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Hello Fediverse,

I would like to receive some feedback on this idea I have been kicking around, and see if others might be interested in contributing. I have a basic prototype that proves out most of the technology, but not much beyond that.

The basic general description is an Iroh based identity layer for the open web. This platform would serve three primary functions:

1. Preserve and consolidate social graph data in an encrypted local storage vault, allowing for import, display, and management of media and posts from both walled garden platforms and open platforms.
   
2. A “universal translator” across open platforms, allowing for seamless connection between activitypub, AT protocol, and rss subscriptions. You are able to link mastodon, Lemmy, pixelfed, loops, and blusky accounts and your legacy social media imports can also generate RSS subscription feeds for your previous Instagram or YouTube (among other platforms) subscriptions, with all this content showing up in a single filterable fleed.
3. Identities can be linked to any unique URL, using an umbrella DID. That URL can be any location the user chooses, including an indieweb page, a spacehey.com profile, or any other site the user controls and is able to host the corresponding DID document for cross platform identification.

There are many more details and features I have in mind that this architecture could facilitate, but this is the overarching basics of what I had in mind. I am very open to critique or analysis of this architecture, potential issues and limitations, as well as ideas for modification.

I would also welcome collaborators and contributors if there is interest, and I can open up the project for whoever may be interested. Let me know!

If I’m getting it right, sounds like a more refined and self-hosted form of Linktree, a.k.a. a hub for your social medias so people can find you more easily. Is that it?

That’s kind of it, but it’s more behind the scenes than linktree. What I am proposing would be a new platform, like Lemmy or mastodon, that allows you to link in all of your identities and view them all in one place. Other users can then link to your personal website or whatever link your identity is tied to (could be a default Bytescape “profile” page), we well we all social media handles you have linked to that identity. These could either be simply linked like a link tree, or shown on a profile feed display page so users and yourself can view all of your activity across the web on one place.

Unfortunately, I’m not familiar enough with Iroh to understand what exactly this is, but point #3 sounds interesting. Does this mean that, if a user has linked their identity to this service (and the other special media sites they are using support it), would I be able to see all of a user’s posts across multiple social media sites? E.g. filtering the feed by a certain user, and it shows all of that users’ posts on Mastodon and Pixelfed?

Yes, that’s the goal. It would be like an external facing version of emissary or bridgey fed, so you could set up a web portal for all of your social media presence, if you want. Iroh is just a p2p encryption protocol that allows data to be stored and transferred independently of central servers (although relay servers can and likely would be used for reliability and discoverability). So you can have a master copy of all of your data stored on your phone or PC or cloud hosting service or self hosted server, and display that data in one place for your reference/management or for others to view.

Can you give more detail on how Iroh would viabilize this? I’m unfamiliar with it

I think I get it.

Personally, I like the idea.

And something that comes to mind, Mastodon, Lemmy and PieFed all have methods of account migration. Perhaps such Bytescape tool could integrate to those if possible?

And further on that, apparently Piefed doesn’t import info that it doesn’t federate with, e.g. Kbin.Social since iirc it can’t be reached (correct me if I’m wrong pls). Also maybe that happens with Mastodon and Lemmy but haven’t checked. But if I’m right on that, it would also apply to active but defederated instances. So maybe such potential integration could be used to preserve information that would otherwise be lost as it’s not imported?

Sure. Iroh facilitates local storage and direct device to device encrypted connections. So basically, it allows you to store your online data on your own devices, encrypted with a secure key, that can be sent to a variety of different end points.

So for example, you import your mastodon profile, it downloads that data to a local vault, and the vault can then be viewed on any other platform that is able to visit your profile. So if a user signs up to the proposed Bytescape platform using a bluesky account, they could search for your mastodon handle, view your posts, and even be updated of your content, thanks to the Iroh syncing of the users local master vault and the cloud storage for their social accounts. This could be shared either through cloud relays for reliability, or you could retrieve it directly from the users local vault via direct p2p connections.

This would definitely integrate with data migration tools of all sorts, it already works with meta and bluesky data export/access systems. Activitypub is next on the list. I’d like it to be as seamless as possible, something like an oAurh login. It would be especially useful in cases where users want to move to a totally local storage solution. The goal is not to replace existing platforms per se, but to give users the ability to have a complete locally available copy of their data at all times. Whether that data is mirrored or distributed elsewhere on the web is ultimately up to the user.

With regard to displaying defederated content, this would put that choice in the hands of the user as well. It should take the headache out of seeing the content you want to see, but should also obviously have some level of moderation and safety in place at a basic level.

This is interesting and I def. hope this gets traction. Thanks for sharing!

This was one of my stretch goals for https://fediverser.io/, and I would definitely be interested in helping with this. Basically, the real end goal for me would be to create ActivityPub actors that are based on the DID to completely decouple their identity from the ActivityPub server that is serving their inbox and outbox.

Yes, that’s exactly it! The identities are linked to a URL that the user chooses, which hosts the DID document and all the identity records. I am working on getting the GitHub ready for public, I will notify you when it has been opened up!

FYI: I am not going to say that I have all the pieces in place, but I will say that if we put what I”ve done on https://fediverser.io/ with my headless ActivityPub Server, we are like 90% of the way there. The hard part now, believe it or not, is to get other servers to implement the missing parts of AP instead of the selective implementation they have.

@robert.meyer86 See also https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md. This is already part of Fediverse and has multiple implementations.

Oh wow, this is exactly what I had been thinking of! Amazing! This should simplify the development process of this platform significantly. Do you know of any projects using this standard in their platforms?

Forte and tootik use FEP-ef61 with server-managed keys. I am working on an application where keys are stored on the client side: minimitra. This is probably closer to your idea.

Do you want to use iroh for transport, or for identity?

Iroh was more of the p2p transport layer, but it is what facilitates the authentication through DID to the local vault. The work you linked is very relevant and will be definitely be of use!