 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • Richard MacManus

     @ricmac you know how when a post is in another language and there's a "translate" button? It'd be nice to have a "what is Evan talking about" button that linked to a ChatGPT explanation. (I think this is actually what some people use Grok for on X...?)

   • Embed this notice
     Evan Prodromou (evan@cosocial.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 21:17:15 JST Evan Prodromou

     in reply to

     • quaff

     @quaff Fediverse account servers could just support BYOD directly, too. Point yourdomain.example at socialnetwork.example, configure it in your user sessions, and then just use username@yourdomain.example as your handle.

   • Embed this notice
     quaff (quaff@thecanadian.social)'s status on Wednesday, 10-Sep-2025 21:17:16 JST quaff

     in reply to

     @evan slightly related, and I think you may have a FEP relating to it as well. But the fediverse could adopt aliasing domains to their account via DNS records as well. Create a TXT record for your domain that points to your mastodon user@home_instance. The lift will be getting all the different AP apps to implement it tho 🥲

     This would give users the ability to migrate identities* across* instances* as well.

     Edit: forgot a few words!