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Antwortete im Thread
@Strypey Locally writing content to the database of an ActivityPub-based server will inevitably require a local user account on that very server.

I mean, we already have OpenWebAuth magic sign-on which was invented by @Mike Macgirvin ?️ for Hubzilla in 2017, and which also has full implementations in his later server applications (streams) and Forte and a client-side implementation on Mike's first project, Friendica. But without an actual account on another server, OpenWebAuth can only authenticate you on that other server as a guest and grant you certain guest permissions. It does not give you all the powers of a local user, at least not without a local account.

Also, if you want to actually log in on another server, you will inevitably need local login credentials on that server. Which means that a user account with these login credentials must be created prior to you logging in on that server so that that server knows your login name and your password. Even if you want to use something like OAuth, that server will still require to know your credentials. They will have to be in that server's database before you can successfully log in.

A server cannot and will not authenticate you against credentials in a wholly different remote server's database. What you and many other Fediverse users dream of can only be solved in two ways and both only theoretically because, in practice, they are just as impossible or at least very unfeasible.

Either if you register an account on one Fediverse server, that account with the exact same credentials is simultaneously created on literally all other Fediverse servers, and on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, you also automatically get a channel along with that account. This also means that each Fediverse server that's installed and spun up for the first time will immediately have to create tens of millions of accounts so that everyone all over the Fediverse automatically has login credentials on that server. I guess it should be clear that this is impossible, also because this requires a) a centralised list of absolutely all Fediverse accounts and identities and b) a centralised list of all Fediverse servers to be hard-coded into every last instance of every last Fediverse server out there.

Now, I keep reading stuff like, "But I don't want to use all Fediverse servers!" No, but you want to be able to use any Fediverse server. And then you will have to have an account there. How is the Fediverse supposed to know in advance which servers you will visit this year, the next two years, five years, ten years so that accounts can be automatically created for you exactly there and nowhere else?

See? And that's why, if you want to be able to use any server like with a local account, every server must be prepared for it before you arrive.

Or drive-by registration: You visit a Fediverse server for the first time, your active login is recognised by that Fediverse server, and an account is created for you on the fly with the exact same login credentials as where you're already logged in. That's its own can of worms.

Also, it requires remote authentication. OpenWebAuth. As I've already said: This is technology that's eight years old, and that's being daily-driven right now. But: You will never have this on Mastodon. There actually is a pull request for Mastodon from two years ago that would have implemented client-side OpenWebAuth support. It was never merged. It was silently rejected by the Mastodon developers. The PR was closed in November, 2024.

Some people go even further: They don't just want their login credentials wherever they go, they want their whole identity cloned to everywhere. They want all their stuff, all their posts and comments and DMs, all their followers and followed, all their settings, all their filters etc. etc. pp., they want it everywhere all the same. Like a nomadic identity (an invention by Mike from 2011, first implemented in 2012) across up to 30,000 servers.

Now, you and many others on Mastodon are probably going to cry out, "YES, YES, PLEASE MAKE THIS REALITY!"

But seriously: I myself have actually cloned enough Hubzilla and (streams) channels of mine in my time. None of them even had nearly as much content on them as your Mastodon account. And I can tell from a lot of personal experience that this cannot be done within a blink of an eye.

Nomadic identity won't come to Mastodon anyway. Nomadic identity via ActivityPub is probably being daily-driven already. Forte has it, and it relies on it. But Mastodon will never implement it. In particular, Mastodon would rather re-invent the "nomadic identity" wheel in a way that's incompatible with what we already have than implement something made by Mike Macgirvin. Not after all the head-butting that has happened between Mike and Gargron over the years.

And OpenWebAuth won't come to Mastodon either. Probably also for the same reason.

CC: @Tim Chambers @rakoo @Ben Pate 🤘🏻

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #OpenWebAuth #SingleSignOn #NomadicIdentity
Mastodon - NZOSSStrypey (@strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)41,4 Tsd. Beiträge, 3,13 Tsd. Folge ich, 3,08 Tsd. Follower · Free human being of this Earth. Pākeha in Aotearoa. Be excellent to each other! Email: strypey @disintermedia.net.nz Jabber: strypey@jabber.org Matrix: @strypey:matrix.iridescent.nz All my posts here are CC BY-SA 4.0 (or later). #Vegan #Permaculture #PeerProduction #SoftwareFreedom #PlatformCooperatives #FreeCode #CreativeCommons #SciFi #Comedy #Juggling #fedi22
Antwortete im Thread
@Ben Pate 🤘🏻 Allow me to take a look at this from a Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte point of view.

The Sin of Overwhelming Complexity: Instance Selection Paralysis


The only way to really combat this effectively is by hiding the whole concept of servers/instances at first, railroading everyone to a server and only letting them know about decentralisation and servers/instances after the fact.

In theory, this could be doable with Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, and even better than with Mastodon with its themed servers. It wouldn't make sense to offer Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte servers for certain topics or target audiences, seeing as the whole thing would become moot the very moment when you make your first clone on another server. Simply build a kind of "automatic on-boarder" that sends everyone to the geographically closest open-registration server.

In practice, that'd be a bad idea, but for a different reason than on Mastodon. And that's how these servers tend to be very different. Not in topic. Not in target audiences. Not in rules. But in features. Hubzilla is modular, (streams) is modular, Forte is modular, and each admin decides differently on which "apps" to activate. Then you want to join Hubzilla for one cool feature, but the on-boarder railroads you to a server where that very feature isn't even activated.

Sure, the on-boarder could include the option to select certain features that you absolutely must have in your new home and then pick a server that has them. But that'd be extra hassle and extra confusing.

Besides, where'd you put that on-boarder? On the official Hubzilla website? Haha, no can do. The official Hubzilla website is a webpage on a Hubzilla channel itself. It's all just dumb old static HTML with a CSS. If it's even HTML and not Markdown or BBcode, that is. You couldn't add scripts to it if you tried.

Oh, and (streams) and Forte don't even have official websites. And (streams) will never have one, seeing as it's officially and intentionally nameless, brandless and totally not even a project. Their "websites" are readme files in their code repositories on Codeberg.

The Sin of Inconsistent Navigation: Timeline Turmoil


The streams on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are quite a bit different from Mastodon timelines.

First of all, what you usually don't have on public servers is the counterpart to Mastodon's local timeline and Mastodon's federated timeline. On all three, this would be only one stream, the "public stream" or "pubstream". It can be switched by the admin to either what'd be local or what'd be federated. However, public servers usually have it off entirely. Unavailable even to local users. That's because the admins don't want to be held liable for what's happening on the pubstream.

Technically speaking, you only have one stream on a public server, and that's your channel stream. It's much more efficient than a Mastodon timeline because it always shows entire conversations by default instead of detached single-message piecemeal, and because it has a counter for unread messages which even lists these unread messages for you to directly go to the corresponding conversation. But that's another story.

However, your channel stream can be viewed on your channel page, conversation by conversation, or it can be viewed on the stream page as an actual stream with all conversations shown in a feed/timeline-like fashion, one upon another, and with its own set of built-in filters such as "only my own messages" or "only conversations started by members of one particular privacy group/access list" or "only conversations from one particular group actor". It's actually much more convenient than any Mastodon timeline, but for those who want a Twitter clone for dumb-dumbs, it can be very overwhelming.

Yes, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are much more complex in handling than, say, snac2. But they're also much more complex in features than snac2. That power is their USP. And that power must be harnessed somehow.

The Sin of Remote Interaction Purgatory: Federation Gymnastics


Sure, Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte have some of the best built-in search systems in the whole Fediverse. They can pull almost everything onto your channel stream just by searching for it. And if it has replies, chances are they pull these in as well.

