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wakest ⁂

@0x0 @dev Thanks for the reply! Really exciting to see all these different servers take off in different directions. As someone who has been active on the fediverse for 6+ seeing these new directions take shape is really quite exhilarating.

4 comments
wakest ⁂

@0x0 I noticed that usernames on Kitsune look like some sort of key or hash: dev.joinkitsune.org/users/0188 and then are displayed as @dev to Mastodon. Do you have an outline of how you imagine names will work moving forward? and how that might work in the future when things like account migration start coming into play? One of the main issues with older software in the fedi is that they have not been designed with the ability to change usernames from the beginning

wakest ⁂

@0x0 so all the posts are "hard coded" with the path of the username that posted it, so designing a mechanism that would let a user move to another server and bring their old posts with them is sort of impossible with most fedi software. There are solutions to this issue in places like 'streams' nomadic identity and other places like Nostr and maybe Bluesky (tho thats yet to be seen in practice) but this is a space where the fedi really needs to do some work...

Aumetra Ⓐ :nonbinary:

@liaizon As far as the ActivityPub standard is concerned, usernames should be completely changeable.
As you noticed with Mastodon and Akkoma, they add the username to the ActivityPub ID which makes changing usernames pretty much impossible since the ID is supposed to be immutable.

We are using the IDs at the moment since it will make it easier for us to potentially support multiple domains (something similar to what Takahe does).
But we can also explore how different implementations react to username changes, and if the reaction isn't "we break everything", it might be something worth considering.

This multi-domain support is also somewhat related to portability. The idea is that a user is able to register their own domain and use a hosted instance via their own domain.
I.e. the account is on "kitsune.nexus" but they use their own domain with it.
The IDs of the actor, posts, etc. reference that own domain they brought.

This will enable some sort of portability (at least between Kitsune servers) since the user is still in control of their domain. A more detailed explanation can be found here: shadowfacts.net/2023/activityp

This is all very much in the planning phase though.

However this is something we want to add before we do our first "proper" release since we want to guarantee data model stability from there on out.

@liaizon As far as the ActivityPub standard is concerned, usernames should be completely changeable.
As you noticed with Mastodon and Akkoma, they add the username to the ActivityPub ID which makes changing usernames pretty much impossible since the ID is supposed to be immutable.

We are using the IDs at the moment since it will make it easier for us to potentially support multiple domains (something similar to what Takahe does).
But we can also explore how different implementations react to username...

Aumetra Ⓐ :nonbinary:

@liaizon @dev I've been also a bit on the fediverse for a while now (started using it like half a year before Mastodon first released; back then on GNU social). And I agree, seeing all the new projects and tooling around the fediverse is really great.

Things like GoToSocial, Elk, etc. are really inspiring, and especially with Elk focussing on the UX, it a really big step towards more people adopting the fediverse

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