jonny (good kind)Oct 15

RE: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/115343246885448739

Rumors that the fediverse can't do mobile identity have been greatly exaggerated: #FEP_1580 is now in draft status - https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/1580/fep-1580.md

This is a proposal for how to migrate all your stuff along with you when you move instances.

The gist:

  • Send a request to move along with a set of stuff you'd like to bring with you. Moderators (optionally) can, approve, send back a change request, or deny. If the changes look ok, start the move, if not, hey you avoided incompatible moderation. Should be possible to layer in any kind of bulk actions you might want: "everything except my DMs," "strip attachments," "only my favorite posts," "nothing," etc.
  • keep a public collection of move events signed by both the source and target for durable, portable proof that you are the same person as the old account
  • the new instance crawls your old account and grabs whatever you specified, and then posts a mapping from old URIs to new URIs.
  • other instances can then immediately remap the URIs so e.g. future interactions get sent to the right place, and then gradually update their local versions over time, spacing out traffic.

Just using existing ActivityPub mechanisms. There are 6 new terms.

Bonus: lays the next steps to migrate to content addressed URIs, decouple accounts from instances, and merge and split accounts.

It being a draft means that there is a 60 day (or longer) public comment period, and feedback/edits/etc. Are very much welcome.
Issue: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/issues/702
Discussion: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-1580-move-actor-objects-with-a-migration-collection/8111

#FediDev #MoveAllPosts

Show threadjonny (good kind)Oct 15
Gonna try and negotiate an acceptable implementation with the masto devs (if u see this no pressure! Ik ur busy), will take a bit of background work like to implement an integrity proofs FEP, so may take a bit, but if you wanna write this with me I would love to work together on this. hopefully its implementable, it's my first spec document ive ever written so idk what I'm doing rly I just think I can write it and wanna move my posts around and break down the feudal fedi
Show threadjonny (good kind)Oct 15
Also if anyone wants to write about the social/political/governance problems caused by not being able to move your stuff with you when you move for motivating context, I'd be glad to put it in, I haven't had the energy to write that yet
Show threadjonny (good kind)

Also it treats post backups as posts (I mean they should anyway, importing a list of posts is the same as posting a list of posts, and backdating is not a crime), and if instances support exporting your private key with account backups, then you can create a Move activity without needing the source instance, so account backups are just... your account in a file, so you can restore if your instance goes down or becomes hostile.

CBOR and CAR files and Merkle Search Trees are cool, but so is a zip file of JSON.

(This is spec'd as a "should" BC there are some problems to work out incl. Key rotation and etc. but the mechanism for remapping is general and driven by the new instance)

Oct 15 at 5:49amWeb
Show threadjonny (good kind)Oct 15
also it theoretically allows you to do a chain of moves, including moves without changing actor URI to rotate keys, so you can deal with repeated moves or old posts. idk it may help with key rotation but I know enough about cryptography to know that I don't know enough to say that confidently.
Show threadjonny (good kind)Oct 15
Speaking of which, shoutout to @ansuz for taking the time to give input and info on some of the cryptography stuff (if there are places where I am super wrong about things that is all me though)