silverpill

Yes, it is feasible and such instances already exist.

For example, you can run a Mitra instance on Tor, I2P or Yggdrasil. It is a lightweight micro-blogging server similar to Mastodon:

https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra

Tor / I2P docs:

- https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra/src/branch/main/docs/onion.md
- https://codeberg.org/silverpill/mitra/src/branch/main/docs/i2p.md

I mean event kinds: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips?tab=readme-ov-file#event-kinds

ActivityPub has Note and Follow, Nostr has 1 and 3.

I don’t know much about recent developments, but the early version of the protocol had several major flaws:

- Identity is based on a non-rotatable key, other types of identity are not supported.
- No privacy without encryption.
- Media attachments are not supported, all images are stored on a single server.
- Servers only store data and don’t do anything else, so they get abstracted away and everyone uses the same 5 relays (in Fediverse each server has a personality, and that creates a strong incentive to self-host).

There are also many minor things that I dislike, for example the use of numbers instead of human-readable names, unusual cryptography and so on.

By separating core protocol requirements and optional features.

The guide has a section titled “Protocol features”:

https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/commit/f1ee497085f56cde9860b9417eba8cd05cd1522a/guide.md#protocol-features

This is a place where information about optional features is collected, and soft deletion FEP could be mentioned there. A formal specification could be structured in a similar way.

>Currently it’s hard to read, there is no single document. No single source of truth.

We can make it happen.

I am currently working on this: https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/branch/main/guide.md. It’s a guide for developers, but in the future it may be used as a base for a more formal specification.

Sucks, right, because on the theadiverse, you’re not actually able to do that so easily.

Sounds like an unnecessary limitation of threadiverse software. Why limit a post to only one community? That doesn’t make any sense.

The person who made the post with multiple mentions clearly did it intentionally, and I would do the same because for every topic I am interested in there are 4-5 groups on different servers.

Every mentioned person gets addressed

In most cases, this is what a user wants. Some platforms support silent mentions, though (Friendica, if I remember correctly).

hashtag / community tag soup

I think this should be viewed as a moderation problem, not a protocol problem. If you don’t want to see mention soup, just limit the number of mentions per post on your instance.

If the goal is normie-friendly social media with full ownership, it would be better to work on peer-to-peer Fediverse applications.

You can get to a point where you just install an app on your phone and it’s yours forever. The foundation for this is already being built: https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/branch/main/nomadpub.md

Self-hosting is nice but it requires an always-online, publicly accessible server and a domain name.

@fhoekstra Such tools are worse than useless. Every time I see an automated changelog it’s mix of dependabot commits, “fix CI” and other meaningless messages.

Not having a changelog is better, because then you just go straight to a commit history and don’t waste your time trying to parse machine-generated slop.

You can find some interoperability data here: https://funfedi.dev/support/_tables/

More applications could be added, there are open issues for PeerTube and Lemmy.

I think Solid had some interesting ideas, but was ruined by Linked Data.
ActivityPub has a chance of evolving into something like Solid, but better.

Actually, I am already using a single account for interacting with most Fediverse apps. Aren’t you on Mbin? I thought it also can interact with blogs, forums and everything in between

I would like to use a single account for everything, rather than separate accounts for different kinds of content. A server that works like super-app.

I don’t like the idea, but at least one such application is already being developed:

https://codeberg.org/rozodru/Bridge

FEP-ef61: Portable Objects describes how to use DIDs with ActivityPub. Here’s a slightly less technical introduction: https://codeberg.org/ap-next/ap-next/src/branch/main/nomadpub.md

It’s not easy, though. Adding this feature to an existing project will require a lot of work, especially if you don’t want to share signing keys with servers. This was discussed in #3100, Lemmy devs are not opposed to FEP-ef61, but they don’t plan to work on it.

Also, I don’t recommend copying solutions from ATProto, their did:plc and did:web are not really “decentralized”.