Nah

Yes, that is the general idea of the app, unifying all of your social interactions under one UI. It is foss, and I will soon be looking for contributors and issue reports, once I am ready to make the repo open to the public. I just have a few more foundations to set in place.

I have very briefly considered a browser extension, but could not figure out how to do it in a way that made sense. Perhaps it could be something that I do once the full version has been fleshed out, so I can figure out what features would make sense as an extension, vs a standalone browser/platform.

I had heard about the fediforum, and am definitely interested. Thanks for the reminder, I will look into registering.

Best place to reach me would be lovingisliving.bsky.social and @lovingisliving@indieweb.social. I am not sure when I will be ready to talk about the project overall, but I am open to it down the line when things are more solidified.

Thanks for all of the info, I will definitely check out the podcasts and conference!

Fair criticism, I understand the sentiment. I know there are a lot of problems with bluesky, and one might want to distance themselves from the platform as much as possible, but the reality is that a lot of people use it, and it is the primary form of communication they have that is capable of federation.

The method of federation is seamless, but notably, it is also completely optional. Just like the rest of the fediverse, if you don’t opt in to seeing the content from a bluesky user, you won’t. It is based on a bluesky identity, so if you just never link ones you will never connect to bluesky in any way.

Furthermore, the platform utilizes did:web, a w3c standard that allows the unification of identities under a single url based identity (I.e., did:web:quokka.au:lumpenproletariat) whose did document can list any number of aka identities for that user. That can include a bluesky identity, or it can be any fediverse identity such as pixelfed, piefed, Lemmy, etc. Bluesky is not an integral part of the project overall, it is just a first test at cross platform federation. Your federation choices are your own.

That first rig is the exact specs I have for building my first self hosting set up (with a GTX 970 or radeon r9 290x if I need a GPU, but I have yet to learn of a reason I would), so that’s good to know I’m starting out at a good level.

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!

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?

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!

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 oAuth 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.

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.

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.

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), with 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.