But still, they're geared towards desktop users. They still require copy-paste. Phone users don't copy paste. Most of them don't even know the very concept of copy-paste. For most of those who do, copy-paste is much too fumbly if the input device available to them is a 6" touch screen.

You can't blame them, though. This is next to impossible to do any differently. I mean, you won't see a button magically appear with which you can pull in just that one post or comment you want to pull in.

Rather, the issue is that they can only reel in almost everything. Sometimes the search returns nothing, like a void. Sometimes the search runs indefinitely without any kind of result. This may be because someone has blocked your channel, because someone has blocked your entire server, because the server someone is on has blocked you or your entire server, because Hubzilla/(streams)/Forte doesn't understand the URI pasted into the search field or whatever.

So this is made worse by Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte not knowing what they can search for, what they can't and why not.

Connecting with someone whom you encounter on your channel stream is fairly easy. Connections can be initiated with only two clicks. Either you click their long name, and you're taken to a pretty much distraction-less local "intermediate page" with a striking green button that's labelled "+ Connect". Or if you don't want to leave the channel page, you hover your mouse cursor over their profile picture, click on the little white arrow that appears, and you get a small menu that offers you the "Connect" option as well. Granted, even some veterans don't know the latter trick because it isn't immediately advertised on the channel page.

Also, sure, you don't simply follow them right off the bat with nothing else to do like on Mastodon. You're taken to your Connections page, and you have to configure the connection (you don't have to do that on Mastodon because you can't configure connections on Mastodon).

Following accounts/channels from the directory is a bit easier. The green "+ Connect" button is there right away (unless you're already connected). However, Hubzilla's directory only lists channels based on the Nomad protocol, i.e. Hubzilla and (streams) channels, because ActivityPub is only implemented in an optional, off-by-default-for-new-channels add-on whereas it's in the core and on by default on (streams) and the only available protocol on Forte.

Importing contents or following actors when seeing them locally on other servers without copy-pasting and searching can be done. It requires OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, however, and it requires it to be implemented on all servers of all Fediverse server applications from Mastodon to WordPress to Ghost to Flipboard. Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are the only Fediverse server applications with full (client-side and server-side) OpenWebAuth implementations. But that's of little use if the rest of the Fediverse doesn't have server-side implementations, and Mastodon has even silently rejected a mere client-side implementation already developed to a pull request two years ago.

The Sin of DM Disasters Waiting to Happen


I think this is less of an issue on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte because they handle DMs differently from Mastodon (which "the Fediverse" actually refers to in the article).

On all three, DMs are integrated into their extensive, fine-grained permissions system in which everything is only public if it's really public. The difference between a post and a DM is not just a switch.

If I want to DM you, I can either tag you @!{benpate@mastodon.social} rather than @[url=https://mastodon.social/@benpate]Ben Pate 🤘🏻[/url]. Then you're a) the only one to whom the message is sent (it literally doesn't even go out to any other server than mastodon.social plus my clone on hub.hubzilla.de as can be seen in the delivery report) and b) the only one who is granted permission to view the message.

Or I can use the padlock icon and select you from the opening list as the sole recipient. The very moment that I select certain recipients, the post I'm composing quits being public, and the padlock icon switches from open to closed. This isn't a one-click or two-click toggle. You don't do that casually. It's basically configuration. It requires so many mouse clicks that you do it consciously and intentionally. If you want to post in private, you have to really want to post in private.

Better yet: You can default to posting only to a certain limited target audience. In fact, by default on a brand-new channel, you only post to the members of one privacy group/access list (which is a Mastodon list on coke and 'roids). You have to manually reconfigure your new channel if you want to post to the general public by default.

If you preview your post, you can see whether it's a direct message to one or multiple single connections (envelope icon next to your long name), a limited-permissions message to one or multiple privacy groups/access lists/group actors (closed padlock icon) or actually public (no icon).

Even better yet: Posts to group actors generally aren't public. Posts to at least Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups and Forte groups are never public. They do not go out to your followers as well unless they're connected to the same group. And this is independent from whether a group is public or private. You can't accidentially post to a group actor in public, and if you do, you don't post to that group actor at all, at least not in a way that makes the group actor forward your post to its other connections.

Granted, what does not happen is your background switching from your background colour or background image (which can be user-configured) to red #800000 or a yellow-and-back chevron pattern when you change visibility and permissions to something that isn't public.

The Sin of Ghost Conversations and Phantom Follower Counts


And again, when @Tim Chambers says, "the Fediverse", he almost exclusively means Mastodon. He writes as if the entire Fediverse handled conversations as terribly as Mastodon, as if the entire Fediverse was as blissfully unaware of enclosed conversations as Mastodon. Which is not the case.

Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, as well as their ancestor Friendica, handle conversations in ways that exceed Mastodon users' imaginations and wildest dreams by magnitudes. Unlike Mastodon, they know threaded conversations, and they see them as enclosed objects where only the start post counts as a post, and everything else counts as a comment.

This means that once you've received a post on your stream, you will also receive all comments on that post, regardless of whether or not you follow the commenters, regardless of whether or not they mention you. That's because all four reel in the comments not from the commentors, but from the original poster who is perceived as the owner of the thread. Only blocks or channel-wide filters can prevent comments from coming in.

Beyond that, (streams) was the first to introduce Conversation Containers. Forte inherited them from (streams), and when they were defined in FEP-171b, Hubzilla implemented them, too.

Here on Hubzilla, I can see all comments in this thread because my channel has fetched them directly from @Johannes Ernst. And I can actually see them right away because that's the default view here on Hubzilla, rather than Mastodon's piecemeal.

Even if you import a post manually using the search feature (and you better import the actual start post), AFAIK existing comments will eventually be backfilled. Comments that come in after importing will definitely end up on your stream as part of the thread.

So this is not a shortcoming of the Fediverse. The Fediverse has been able to do better for 15 years. It's a shortcoming of Mastodon.

The only "issue" here may be that it sometimes takes some time for a comment to show up for some reasons. But unless there are blocks or filters in play, it eventually will.

The Sin of Invisible Discovery: The Content Mirage


I'm not going to pick on the audacious implication that "Eugen and team" invented the Fediverse.

But Tim writes like literally everyone wants "the Fediverse" (read, actually Mastodon) to be literally Twitter without Musk.

Also:
  • Friendica has had full-blown full-text search since its inception as early as 2010. Five and a half years longer than Mastodon has even existed.
  • Hubzilla has had full-blown full-text search since its inception as early as 2011 when it was forked from Free-Friendika. It has inherited full-text search from Friendica.
  • (streams) and Forte have had full-blown full-text search since their respective inception in 2021 and 2024, both having inherited it themselves.

Oh, and none of them has an explicit opt-in switch to soothe panicking Twitter converts because panicking Twitter converts have never been the primary target audience of either of them.

Instead, on Hubzilla, whether someone can find your content depends on whether they've got permission to view it in the first place ("Can view my channel stream and posts"). If it's public, they have it. Full stop. Public is public is public. Stop whining. You've made it public, now deal with everything being able to see it.

(streams) and Forte behave the same. In addition, they have an extra permission: "Grant search access to your channel stream and posts". This controls who may search your channel stream using your own local search feature while visiting your channel locally. Something that isn't even possible on Mastodon.

As for not having any content on my channel stream before I connect to anyone: I, for one, do not want some algorithm to force content upon me that I'm not interested in. Full. Frigging. Stop. I want to have full and exclusive control over what I see and what I don't.

