Discussion
I think I just figured out why the SocialCG prioritised work on encrypted private messaging for ActivityPub.
Decentralised DMs already give the fediverse an edge over the ATmosphere (eg BlueSky DMs are BS-only). If they're all E2EE as well, that puts us head and shoulders above anything the ATProtocol can currently handle.
(1/?)
@strypey I wish it was that clever! It's a combination of three things, I think:
1. My UI research showed that people were not bringing their personal connections to Mastodon because of the lack of private messaging. At SWF, we prioritized this as an important issue for growth. See https://evanp.me/2023/05/15/re-designing-the-mastodon-user-interface-for-better-personal-relationships/
2. @tomcoates and I proposed it as a project for Summer of Protocols. We spent a few months really digging deeply on the topic.
3. @mallory is a cryptographer who worked on MLS at IETF. So, it's remained a high priority for us at SWF.
It's extremely important and strategic, but it wasn't designed by the CG as an ATProto killer. In fact, we have bridgeability as a goal of the project:
If the encrypted messaging work gets widely adopted across fediverse apps - and if it seems to work, so why not? - the fediverse then becomes a fully-fledged social network. Capable of fulfilling the original purpose of FarceBook; quiet chats with people we already know. Just as well as it handles the original purpose of Titter or other social media platforms; publicly broadcasting thoughts and discussing them.
(2/?)
Hopefully the MLS-based E2EE support for AP is coded into libraries for all the major programming languages. So app developers can just fold them in via standardised APIs, without needing to be confident about their own ability to handle encryption functions securely.
(3/3)
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