Daniel AppelquistJul 17
The issue with digital identity is that people don’t have a single, unified identity. Identity, like many things, is a social construct, not part of some natural order. As a dual national, I'm acutely aware that when and how I assert an identity credential, or characteristic, depends on context. Therefore, digital systems that help us assert these identities must be responsive to people’s contextual needs and under their control. Otherwise, we’re just building more surveillance tools.
Show threadjust small circles 🕊Jul 17

@torgo a lot of confusion arises when there's no shared understanding of identity in a particular context, or even the context itself is unclear. We see this in #ActivityPub development, where a plethora of different mental models and perspectives are complicating severely the standardization process.

An example is this #SocialHub post and onwards pondering "What is Nomadic identity?" ..

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/nomadic-identity-for-the-fediverse/2101/77

Nomadic identity for the fediverse?

I guess here we have one of those decision points that may greatly influence the future of the fediverse. According to the bottom-up process any interested project initiatives can make the pragmatic choice that fits the needs of the participants at the time, with the risk getting stuck with that choice once there is an installed base. And protocol and tech debt when other initiatives add their own pragmatic variations or alternative technologies. That is an argument to tackle the issue in top-d...

SocialHub
Show threadMike Macgirvin 🖥️Jul 18
Nomadic identity is nothing more than a full backup of your social profile, friends, settings, and content that is always kept up-to-date on one or more alternate instances. So if anything goes wrong with your chosen instance; anything at all --  you can carry on like nothing happened.

And people think "choosing an instance" makes the fediverse complicated. That's nothing compared to what happens if you choose the wrong instance or the admin decides they don't like you. Nobody talks about this, because it can be devastating.

We provide a way to extract yourself and all your content from this situation. If you're on Mastodon, you have no such safety net. If something goes wrong, you can migrate your friends if you have warning; otherwise your existence in the fediverse and everything you ever posted is gone. Forever.

Poof.

This has happened before. in 2011 it happened to nearly a half-million people in the space of a week or two. Most of these went back to either Facebook or Twitter and left the fediverse forever.

As for the current conversation, what allows an identity to be nomadic is that it isn't permanently attached-to or associated-with a particular
  • username, or
  • DNS name


these things can change at any time, but you're still you - no matter what instance or software brand you are using right now; and our own software tends to reflect this.

"Nomadic identity isn't just a good idea. It's a bloody great idea."
Show threadShaun ChamberlinJul 18

@mikedev

Forgive my ignorance, coming in late, but you say "we provide a way to extract yourself and all your content from this situation".

So is nomadic identity as you define it available now..? Sounds good!

Show threadMike Macgirvin 🖥️Jul 18
Yes. Supported in both the streams repository and forte.
Show threadShaun ChamberlinJul 18
@mikedev
Ah, so I'd need to switch server?
Sorry, relative noob here.
Show threadMike Macgirvin 🖥️
You wouldn't have to switch - you could use both. The best part is that if you had an account on a streams or forte instance, you could link all your fediverse accounts using the built-in fediverse identity manager and re-publish your content from any of them under a single nomadic identity. Or you can just wait for Mastodon to do something similar. It could be a long wait.
Jul 18 at 3:49amWeb
Show threadShaun ChamberlinJul 18

@mikedev
Ah, right, I'm getting it now! 😍

So I tried heading to https://fediversity.site/channel/streams , hitting join and entering DarkOptimism@mstdn.social as my home instance.

I unfortunately then hit a "The page you are looking for isn't here".

Is this interaction between mstdn.social and the streams repository not functional, or am I doing something wrong?

Show threadMike Macgirvin 🖥️Jul 18
Ah - long story. I'll shorten it. The old OStatus 'remote interaction URL' is used by Mastodon. When I came up with the Zot protocol in 2011 I tried to clean it up, as OStatus was dead at that point - being replaced by pump.io - which later became ActivityPub. Anyway, I had two versions of that URL to support different protocols and they got confused. Should be fixed.