The Sin of User Discovery Hell


Can it really be that Mastodon's directory is so much worse than Friendica's, Hubzilla's, (streams)' and Forte's directories? I guess it is because it really only lists local accounts on that one particular server. A side-effect of Mastodon being a microblogging service and Twitter clone. And not a full-blown, fully-featured social network and Facebook alternative. No, seriously, it isn't that.

Friendica is. It was designed as such. It was designed to take Facebook's place, and not by aping and cloning Facebook, but by being better than Facebook.

The directory on each node is decentralised. It lists all actors known to that node. What's outright unimaginable from a Mastodon point of view: It takes the keywords in the profiles into account. Better even: It ranks suggestions by the number of matching keywords.

Want something centralised instead? Try the Friendica Directory. Looking for people? Looking for news accounts? Looking for groups? There are specialised tabs for that. Friendica can tell them apart, and so can the Friendica Directory.

Caveat: The Friendica Directory only lists Friendica accounts. Friendica's built-in directory should list everything it knows. I haven't used Friendica in many years, but I guess this even includes diaspora* accounts because why not?

Hubzilla has indirectly inherited its directory from Friendica. This is the directory on Netzgemeinde, the biggest Hubzilla hub.

Again, it lists local as well as federated channels. You can choose whether to see only local channels ("This Website Only") or federated channels as well. You can choose whether channels flagged NSFW shall be listed or not ("Safe Mode"). You can choose to only have group actors listed that let themselves be listed ("Public Forums Only"). You have a cloud of keywords from the keyword lists in the profiles that you can filter by (Mastodon doesn't even have keyword lists in profiles). You have full-text search for names and keywords. There's even a Facebook-style suggestion mode that proposes connections to you with a ranking based on your keywords and their keywords as well as the number of common connections, and that still has the same filters.

Caveat this time: Hubzilla's directory only supports the one sole protocol built into Hubzilla's core. And that's Zot6. This means that Hubzilla's directory only lists Hubzilla and (streams) channels because Hubzilla and (streams) are the only Fediverse server applications that support Zot6.

(streams) and Forte have inherited their directories again. And they probably have the most powerful decentralised directories in the entire Fediverse. I'd give you a link, but (streams) directories generally aren't public; only local channels can access them.

These directories are similar to the ones on Hubzilla. You see local and federated actors, and you can choose to only see local actors ("This Website Only"). You can choose to only see group actors ("Groups Only"). You can choose to not see channels flagged NSFW ("Safe Mode"). What's new: Inactive actors can be kept out, too ("Recently Updated").

Now it comes: (streams) has ActivityPub built into its core, and it's on by default on new channels. Forte is entirely based on ActivityPub.

This means that their directories can list anything from anywhere that uses ActivityPub. "Groups Only" gives you Guppe groups, Lemmy communities, /kbin and Mbin magazines, PieFed communities, Mobilizon groups, Flipboard magazines, Friendica groups, Hubzilla forums, (streams) groups, Forte groups etc., all on one list.

(streams) has a slight edge over Forte here because it also lists Hubzilla and (streams) channels that have ActivityPub off such as the Streams Users Tea Garden where ActivityPub was turned off with the very intention to keep Mastodon out.

If there was a gigantic Forte server, as big as mastodon.social, and its directory was accessible to the public, that directory would be the best directory in the Fediverse for anything really. If it was on (streams), it would list more, but it would confuse some users of e.g. Mastodon who'd try to follow Hubzilla or (streams) channels that have ActivityPub off. Forte simply doesn't list these because it can't find them.

A global directory of everything sounds like a good idea, but it's next to impossible to implement.

Either the directory would go look for actors itself. In order to do that, it would have to know within a split-second not only whenever a new actor is created somewhere so it can index that actor right away, but also whenever a new server is spun up so that the admin actor can be indexed, and that server can be watched. How is it supposed to know all that?

Well, or the directory, a single, monolithic, centralised website, would have to be hard-coded into all Fediverse server software. That way, each server could immediately report newly created actors to the central directory upon their creation.

For starters, this would make the whole Fediverse depend on one single centralised website under the control of, if bad comes to worse, one person.

Besides, this would be a privacy nightmare. Let's suppose I create a new (streams) channel that's supposed to be private. Its existence and all its properties would be sent to the central directory before I can set it to private and restrict its permissions. This wouldn't be so bad on Hubzilla because I'd make the channel private before I turn on PubCrawl and make the channel accessible to the directory in the first place because the directory would only understand ActivityPub.

Of course, the directory would mostly be built against Mastodon. It would not understand the permissions systems implemented on Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte, and it might happily siphon off the profiles of channels where access to the profile is restricted and make them publicly accessible. On the other hand, this is likely to mean that the directory couldn't read most of Hubzilla's, (streams)' and Forte's profile text fields anyway because Mastodon doesn't have them.

But such a centralised directory wouldn't make connecting to other users that much easier and more convenient. You'd still have to copy and paste URLs or IDs into your local search and search for them (unless you're on Friendica, Hubzilla, (streams) or Forte where you can connect to URLs directly). At the very least, you should be able to go to the centralised directory and follow anyone just by clicking or tapping them. That, however, would require OpenWebAuth support on both your home server and that directory.

Ideally, that directory would be firmly built into all instances of all Fediverse software from snac2 to Mastodon to Hubzilla, even replacing any existing directory to confuse people less. But that would make the Fediverse even more dependent on one central website and its owner, something which should be avoided at all cost.

Lastly, nothing can ever be built into all instances of all Fediverse software. Remember that there's software with living instances that's barely being developed such as Plume. There's even software with living instances that's been officially pronounced dead such as Calckey, Firefish or /kbin. How are Firefish servers supposed to implement such a feature if nobody maintains Firefish anymore, and even the code repository was deleted?

CC: @Risotto Bias

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #OpenWebAuth #SingleSignOn #NomadicIdentity #Search #FullTextSearch #Directory #Permissions #Privacy #Conversations #ThreadedConversations #FEP_171b #ConversationContainers
hubzilla.orgHubzilla Fediverse Server and Community
Antwortete im Thread
@Johannes Ernst You would still need write permission to lemmy.world's local database. For that, a local user account on lemmy.world would be a hard requirement. Local actions saved in a Lemmy database cannot reference a user in a database on a wholly different server running under a wholly different domain.

This would require
  • nomadic identity both on Mastodon and Lemmy so your j12t.social identity can have a local representation (= "clone") on lemmy.world
  • OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, implemented on Mastodon at least client-side (will never come; there's an actual PR on Mastodon's GitHub which has never been merged, and which can be regarded as silently rejected) and on Lemmy at least server-side, in order for lemmy.world to recognise your j12t.social login
  • a clone of your j12t.social identity on lemmy.world that's created
    • either "drive-by" when you visit lemmy.world for the first time
    • or before you visit lemmy.world for the first time
A clone before your visit sounds more practical, but it's non-sense. It simply isn't doable. How is your Mastodon instance supposed to know before the fact which Fediverse servers you want to visit and interact with like with a local account?

"Drive-by cloning" during your first visit is more doable. But cloning takes time. And I'm talking from personal experience here. I myself have cloned a number of Hubzilla and (streams) channels over the years. It always took quite a bit of time to sync all the contents from one server to the other one. And none of them were even nearly as active as your Mastodon account.

Granted, cloning from Mastodon to Lemmy would be quick because Mastodon and Lemmy have next to nothing in common. Lemmy would have no use for your toots, for your images, for your followers and followed.

