@Johannes Ernst We need to get to identities that aren't tethered to particular instances. Various approaches have been discussed, all more or less valid IMHO, we just need to get them implemented.
We have had one working implementation for 13 years now. In the Fediverse. In stuff that's federated with Mastodon.

@Mike Macgirvin 🖥️, creator of Friendica (2010), creator of Hubzilla (2015), creator and maintainer of the streams repository (2021) and, most recently, creator and maintainer of Forte (all four are being actively maintained, part of the Fediverse and federated with Mastodon), invented the concept of nomadic identity in 2011.

The same year, he implemented it in his own Zot protocol. Zot came to use first in 2012 in a Friendica fork named Red, later the Red Matrix, which became Hubzilla in 2015. Hubzilla still uses the latest stable version of the Zot protocol that's still called Zot. Everything that Mike did since 2012, with the exception of the first Osada from 2018, featured nomadic identity, including (streams) which is based on an "offspring" of Zot called Nomad.

I'm writing to you from a Hubzilla channel that simultaneously resides on two server instances. Not in the shape of a dumb copy, but in the shape of a real-time, bidirectional, live, hot backup.

It's basically what Bluesky has claimed to be a revolutionary new and never-done-before feature in the AT protocol, only that a) it's even more advanced, b) it's older than Bluesky, c) it has been proven to actually work in daily use, and d) it is in daily use.

Right now, Mike is working on implementing nomadic identity using only ActivityPub, specifically FEP-ef61. Even this has advanced beyond theoretical. (streams) has it implemented already. All channels created on accounts that were registered on versions 24.07.20 and newer are made compatible with nomadic ActivityPub. I have two such channels, although neither has a clone yet.

In fact, it could be that at least Forte, which is in a very early stage right now, will have Nomad and maybe even support for Zot6 removed and go nomadic using only ActivityPub. Mike said he wants to sunset Nomad and Zot6 once nomadic identity via ActivityPub is ready for prime time.

@silverpill is working closely together with Mike to implement nomadic identity via ActivityPub on the Fediverse microblogging project Mitra. It has taken the switch to nomadic ActivityPub itself.

Just because Mastodon doesn't have it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

CC: @ShadSterling @damon

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mitra #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #FEP_ef61 #NomadicIdentity