Post
On moving an actor's content.
1/
One of the things that comes up on the Fediverse from time to time — is the ability for people to move their accounts.
For example, someone started off at:
＠joeblow＠example.com
But, now wants to "move" to:
＠misterx＠host.example
There is a mechanism to do that.
That mechanism moves their followers, their followees, BUT —
It does NOT move their content over!
That is a problem. Could we address this‽
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@reiver > ... from time to time ...
I think almost everyone is longing for portable identity/ ability to move everything, but just gave up nagging, because it is not happening. 🤷♂️
On moving an actor's content.
2/
Could an ActivityPub 'Update' activity be used to move objects from one server to another server?
Could an 'Update' activity be used to change an object's "id" field?
After all, the "id" is used to identity what is being changed. It is the targeting mechanism.
How can you provide the old "id" to target the (old) object you want to change the "id" of, while also providing a new "id"?
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#update-activity-inbox
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On moving an actor's content.
3/
There a many different conventions we could come up with to allow an ActvityPub 'Update' activity to be used to change an object's "id" field.
We (the Fediverse developer community) just need to pick one that everyone is willing to implement.
For example, perhaps the "origin", "result", or "target" field should be used:
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-origin
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-result
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-target
Or —
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On moving an actor's content.
4/
Or, instead of using the ActivityPub 'Update' activity —
Couldn't we use the ActivityPub 'Move' activity.
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#dfn-move
With the "origin" and "target" fields.
Where "origin" contains the old ID URL, and "target" contains the new ID URL.
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@reiver Before inventing something new, my recommendation would be to check if the needs are met by LOLA (https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/lola) or FEP-1580 (https://fediverse.codeberg.page/fep/fep/1580/).
FEP-1580 has no (finished and public) implementations AFAIK. LOLA is implemented by Emissary (@benpate) and I forget who else, @Bonfire?
Thanks Julian!
Yes, `Move` is the correct option here. I believe Mastodon uses this as a way to announce that an account has moved to another server - though I don't think it does a lot to actually transfer the account DATA to the new server.
The LOLA spec is pretty good, and I'm happy to walk through it with you if you'd like. It handles the sending a `Move` to all of your followers, along with getting your data to the new server (and all of the complexity there)
One last thing: Check out this video walkthrough of LOLA on Emissary: https://clip.place/w/joEazgBP38z81WsZZQNd1r
...Along with my post about how it implements LOLA, and where we are waiting for the spec process: https://emissary.dev/developers-migration
Oh, this is something I could contribute to. @reiver@mastodon.social, you should talk to @jonny@neuromatch.social ... I haven't looked into his FEP draft nor LOLA in-depth, but my first impression is that Jonny's approach is a lot more... approachable for devs.
@reiver Before inventing something new, my recommendation would be to check if the needs are met by LOLA (https://swicg.github.io/activitypub-data-portability/lola) or FEP-1580 (https://fediverse.codeberg.page/fep/fep/1580/).
FEP-1580 has no public implementations AFAIK. LOLA is implemented by Emissary (@benpate) and I forget who else, @Bonfire?
@reiver I was considering a similar logic for one of my projects: https://todo.sr.ht/~mariusor/go-activitypub/366
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