But let's suppose I post a (non-federating) article, I advertise it in a federating post, and it sounds interesting to you. Then you'll have to come over to hub.netzgemeinde.eu to read it because, again, the actual article doesn't federate to your Mastodon timeline. Upon visiting hub.netzgemeinde.eu, j12t.social would automatically register a local user account on hub.netzgemeinde.eu and then clone your entire Mastodon account into a Hubzilla channel. And I mean pretty much all of it. This would take considerable time.

Also, drive-by cloning would have quite a few other disadvantages.

In particular, it would bog Fediverse instances down. Anyone who visits them would have their account or channel drive-by-cloned. Every Fediverse instance would have a clone of each visitor's account or channel. With all their posts and comments and DMs and all their files on it. And these clones would be sync'd with their main instances all the time.

This would also mean the end of tiny, self-hosted single-user servers like yours. Everyone who even only goes check your Mastodon profile locally on your server (and on some Fediverse server applications, that's the only way, for there's no viewing remote profiles locally) would have their account or channel drive-by-cloned.

If your account is popular enough, you'd end up with maybe tens of thousands of local user accounts with clones of other people's Fediverse identities, with all their posts and comments and DMs, with all their images and other files. And j12t.social would be pelted with nomadic syncs of all these identities all the time.

You want to use any Fediverse server like with a local account, but with your j12t.social identity? Then grant everyone else the same wish. And order a big honkin' rack server for your single-user server because it won't stay single-user for long.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Lemmy #Hubzilla #OpenWebAuth #SingleSignOn #NomadicIdentity
opennomad.netZot, Nomad, and Nomadic Identity in the Fediverse
Antwortete im Thread
@Johannes Ernst The first step is already done:

Forte, @Mike Macgirvin ?️ most recent project from the same family that started with Friendica 15 years ago, is the first and only stable Fediverse server application that uses ActivityPub for nomadic identity. Nomadic identity itself is a concept created by Mike in 2011 and first implemented by himself in 2012 in a very early version of Hubzilla which he called Red back then.

This means that you can have the exact same channel/identity (think Mastodon account, but without its own login) on multiple server instances with one account each. If one server goes down, you still have at least one clone (depending on how many clones you make).

@silverpill is working on implementing this on Mitra. It's still only available in development versions, though. The difference is that Mike had already created a whole bunch of Fediverse server applications with nomadic identity since 2012; he "only" had to port nomadic identity from the Zot or Nomad protocol to ActivityPub. Silverpill, on the other hand, has to implement nomadic identity in something that was built upon ActivityPub with no nomadic identity.

Both recognise each other's nomadic identities. (For comparison: Mastodon doesn't recognise any nomadic identities. It takes the two instances of this Hubzilla channel of mine for two fully separate identities.) But that's all for now.

The next step, and that's way into the future, would be to be able to clone from Forte to Mitra or from Mitra to Forte. This would give you one identity on at least two server instances of two separate Fediverse server applications.

The obvious downside is that you won't be able to take everything with you everywhere when you clone to other server types. For example, if you clone a Forte channel to Mitra, you won't be able to take your permissions settings, your permission roles, your friend zoom settings, the contents of your cloud storage, your CalDAV calendars and your CardDAV addressbook with you over to Mitra. That's simply because Mitra doesn't have any of these features.

What you envision is another step further. And that's the adoption of nomadic identity via ActivityPub and ideally also OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, another one of Mike's creations, by all Fediverse server applications. And I mean all of them. Including extremely minimalist stuff like snac2 or GoToSocial. Including stuff that isn't actively being worked on like Plume. Including stuff that's dead, but that still has running servers, like Calckey, Firefish or /kbin. And including Mastodon which stubbornly refuses to make itself more compatible with the "competition" in the Fediverse and adopt technologies created by anyone else in the Fediverse, even more so if that someone is Mike Macgirvin.

In other words, this won't happen. Mastodon would rather turn itself into its own federated walled garden by becoming incompatible with all other ActivityPub implementations.

What many Mastodon users who know nothing about decentralisation wish for is another step further. And that's to create one account on one server instance of one Fediverse server software, no matter which, and then to have full-blown user permissions on any instance of any Fediverse server software.

Like, create one account on mastodon.social, go to a Pixelfed instance, post pictures Instagram-style, go to a PeerTube instance, upload videos, go to a WriteFreely instance, blog away, go to a Hubzilla hub, build a webpage, all with only your mastodon.social login.

Of course, this is impossible to do. This would mean that if you create an account on one Fediverse server instance, it would have to be cloned to all 30,000+ servers in the whole Fediverse instantaneously. And if you start your own instance, it would have to trigger 30,000+ servers to clone their tens of millions of accounts and channels over to your instance.

Usually, when I explain this to people who want to use everything with one login, they tell me that they don't want to use every server in the Fediverse. No, but they want to use any server in the Fediverse. Any one of the 30,000+.

And they want to use it immediately. Like, go there, use it with full-blown local user permissions right away, no delay.

Now you may argue that their account or channel could be cloned to that server when they visit it for the first time. Drive-by cloning, so-to-speak. Still, won't happen. Cloning takes time. I myself have cloned enough Hubzilla and (streams) channels over the years to be able to estimate just how long it takes. And none of my channels has ever contained tens of thousands of posts and thousands of pictures.

Besides, drive-by cloning would inflate Fediverse instances senselessly, not to mention bog them down with extra network traffic. Whenever you visit a Fediverse server instance for whichever reason (like, you want to look at a post on Friendica or Hubzilla to see what it looks like without being botched by Mastodon), your account or channel would automagically be cloned to that server instance. Another account (and channel, if necessary) on that server instance, another deluge of posts and files flooding into the database, and that clone would have to be synced with your 600 other previous drive-by clones on the 600 Fediverse server instances you've visited before.

Extra nefarious: Some "websites" that have to do with Hubzilla or a certain aspect of Hubzilla are parts of Hubzilla channels themselves. This includes the official Hubzilla website. If you visited them, you'd create a drive-by clone on the Hubzilla hub which hosts that website.

So if someone set up a single-user Hubzilla hub with their personal channel and a website channel on it, and the website is interesting enough, and 10,000 Fediverse users visit it, it'll end up bigger than the biggest current Hubzilla hub within days. It'll have 10,001 accounts, namely the owner's account with two channels and 10,000 accounts with drive-by clones, automatically created by the 10,000 external visitors.

But this will remain utopic not only because it's technologically pretty much impossible and very much not feasible at all. It also requires a mechanism for one Fediverse server to recognise logins on other Fediverse servers. You know, like OpenWebAuth. You want your Mastodon account to drive-by clone itself, Mastodon will have to implement OpenWebAuth, and I mean fully implement it.

There actually is a pull request in Mastodon's GitHub code repository that would have implemented client-side OpenWebAuth support (= Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte would recognise Mastodon logins). This isn't even about full-support that'd include login recognition on Mastodon's own side. This pull request has been there for two years. It was never merged. And it probably will never be merged.

This means that the Mastodon devs have practically rejected OpenWebAuth as a feature to implement. Won't come. Ever. Not even half of it.

And this should say everything about the chances that Mastodon will ever implement nomadic identity.

CC: @william.maggos @Richard MacManus @Tim Chambers @Ben Pate 🤘🏻

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mitra #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #OpenWebAuth #SingleSignOn #NomadicIdentity
Codeberg.orgforteNomadic fediverse server.
Antwortete im Thread
@Hrefna (DHC)

If your server disappeared tomorrow with no ability to export your follower graph, how would you rebuild it?

If you do a server move, what happens to your post history?


Widespread adoption of Nomadic Identity, if it ever happens, may help with this.

I am sure you already know this, but for other readers, these two 2017 articles explain how Nomadic Identity works in Hubzilla, which is based on the Nomad/Zot protocol.

