Oh, Zot! Nomadic Identity is Coming to ActivityPub: This could change the Fediverse forever
Years before there was Mastodon and even ActivityPub, there was Mike Macgirvin who created the Zot protocol, which Hubzilla runs on. One of Hubzilla’s most amazing features (apart from also integrating with Activity and the Fediverse, and having cha ...continues
@danie10 can you give a little hint on how to use/activate this Nomadic Identity function so we could try it and understand what it is and how it works. I looked at my #hubzilla profile settings and didn't find any mention of it.
@danie10 thank you, I think I got it, though I should admit everything is really difficult to find with #hubzilla interface - even just to get to this Import function where Nomadic Identity is hidden you should unintuitively go to "Channels" - "Create new channel" page instead of just simply find it in Settings menu like with Mastodon.
@fisunov and #Hubzilla is now quite an old network. Mike has long moved onto other projects. But he is here on the Fediverse at @mikedev so I'll be watching his posts closely.
@fisunov Basically you can register or connect your identity on one instance with another one. Rather than having to migrate the way you might on Mastodon, the identities are mirrored on both at the same time. One of them is the primary and gives you your contact handle, but you can log in to use that account from any of the instances you have connected together. If one instance goes offline, you can still use your account from the others you had previously connected to. (IIRC) @danie10
@fisunov It gets a bit confusing when you try to connect that to ActivityPub, because while Zot sees your registrations on all instances as part of one identity, ActivityPub only sees them individually. Your posts get blasted out onto AP for each of the instances you've connected over on Zot. But that may change by the sounds of things. @danie10
@tokyo_0 which is why when Mike created Hubzilla, after he'd created Friendica, he'd made a complete break with a new protocol. I'm hoping that after studying ActivityPub, and having some years of experience, he can see a way of making this work to modify the existing ActivityPub (or extend it).
@danie10 Fingers crossed. There's no reason the whole Fediverse couldn't switch to a more powerful protocol, I guess, but ActivityPub does have the numbers for now.
@kotaro the article I linked to from my blog does summarise the three key aspects that differentiate it collectively. The relay channel tho is everything including all previous posts, comments, etc. To date regular migration has only been the profile itself. Bluesky has only now started to decentralise so not sure rthey have anything as complete as Hubzilla has.
@danie10 Is it this page? It seems that channel relay is different from mirroring. Well, if it's upward compatible and the verification method can be managed like a blockchain, I'm fine with it. wedistribute.org/2024/03/activitypub-nomadic-identity/
@kotaro a channel is a sort of feed, but you can have more than one. A channel can then be mirrored to a different instance that acts as a backup, whilst everyone follows the primary one they see. In the settings you can switch which will be primary.
@kotaro yesd it's similar to like Google+ allowed one account, but posts on different themes could be subsribed to separately for better focus vs a single stream of everything from one profile. Separate but linked to one account.
@danie10 Hmmm. In that case, I'm worried that someone who has access to one channel will quickly discover another channel for the same account and make it all known.
@kotaro I think that was something that Zot handled so that channels were either public, or allowed only specific followers to see them. But yes I'm not sure if you have say 3 public channels, whether a follower of one may be easily able to see the othe rpublic channels through the linked profile.
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