Nice to see a blogpost on the Mastodon blog about implementing a basic ActivityPub server https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2018/06/how-to-implement-a-basic-activitypub-server/

(Though technically webfinger isn't needed for activitypub, but it is for mastodon interop!)

@cwebber I'm curious how subscribing between different AP server implementations is going to work UX-wise. Mastodon, Pleroma and peertube all work with the user @ domain webfinger scheme, but what identifiers shall be used for implementations lacking webfinger?

@notclacke @schmittlauch @cwebber Honestly though, I've always liked the user@instance format that other federated networks use. It's a pretty useful way to think about users across the network; conceptually that identifier feels closer to email.

URL works okay, but the flow and the logic is kind of different.

@deadsuperhero @notclacke @schmittlauch yeah I get that, and people are fairly familiar with email-like ids. I'm not arguing against clients supporting that for composition of addressing anyway, but it does bother me that Mastodon uses Webfinger for some sources of information where it shouldn't matter for protocol'y things

I think that could hold back some exciting future things if it remains. But fortunately my suspicion is that it won't be hard for mastodon to evolve there.

@cwebber @deadsuperhero @notclacke @schmittlauch For the most part it seems to be based on the (mistaken) assumption that if users address each other by user@domain, then so should computers. But that's not really a valid or useful assumption... it's also already caused issues that have been solved in suboptimal ways (re: case sensitivity, account migration, username changes, etc)

@trwnh @cwebber @deadsuperhero @notclacke @schmittlauch I've been thinking for a while that I want to be able to use @strypey as my #fediverse identity, regardless of whether I'm self-hosting or using another host. The question is, what would be the equivalent of DNS that would resolve that ID to the underlying host-based ID (eg currently mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey)? How would I update it when I move hosts? How do I secure it against hijack?

@strypey @trwnh @deadsuperhero @notclacke @schmittlauch This is what DIDs are trying to solve

@cwebber @trwnh @deadsuperhero @notclacke @schmittlauch cool. Two questions 1) what does DID stand for? 2) Where can I found out more?

@strypey @trwnh @deadsuperhero @notclacke @schmittlauch Decentralized Identifiers. Look up various Rebooting Web of Trust papers and the w3c spec. DIDs aren't human readable, but you'll have a unique identifier for yourself for life. For the human readability, add petnames. https://github.com/cwebber/rebooting-the-web-of-trust-spring2018/blob/petnames/draft-documents/making-dids-invisible-with-petnames.md

@cwebber @trwnh @deadsuperhero @notclacke @schmittlauch so my actual ID might be a string numbers like an IP address (or alpha-numeric or whatever), but I can associate @strypey with that in all my apps, and users who connect with me can decide whether to nickname me @strypey or use their own preferred nickname (@irritatingcleverclogs or whatever). Yes?

@cwebber @trwnh @deadsuperhero @notclacke @schmittlauch Would it be possible to do the same thing with another user's avatar? So they have the photo or anime GIF or whatever they prefer to represent them, but I can choose a picture of Gandalf or Harry Potter or a baboon bottom or whatever I like to represent them in my timeline? That would be an awesome way to diffuse tension when dealing with argumentative but sometimes helpful contacts ;)