#^https://medium.com/@tamanning/nomadic-identity-brought-to-you-by-hubzilla-67eadce13c3b
#^https://medium.com/@tamanning/getting-started-with-nomadic-identity-how-to-create-a-personal-channel-on-hubzilla-7d9666a428b

Mike Macgirvin recently got Nomadic Identity working on ActivityPub too.

#^https://fediversity.site/item/b69ce5a0-0c22-4933-8393-dce7100f4584

Unfortunately, the ActivityPub world keeps pretending that Mike Macgirvin and his work does not exist (Nomadic Identity has been around and working in Hubzilla for roughly a decade).

There's also OpenWebAuth (Federated Single Sign On). As Sean Tilley explains in this March 2024 article, Nomadic Identity and OpenWebAuth together can enable network resilience, censorship resistance, and ease of migration.

#^https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/activitypub-nomadic-identity/

No idea whether Nomadic Identity, OpenWebAuth, conversation containers, etc. will ever get widespread adoption. At present, the user base of software such as Hubzilla, Forte etc. (which have these features) is negligible. And at least in case of Hubzilla (which I am using), the UI and UX needs a lot of work; don't know about Forte (which is based on ActivityPub).

And yes, all the other problems with the Fediverse that you listed will still remain. At this point, I doubt if the Fedi will ever become socially and politically relevant.

#ActivityPub #ATProto #Nomad #Zot #NomadicIdentity #OpenWebAuth #Fediverse
Medium · Nomadic identity, brought to you by Hubzilla - Andrew Manning - MediumVon Andrew Manning
Antwortete im Thread
Genial wäre jetzt noch, wenn Friendica auch serverseitige Unterstützung für OpenWebAuth einbauen würde.

Und wenn Mastodon endlich den schon seit Ewigkeiten auf GitHub schimmelnden Pull Request für OpenWebAuth-Unterstützung akzeptieren würde (wobei ich glaube, der ist auch nur clientseitig).

#FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #OpenWebAuth #SingleSignOn
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Antwortete im Thread
@Bryan Redeagle
I found a really cool one called Zot that had cross site authentication, which made privacy settings really interesting and useful. Unfortunately, the developer took down all of the drive and instead created a reference application called (streams), the parenthesis are correct. (streams) has no good info or documentation. You have to read the code to figure it out.


A few corrections. Source: I've been using that stuff since before Mastodon was hot. Oh, and this is going to be long.

First of all, the creator, @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️, not only created the Zot protocol, but also a reference implementation at the same time. As in 2012. The reference implementation was named Red and a fork of his very own Friendica from 2010. Since Red turned out to be a not-so-good name, it was renamed Red Matrix. And as it didn't really take off, it was redesigned and renamed into Hubzilla in 2015. Hubzilla still exists today. I'm using it right now.

Mike kept advancing the Zot protocol further and further with a whole string of forks and forks of forks and so forth. Zot6 matured with Zap around 2019 and brought OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on with itself. Both were backported to Hubzilla, which has been maintained by someone else since 2018, in 2010.

Zot's killer feature is not OpenWebAuth magic single sign-on, though. It's nomadic identity. The very thing it was designed for.

In 2021, Zot11 was reached, but it had advanced so far that it was no longer compatible with Zot6, so it was renamed to Nomad. Today's Nomad would be Zot12.

(streams) is only a semi-official name, given to it by the community, based on the name of the code repository. Officially, the application is not a project, it is intentionally nameless (no, I'm not kidding, this thing has no name), it is intentionally devoid of any traces of a brand identity, it intentionally had almost all nodeinfo code removed, and it was intentionally released into the public domain.

As (streams) is not a branded product, it does not have a website either.

The reason why it doesn't have any documentation is another one: The documentation it had was painfully outdated. It was basically handed on from fork to fork to fork and never touched. Parts of it have remained untouched since before Osada and Zap were forked from Hubzilla, and that was in 2018. Other parts still speak of Red, and that name ceased to exist in 2012. I know because Hubzilla's current documentation is every bit as old.

Hubzilla is right now having its entire documentation re-written from scratch in German and English by a community member.

For (streams), however, the only solution was to rip the whole documentation out because no documentation was deemed better than one that's so outdated it's useless.

It was considered not so bad for as long as how few people a) learned about (streams) and b) figured out how to find an open-registration instance of something that has neither third-party instance lists nor a unified instance identifier actually joined (streams). After all, they all came from Hubzilla, so they could figure out most themselves.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Zot #Zot6 #Nomad #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #NomadicIdentity #SingleSignOn #OpenWebAuth
joinfediverse.wikiWhat is Hubzilla? – Join the Fediverse
@Johannes Ernst
same account for multiple instances

This in its pure, nomadic form and with proven stability is only available on Hubzilla and (streams) anyway.

They're also the only ones whose instances can detect off-site users' logins and grant them rights that other visitors don't have, provided said off-site users are on either of the two or Friendica. All thanks to OpenWebAuth.

@Mike Macgirvin 🖥️, creator of all three and maintainer of the streams repository, is currently working on implementing nomadic identity and (streams)' set of permissions using nothing but ActivityPub so it can become available to everything else in the Fediverse as well.

share to fediverse

I'm not quite sure, but I think @Stefan Bohacek or someone who commented on one of his posts has figured out how to share at least to Hubzilla.

However, actual share buttons are all geared only towards Mastodon and hit-and-miss at best when it comes to anything else. The less something is like Mastodon, the less they work with it.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #NomadicIdentity #OpenWebAuth #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #ShareButton #ShareButtons
tl;dr: Hubzilla has had at least some of this for over a decade now. And it won't replace any of it with a new standard tailor-made for Mastodon.

@silverpill If you look past projects based on ActivityPub and at projects that have ActivityPub as an additional protocol, some of this already exists.

- Data portability. In my opinion, this is the most important problem. I'm in favor of FEP-ef61, which also solves identity portability and unlocks many new features.

Exists in the shape of nomadic identity. Invented by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ in 2011 with his Zot protocol and first deplayed in 2012 with the Red Matrix, nowadays known as Hubzilla. Also available on (streams), Mike's current project at the end of a string of forks from Hubzilla, now based on the Nomad protocol.

Mike would like to see nomadic identity and other special features of the Zot and Nomad protocols included in the ActivityPub protocol. He has actually submitted a number of proposals for this. They were all rejected. Even though he is a protocol developer first and foremost, and he has both created and worked on more Fediverse protocols than anyone else, so he should be considered competent.

Nomadic identity with ActivityPub won't come unless either Evan Prodromou and the W3C commission cave in and allow Mike's suggestions, or someone re-invents the wheel from scratch in a way that's utterly incompatible to Hubzilla and (streams). And it won't come to Mastodon unless Eugen Rochko can imply that Mastodon has had it first.

And there will never be a nomadic identity standard that meets Mike's requirements as well as Eugen's wishes.

- End-to-end encryption. MLS has become a standard, and it would be wise to adopt it. Issue 3 at fediverse-ideas provides a good overview of what we have at the moment (not much). Some variation of FEP-ae97 is likely needed to make end-to-end encryption work.

AFAIK, all three of Mike's still existing projects, Friendica from 2010, Hubzilla from 2012/2015 and (streams) from 2021, have it. Optionally, but still. I think Friendica actually advertises military-grade encryption.

- Plugins. Something like Pleroma MRF, but cross-platform (e.g. Wasm-based). Also, pluggable timeline algorithms.

Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have had support for add-ons, including third-party add-ons, plus a number of official add-ons since their respective inceptions. If you want a cross-platform add-on standard, I hope you don't expect these three to throw their own standards over board in favour of the new standard. Otherwise, good luck developing a replacement for Pubcrawl that makes Zot-based Hubzilla compatible with ActivityPub while working on ActivityPub-based Mastodon just the same. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) rely on add-ons for all federation beyond their respective base protocols (DFRN, Zot, Nomad).

- Groups. We have several competing standards for groups: FEP-1b12, FEP-400e, Mastodon developers are working on their own standard. It would be nice to converge on a single standard, that also supports private groups.

Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have had support for discussion groups/forums since their respective inception. On Friendica, a group is a user account with special settings; on Hubzilla and (streams), it's a channel with special settings. In addition, especially Hubzilla and (streams) have access permission control on a level that most people for whom the Fediverse is only ActivityPub couldn't imagine in their wildest dreams. All three can be used by users from all over the Fediverse already now.

Good luck forcing Friendica to give up its 13-year-old standard that's used by Fediverse News, just to name one, and Hubzilla to give up its 11-year-old standard that blows everything else but what (streams) does out of the water. Good luck forcing them to adopt something inferior.

On the other hand, good luck forcing Lemmy and /kbin to switch to a wholly different standard. Don't forget that these two exist as well. And good luck having the Fediverse outside of Hubzilla and (streams) adopt both server-side and client-side OpenWebAuth.

And I'm not even talking about how different Fediverse projects handle threads differently. Mastodon has a Twitter-like thread structure: many posts, tied together with mentiones. Just about everything that's built on ActivityPub has taken this over. Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have a Facebook/blog/Tumblr-like thread structure: one post, the start post, and many comments which aren't posts. It's similar on Lemmy and /kbin which are Reddit clones, only that they don't allow thread starters to moderate their own threads.

- Quoting. FEP-e232 is a proposed standard, but most fediverse applications still use non-standard properties. Mastodon developers are trying to invent something completely different.

This is something that almost the whole Fediverse has implemented, save for Mastodon.

And again, Friendica has had quotes since its inception in 2010, almost six years before Mastodon was launched (which, by the way, federated with Friendica and Hubzilla on the spot). Hubzilla has had quotes since 2012, inherited from Friendica. Their way of quoting is dead-simple: BBcode. [quote][/quote] (streams) supports Markdown and HTML in addition to BBcode, but otherwise it's the same.

Oh, and by the way: Friendica, Hubzilla and (streams) have also supported quote-posts a.k.a. quote-tweets a.k.a. quote-toots a.k.a. quote-boosts from their very beginnings.

- Markets. So far there's only one server implementation capable of processing payments.

At least two. Hubzilla has a payment add-on, too. It isn't installed on all hubs, but it's there.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #CWFedisplaining #Fediverse #Mastodon #MastodonIsNotTheFediverse #NotOnlyMastodon #ActivityPub #Friendica #DFRN #Hubzilla #Zot #Streams #(streams) #Nomad #Lemmy #kbin #/kbin #NomadicIdentity #OpenWebAuth #Group #Groups #Forum #Forums #Quote #Quotes #Encryption #E2EE #E2EEncryption
Codeberg.orgfep/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md an mainfep - Fediverse Enhancement Proposals
Antwortete im Thread
@maegul @Johannes Ernst To be fair, something like "mobile identity" already exists. In the Fediverse. Not as an experimental proof-of-concept, but in stable daily use for longer than Mastodon has even been around.

It's called "nomadic identity". It was created by @Mike Macgirvin 🖥️ in 2011 with his Zot protocol and first implemented by himself in 2012 in the Red Matrix which became Hubzilla in 2015. It's also part of the Nomad protocol, a successor of Zot, upon which Mike's latest creations commonly referred to as (streams) is based.

Nomadic identity allows you to have your channel (similar to what an account is just about everywhere else) on multiple server instances at the same time. Not backup-like static copies, but identical clones which are being kept in sync in near-real-time.

In case any of you don't know yet: Both can use ActivityPub as well, and they're federated with Mastodon. I'm actually writing this from a Hubzilla channel that has one spare clone.

Also, both Hubzilla and (streams) have bidirectional support for another creation of Mike's, a single-sign-on system named OpenWebAuth which automatically recognises your login on compatible instances.

The obvious catch is that neither of these features are available anywhere else, at least not to this extent. Hubzilla and (streams) are the only nomadic federated server applications, and they're also the only ones that with server-side OpenWebAuth support which means that they can recognise OpenWebAuth logins from elsewhere.

And it's safe to say that what doesn't exist on Mastodon may be seen as non-existent in the Fediverse altogether.

CC: @Ben Pate 🤘 @Laurens Hof @Vicki Boykis

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #Fediverse #NomadicIdentity #OpenWebAuth #Hubzilla #Streams
social.coopJohannes Ernst (@J12t@social.coop)6.6K Posts, 833 Following, 1.77K Followers · Technologist, founder, organizer. Let's put people back in control of their technology. The Fediverse is a good start. Also wondering aloud where we are taking this planet. Check out my home page for more info and links. He/him. tfr
@Matthias ✔ Wobei meines Wissens auch #OpenWebAuth nicht das Anlegen eigener Kanäle erlaubt, sofern man kein wirkliches Konto hat.

Schön an OpenWebAuth im Zusammenspiel mit nomadischer Identität ist, daß man, wenn man an seine Klone will, sich nicht erst auf den Instanzen einloggen muß, wo die Klone liegen.

Aber anscheinend geht OpenWebAuth auf #Friendica ja inzwischen in beide Richtungen, d. h. #Hubzilla und #Streams erkennen Friendica-Logins, und Friendica erkennt Logins von Hubzilla und (streams).
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
@KubikPixel™ Kommt ganz drauf an, was man will.

Die beste direkte Alternative dürfte #Firefish ex #CalcKey sein, das #Mastodon in Features weit voraus ist. #Volltextsuche hat Mastodon gerade erst eingeführt, so daß die mangels brauchbarer Indizes noch gar nicht richtig nutzbar ist. Firefish hatte sie schon immer, weil auch #Misskey sie schon immer hatte.

#Textformatierungen und #Zitate konnten Firefish und Misskey meines Wissens auch schon immer. Mastodon kann beides nur anzeigen, während Firefish sogar Textformatierungen erzeugen kann, die Mastodon nicht anzeigen kann.

Oder Zeichenlimits beim Schreiben von Posts. Mastodon kann nur 500 Zeichen. Für mehr muß der Admin so tief in die Software einsteigen, daß man fast schon von einem Fork reden könnte. Firefish kann standardmäßig 3000 Zeichen, was der Admin meines Wissens auf der Oberfläche einstellen, also noch erhöhen kann. Zugegeben, beide hacken #AltText rigoros bei 1500 Zeichen ab.

Last but not least unterstützt Firefish meines Wissens die Mastodon-API, sollte also gute Unterstützung durch Mastodon-Apps haben bis darauf, daß man mit Apps, die nur für Mastodon entwickelt werden, auch fast nur das machen kann, was Mastodon kann.

#Friendica ist natürlich noch mächtiger. Es hat Zeichenlimits in den Zigtausenden, es unterstützt wohl noch mehr Formatierungen, es hat einen Filehoster eingebaut, es hat einen öffentlichen Kalender eingebaut, man kann Konten als moderierte Gruppen/Foren einrichten usw. Und es hat mit all dem schon Erfahrungein seit 2010.

Der Hauptnachteil dürfte aber sein, daß es weiter von Mastodon entfernt ist als Firefish. Es gibt mehr, was anders ist und anders läuft. Was man auf Mastodon gelernt oder von Twitter mitgenommen hat, kann man auf Friendica eigentlich gleich wieder vergessen.

