On fediverse apps like Mastodon, Pixelfed and (soon) Threads, content is federated — but identity isn’t. We look at potential solutions.

In response to Bray’s toot, Evan Prodromou — one of the creators of ActivityPub, who is currently writing an O’Reilly book about the protocol — noted that this “is also the argument for using the ActivityPub API.” He described the API as “an open, extensible API that can handle any kind of activity type — not just short text.”

This gets to the nub of the issue. The fact that I can’t use my Mastodon identity to, for example, sign up to Pixelfed is not actually an ActivityPub issue — it’s because the two applications, Mastodon and Pixelfed, each require you to create an account on their respective products. What Prodromou is suggesting is that, technically, you can use the ActivityPub API for account access.

  • GreatAlbatrossAEnglish
    4•24 days ago

    If any federated banning networks do pop up, I’d expect them to form groups, with different groups having different standards. And the idea being that if someone’s banned from one place with similar standards, the rest of the group probably wouldn’t welcome the content.

    It’ll come down to places and groups being reasonable, and not banning for stupid reasons (at least by that group’s standards). And if they are unreasonable, it’ll reflect on the group, as nobody would bother posting to those instances any more.

    And in a way, the ultimate “ban” will be with the host instance, similarly to email.
    An admin at lemmy.world might get a report that an account is spreading csam links everywhere, and to consider banning them, for example.