What is the future of identity on the social web? Could it span federation protocols and be baked into the internet itself? What could it look like to everyday users and how would it be used?
There’s no better person to ask than @jay.bsky.team@bsky.brid.gy CEO of Bluesky. Jay’s extensive experience and deep knowledge about the promise, products and protocols underlying the fediverse is legendary.
If you’re building for the #fediverse this conversation will get you thinking and inspired. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on our PeerTube instance:
Not sure I understand the question. The web was built on hyperlinks. I can post a link on my social media profile(s) to my blog, and vice versa. If there’s a link in both directions, then it’s pretty likely it’s the same person/entity behind both.
So far, the DIDs on Bluesky are either 1) a custom domain name, or 2) a Decentralized Identity provider - which it looks like people may be able to self-host(?) but of course few will do so.
Curious what potential advantages there are over just bidirectionally linking to stuff - other than it potentially creating a new ‘single sign on’ for data harvesting?
@mike@flipboard.social @jay.bsky.team@bsky.brid.gy What we need to begin with is for banks, schools, government offices (e.g. driving license and passport issuers) to provide basic OAuth services, if only to demonstrate that a certain person is real. It almost certainly will be a negligible cost to them.
@mike@flipboard.social I’ve not yet listened to the episode (looking forward to it, as always), but reading the show notes it appears there was not any discussion of Bluesky’s business plan.
As exciting as I find Bluesky’s vision and technical achievements to be, their long term success (and non-enshittification) hinges entirely on their ability to become a profitable company.
Why wasn’t this part of the discussion?
We cannot keep treating sustainability like a negligible afterthought. You are what you sell.
@mike@flipboard.social @jay.bsky.team@bsky.brid.gy It might be the old curmudgeon in me but I can’t really get behind Bluesky as a federation protocol. It all just seems too centrally guided and somewhat closed off. I understand Jay is an exceptionally gifted forward thinker and tech executive but I remain apprehensive. I very much wish Bluesky would’ve just become a leader in the activity pub world, or at the very least offered a native bridge.
@mike@thecanadian.social @jay.bsky.team@bsky.brid.gy It’s unfortunate that the fediverse is built on two different protocols right now. That said, it’s not too late to architect a common approach to identity that would transcend protocols and make it seamless for people to connect with each other despite the underlying protocol – Sort of like how a common email namespace meant you could send and receive email regardless of whether your email server used POP3 or IMAP.
@mike@flipboard.social @jay.bsky.team@bsky.brid.gy Not to belabour the point but BlueSky to me feels more like AOL mail.