Posts schreibt man nicht wie Tweets, sondern wie Blogposts. Bilder werden nicht als Dateien angehängt, sondern woanders hochgeladen (meistens im eingebauten Dateispeicher) und irgendwo im Text eingebettet. Alt-Text ist kein separates Feld, sondern muß per Hand in den BBcode eingeflochten werden. Ein Content-Warning-Feld gibt's nicht, aber eins für den Titel und eins für die Zusammenfassung, wobei sich letzteres dann als dasselbe wie Content Warnings auf Mastodon entpuppt. Direktnachrichten gehen nicht mit @ und Rechteeinstellen, sondern mit !. Antworten sind nicht auch Posts, sondern Kommentare, und das ist ganz was anderes als ein Post. Und so weiter.

Klar, Friendica kann mehr und einiges auch besser, aber Mastodon-Umsteiger müssen im Prinzip alles ganz neu lernen.

#Streams von 2021 ist in Teilen noch mächtiger als Friendica (wobei ein Teil von Friendicas Features wieder fehlt), #Hubzilla von 2015 ist durchweg noch sehr viel mächtiger. Aber hier ist die Umgewöhnung noch heftiger, alleine schon, weil die eigene Identität nicht durchs Konto definiert ist, sondern in einem Kanal "containerisiert". Und man kann auf demselben Konto mehrere Kanäle mit separaten Identitäten haben. Und dann kommt noch #NomadischeIdentität oben drauf, auch wenn die eigentlich der feuchte Traum vieler Mastodon-Nutzer ist. Sie erfordert nur eben Um-die-Ecke-Denken.

Hubzilla ist natürlich so ziemlich der ultimative Alleskönner. Es ist mehr als nur Friendica mit ein bißchen Extrazeugs, wobei vieles genauso funktioniert wie auf Friendica und somit ganz anders als auf Mastodon.

Hubzilla ist ein "Social CMS", das einem neben Social Networking und Gar-nicht-so-Microblogging auch voll formatiertes Macroblogging bietet, das sich in der Funktion kaum vom Gar-nicht-so-Microblogging unterscheidet, außerdem einfache Websites, Wikis, Cloudspeicher mit WebDAV, CalDAV und CardDAV und so weiter und so fort. Oben drauf gibt's ein sehr detailliertes Rechtemanagement, das auch eng verzahnt ist mit #SingleSignOn durch #OpenWebAuth.

Aber auf der einen Seite steht dieser gigantische Funktionsberg, und auf der anderen Seite steht die Benutzeroberfläche. An sich könnte die extrem flexibel sein, sie unterstützt Komplett-Themes, die für jeden Kanal individuell wählbar wären. In der Praxis gibt es aber nur noch ein Theme, das gepflegt wird. Das ist noch von 2012, wurde aus einem Friendica-Standardthema für die #RedMatrix umgebaut, hat sich seitdem kaum bis gar nicht verändert und hat mit Usability kaum etwas zu tun. Alternativen sind in der Mache, aber noch nicht offiziell verfügbar.

Dazu kommt die Dokumentation. Die wurde geschrieben von Entwicklern, die nicht wußten, wie man Nichtentwicklern etwas erklärt, also z. B. ganz normalen Endnutzern, und liest sich streckenweise eher wie ein technisches Lastenhaft. Noch dazu ist sie zu erheblichen Teilen so hoffnungslos veraltet, daß sie überhaupt nicht nutzbar ist.

Ach ja: Textformatierung gibt's. Textformatierung mit Klickibunti und Echtzeit-WYSIWYG gibt's nicht. Wer keinen BBcode kann, hat verloren, weil einem auch die Buttons nur BBcode in den Editor packen. Auch wenn zum Glück zumindest die BBcode-Implementation von Hubzilla ziemlich gut dokumentiert und halbwegs aktuell ist.

(streams) hat nicht mehr den Funktionsumfang von Hubzilla. Das Ziel ist hier eigentlich nicht, von vornherein einen Alleskönner zu haben, sondern eine Codebasis, um daraus was feines Eigenes zu bauen. Die Oberfläche sieht ganz ähnlich aus, ist aber einen Tick zugänglicher, vielleicht auch deshalb, weil es vieles einfach nicht mehr gibt. Erleichternd dürfte für einige dazukommen, daß auf (streams) alles wahlweise mit BBcode, Markdown oder HTML formatiert werden kann, so daß man keinen BBcode lernen muß, wenn man schon Markdown kann.

(streams) hat auch eine bessere Anbindung von #ActivityPub und Verbesserungen in der nomadischen Identität. Dafür kann es sich mit nichts anderem mehr verbinden, außer daß es immer noch RSS-Feeds erzeugt und E-Mail-Benachrichtigungen verschicken kann.

Näher an Mastodon ist es damit aber nicht. Im Gegenteil: Verwirrend ist schon mal, daß es sich nicht um ein in sich geschlossenes Projekt mit Namen und Marke handelt. Es ist gar kein Projekt, sondern nur ein Code-Repository. Es hat auch keinen Namen und kein Logo. Es ist wirklich mit voller Absicht namenlos. Der Name "Streams" und das Wellenlogo gehören beide zum Repository, nicht zur Software. Daher auch die Klammern um den "Namen".

Das heißt auch, daß die einzelnen Instanzen keine einheitliche Projektidentität haben. Mastodon-Instanzen identifizieren sich alle als Mastodon. Hubzilla-Instanzen identifizieren sich alle als Hubzilla. (streams)-Instanzen identifizieren sich als irgendwas, weil man da selbst etwas eintragen kann und muß. Waitman Gobbles öffentliche Instanz namens Rumbly identifiziert sich beispielsweise nicht als "Streams", sondern als "-get".

Folge: Es ist nicht möglich, (streams)-Instanzen automatisiert zu crawlen, zu identifizieren und aufzulisten. Das wird noch zusätzlich dazu erschwert, daß mit ebenso voller Absicht die Statistikausgabe aus (streams) komplett entfernt wurde. Die einschlägigen Projekt- und Instanz-Listenseiten fürs #Fediverse listen allesamt keine (streams)-Instanzen, und das werden sie auch nicht, weil das zum einen nicht gewollt und zum anderen wegen der uneinheitlichen Identifikation der Instanzen gar nicht möglich ist.

Folge: (streams)-Instanzen zu finden, ist Detektivarbeit. Das dürfte auch erklären, warum es bei (streams) einen noch höheren Anteil an persönlichen Instanzen gibt, zumal es kaum öffentliche Instanzen mit offener Registrierung gibt.

Ein gemeinsamer Nachteil von Hubzilla und (streams) ist: Smartphone-Apps kann man vergessen. Für Hubzilla gibt's eine, die seit 2018 nicht mehr gepflegt wird, also mehr als die Hälfte der Zeit, die es Hubzilla gibt. Die funktioniert inzwischen gar nicht mehr. Und auch die hat den Fokus nur aufs Mikroblogging gelegt.

(streams) wird wohl nie eine Smartphone-App haben, eben weil es kein in sich geschlossenes Projekt mit fixer Projektidentität ist.

Beide unterstützen nicht die Mastodon-API, soweit ich weiß. Also ist man so oder so auf den Webbrowser angeweisen. Andererseits sind beide Projekte so mächtig, daß es kaum möglich sein dürfte, ihren jeweils kompletten Funktionsumfang in eine dann immer noch leicht bedienbare Smartphone-App zu pressen.
hub.netzgemeinde.euNetzgemeinde/Hubzilla
Antwortete im Thread
@Jens Ljungkvist :mastodon: @Jeff Sikes @Kainoa @Chris Trottier Something similar to "one account on all projects" is already in the works.

