Can I build a blockchain on top of it?
ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
31–40 of 140 posts
Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#32From my quick read of the spec, server-to-server federation assumes that servers can be trusted. That need not be the case; unless a message is signed it should not be assumed to have come from a specific user. I don't know if there's an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that'd be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe). The other question is whether we want server-to-server federatio…
> I don't know if there's an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that'd be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe).
There is a way to do this! Check out https://bockstack.org. We are working on decentralized identity and key management.
Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Privacy on the level of AP would have been very easy to add, by just using a different salmon endpoint for private messages. This was discussed at length back then, but Mastodon still chose to implement the leaky-by-default changes. There's nothing in AP that can't be done using OStatus, with very very minor extensions.
Could you elaborate on "salmon endpoint"?
In OStatus 'salmons' are messages sent from one server to another that contain posts. They are signed, so the receiving server knows if it can trust it.
If person peter@example.com mentions bob@differentsite.org, a salmon is sent from example.com to differentsite.org containing the message. The endpoint that this is posted to is the 'salmon endpoint'.
Using a second endpoint for privacy enhanced messages would have the way to go. Old servers wouldn't ever receive private messages, while new servers that understood the extensions could have kept 90% of their old code and infrastructure.
Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#34I have been in touch with Tim Berners-Lee and his Solid project since late 2016. Since then, I've run across many people who work at W3C and in the protocol space, and it's inspired me to open up and publish protocols derived from our platform (eg https://github.com/Qbix/auth ) But I believe that, in the end of the day, mass adoption can only be done when there is a popular platform. Whether it's closed source like F…
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Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you elaborate on "salmon endpoint"?
In OStatus 'salmons' are messages sent from one server to another that contain posts. They are signed, so the receiving server knows if it can trust it. If person peter@example.com mentions bob@differentsite.org, a salmon is sent from example.com to differentsite.org containing the message. The endpoint that this is posted to is the 'salmon endpoint'. Using a second endpoint for privacy enhanced messages would have t…
Oh that's nice, thanks for the explanation. I'm currently working on a social network and I like the idea of being able to connect with other ones via open standards. I need to do more research on implementation.
Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#36This protocol is a successor to OStatus (GNU Social), and mostly made by the same people. From what I remember, Mastodon switched from OStatus to ActivityPub a few releases ago. In the past they had to extend the OStatus protocol for private messages, which meant some clients may not honor the private status of theses posts. ActivityPub has private messages defined properly in the spec. It seems PeerTube ( https://gi…
Last summer I tried untangling the OStatus/pump.io/ActivityPub/ActivityStreams nest hoping to piece together a big picture mental image based mostly on what Wikipedia has to say, and found it mostly frustrating. For anyone who's similarly curious or confused, LWN published a pretty great overview last month—their "Federation in social networks" article: https://lwn.net/Articles/741218/
Thanks for this. I was grinding my wheels much the same way, so hopefully this LWN article will clear things up for me.
Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#37The FSF announcement about it:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/victory-for-libre-networ...
Look in particular at that cool video in it. Someone posts a video to Peertube, which gets federated to Mastodon. People comment on Mastodon and the comment gets federated back into Peertube. People reply on Peertube, and the comment goes back to Mastodon. Kinda nifty:
https://peertube.cpy.re/videos/watch/da2b08d4-a242-4170-b32a...
Btw, I have been greatly enjoying Mastodon. I'm @JordiGH@mathstodon.xyz in case anyone feels like chatting to me there.
Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#38From my quick read of the spec, server-to-server federation assumes that servers can be trusted. That need not be the case; unless a message is signed it should not be assumed to have come from a specific user. I don't know if there's an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that'd be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe). The other question is whether we want server-to-server federatio…
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Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#39From my quick read of the spec, server-to-server federation assumes that servers can be trusted. That need not be the case; unless a message is signed it should not be assumed to have come from a specific user. I don't know if there's an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that'd be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe). The other question is whether we want server-to-server federatio…
> I don't know if there's an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that'd be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe). There is a way to do this! Check out https://bockstack.org . We are working on decentralized identity and key management.
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Re: ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol
#40All of these social networking protocols feel like we're just re-inventing UUCP at a higher level.