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Comment on Hollywood stars and geeks unite to billionaire-proof social media

dan@upvote.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

Mastodon and Lemmy (and Pixelfed and many others) use a protocol called ActivityPub. Not all of the Fediverse uses it - for example, the original Fediverse apps like Identica and StatusNet used Activity Streams or OStatus.

AT Protocol is another protocol, created specifically for Bluesky, although there’s no reason other apps couldn’t use it, once Bluesky actually enable decentralization.

It does have some useful features that ActivityPub doesn’t have, like identity portability - you can move a profile from one server to another without having to change username or refollow everyone. AT Protocol lets you use your own domain name as your username, even if you don’t host your own instance. With Mastodon and Lemmy, your identity is tightly coupled to the instance you use, which makes it a pain to move to a different one.

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spartanatreyu@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It’s worth pointing out that while ActivityPub doesn’t currently support account migration (although there are proposals in the works for how to do this), Mastodon does have a weak form of support right now.

You can create a new account on another mastodon instance, then you’re able to point your old account to your new account.

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- dan@upvote.au ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Interesting, I hadn’t heard of that. Does everyone who’s following the old account automatically refollow you when you do that?
  
  IMO it’d still be useful to be able to use an identity you control, like a domain name. I’ll have to find those proposals you mentioned.
  
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  - spartanatreyu@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    
    Does everyone who’s following the old account automatically refollow you when you do that?
    
    It doesn’t port over any old comments/posts, but I’m pretty sure that when anyone @'s you, it’s forwarded to the new account.
    
    IMO it’d still be useful to be able to use an identity you control, like a domain name.
    
    Mastodon already does this
    
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    dan@upvote.au ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Mastodon already does this
    
    That’s only for showing a domain on your profile. What I meant is using a domain as your username, so if you own example.com and used that as your username people would mention you by writing @example.com. A DNS record delegates the domain to the right server.
    
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Applejuicy@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Thanks, this is the first time I’ve seen this explained!

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