By and by, #Fediverse projects may adopt #OpenWebAuth, a #SingleSignOn implementation developed by @mike for #Hubzilla and currently implemented on Hubzilla, its direct predecessor #Friendica and its latest not-quite direct descendant, #Streams. An implementation is also in development on #Mastodon. It should not be confused with #OAuth and #OAuth2, these are something entirely different.

What OpenWebAuth is that it recognises logins elsewhere. When I'm logged into this Hubzilla account, and I visit another Hubzilla hub or maybe a Friendica node or a (streams) instance, it will automatically recognise me. And it will grant me some extra "guest permissions" like being able to post directly on the wall of another Hubzilla or (streams) channel.

What it does not do, however, is give me all the power on any Friendica node, Hubzilla hub or (streams) instance that a logged-in user with a user account has.

I can't go to another Hubzilla hub and create a clone of my channel or create a brand-new channel or post an article or start a wiki or upload files just with my OpenWebAuth login credentials. And when Mastodon introduces OpenWebAuth, I still won't be able to go to any one random Mastodon instance and start tooting. All this would still require a local user account on that one specific instance.

One account for the whole Fediverse is utopic. It's technologically impossible or just very very very unfeasible.

The Fediverse has 24,000+ instances of dozens of projects. If you want full local user power everywhere in the Fediverse, you'll need one registered account on each one of these 24,000+ instances.

Whenever someone joins mastodon.social, then RATATATATATATATATATATA, 24,000+ more accounts with the same login credentials will have to be created automatically.

Also, the Fediverse has 12,000,000+ users. If you want full local user power everywhere in the Fediverse, then everyone else must have it, too. So every single instance of each Fediverse project will have to have one account per Fediverse user. The only exceptions would be those very few projects which are designed for only one user account.

However, personal instances of projects that are designed for multiple user accounts will all be affected. The hapless Mastodon user who comes over to your personal Hubzilla hub to act like a registered user will neither know nor care if that hub is running on a root server in a data centre with two 36-core Xeon CPUs and enough RAM to make a 3-D CAD workstation cry or on a Raspberry Pi at your home.

Now, let's assume someone has set up a new Web server with some Fediverse project installed on it. It doesn't matter if that's Mastodon or #CalcKey or #Lemmy or #Mitra or (streams) or whatever as long as it has #ActivityPub. They start that thing up for the first time: sudo systemctl start nginx or so.

And RATATATATATATATATATATA TATATATATATATATATATATA TATATATATATATATATATATA TATATATATATATATATATATA TATATATATATATATATATATA TATATATATATATATATATATA, that poor thing will sit for WEEKS registering over twelve million user accounts.

Why? Because anyone in the Fediverse might come over anytime soon and want to use just this one specific instance as if they had registered their personal user account there. In order to be able to do that, they need a user account.

By the way, not even the notorious featherweight #Pleroma could handle 12,000,000+ user accounts on one instance. Mastodon can do that even less, not to mention the heavyweight Friendica or the super-heavyweight Hubzilla.

Speaking of Hubzilla, maybe a new Hubzilla hub might get away more easily when starting up for the first time. On Hubzilla, ActivityPub is optional per hub and then per channel. The hub admin can switch it on and off, and if it's on, the users can switch it on and off again for each one of their channels.

So if ActivityPub is off on the admin side by default, new Hubzilla hubs will only register one user account for each Hubzilla and (streams) user out there, maybe also for the users on the few remaining instances of the #Zotlabs projects that went EOL on New Year's Eve 2022, #Redmatrix, #Osada, #Zap, #Misty a.k.a. #Mistpark2020 and #Roadhouse. They all speak one native language, #Zot.

But once the admin activates the Pubcrawl app for their hub, that hub will immediately start registering user accounts for every user on every instance of every project that connects to Hubzilla via ActivityPub, each account with one channel with Pubcrawl on. And it will spend weeks or months doing so and not have any server resources left to do anything else in the meantime.

Speaking of Hubzilla, there's also #NomadicIdentity, the killer feature of the Zot protocol. Hubzilla has it, (streams) has it, and the (un)dead Zotlabs projects have it.

Ideally, each Fediverse user would not get one account on each Hubzilla hub and each (streams) instance with one separate, unique channel on it. They would first get the accounts. On one account on one Hubzilla hub, one channel would be created. This channel would then be cloned across all Hubzilla hubs and to (streams).

Advantage: Each Fediverse user would only have one channel for Hubzilla and (streams) together. They would have the exact same content on all Hubzilla hubs and, minus what Hubzilla can do that (streams) can't, all (streams) instances.

Obvious disadvantage: Whenever someone decides to do something on that channel, it would have to be synced to all its clones in near-real-time, causing a lot of network traffic.

And if you set up a new Hubzilla hub or (streams) instance, the creation of 12,000,000+ accounts would actually become a lesser problem. The bigger problem would be the 12,000,000+ channels that will be cloned onto your machine with everything on them. You'd better attach a few petabytes worth of HDD capacities to your personal little Raspberry Pi.

By the way, if everyone had full local user rights on each Fediverse instance, the Fediverse would have over 300 billion local accounts.
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Antwortete im Thread
@CynthesisToday Yep, these incompatibilities all lie within the #Mastodon server application, how it handles #ActivityPub and how much of it. There are plenty of Mastodon forks which have things like quotes or text formatting implemented. At least text formatting is trivial to add, mostly by throwing out all the code that strips the rich text formatting off the incoming notes, and quotes aren't rocket science either.

The S2C transmission isn't affected by this. However, most mobile apps that were coded against Mastodon either only or first and foremost have neither text formatting nor quotes implemented. Since most Mastodon users are on mobile devices, these features won't appear in practice until the popular mobile apps have them built-in.

More general #Fediverse apps or apps designed for other server-side projects have them implemented already now.

Oh, and if Mastodon really gets #OpenWebAuth, then #Lemmy and #kbin can't sit and watch and pick their noses and do nothing.
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@Sim :blobfoxcomputer: :ferris: At least I've seen Mastodon users demanding that everyone who is not on Mastodon make their posts so that nothing about them disturbs Mastodon users.

This means no actual quotes because Mastodon doesn't know quotes. This means no bullet-point lists because Mastodon doesn't know bullet-point lists.

This means not more than four images because Mastodon has to convert images from certain projects to file attachments and attach them behind the end of the post, and Mastodon can't attach more than four files to one post.

In fact, this means only one picture because Mastodon seems to order file attachments and pictures the wrong way.

And this means no sensitive pictures at all because Mastodon can't hide them behind a CW when they come in from outside of Mastodon.

Oh, and it means posts no longer than 500 characters.

As for your other paragraph, there are two possible solutions for this. One is halfway realistic.

The realistic one means to introduce #SingleSignOn in the shape of #OpenWebAuth (also invented by @mike) to Mastodon, Lemmy and /kbin. Then Lemmy and /kbin would recognise your Mastodon login. Also, this would require modifications to the Web UI for "guest users" as which you would count. Then you could do the same you can do now remotely from Mastodon, but on the Web UI of whatever Lemmy or /kbin instance you're currently on.

But you would not have all features that users with a user account on that instance have, i.e. you can neither create nor moderate Lemmy communities or /kbin magazines.

If you wanted these, too, this would require the second, impossible solution, namely the automatic creation of one user account for each Fediverse user on each Lemmy instance and each /kbin instance. This could be combined with OpenWebAuth, too, and automatically log you into your account on that respective instance. But whenever someone starts up a new instance, it would have to a) know all 12,000,000++ Fediverse accounts and b) immediately create one local account for each one of them.
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