Convener: Ryan Barrett (@snarfed.org), Anuj

Participants who chose to record their names here:

• Evan Prodromou (@evan@cosocial.ca)
• Samir Al-Battran (@samir@m.fedica.com)
• JohannaB (@johannab@<most spaces>)
• Scott M. Stolz (@scott@loves.tech, @scott@codejournal.dev, @scott.codejournal.dev)
• Jesse Karmani (@jesseplusplus@mastodon.social)
• Cagan Mert Islek (@islekcaganmert.me)
• Nigini Oliveira (@nigini@social.coop)
• Damon (@damonoutlaw.xyz)
• Johannes Ernst (https://j12t.org, @j12t@j12t.social, @j12t.org)
• https://bumblefudge.com
• James Marshall (@jamesmarshall@sfba.social)

Notes

Jesse: since we cannot get actual data out of things like instagram, want to at least do verification of identities on centralized platforms, allow users to mark where you should follow, where you should not e.g., here’s my twitter, but don’t follow me there bc I don’t use it any more; just use it to verify it is me if you used to follow me there

Samir:

• linked accounts, bridges
• how to handle centralized platforms?
• as a user, I want to log in and auth/verify, then link accounts
• need interop btw services!

Evan:

• links in profiles to other profiles, established prior art
• “verified” links? bidirectional, eg rel=me, OAuth, etc
• limited though because these are user-visible and often limited number or type
• LinkTree as big prior art here

Johanna:

• LinkTree!
• how to verify real accounts, not impersonators?
• KYC regulations are other prior art
• seeing multiple different but interrelated identity needs:
  • how does one person manage all their accounts/logins to suit their needs, including pseudonmity/anonymity
  • how do we know the profiles we encounter online are who we think they are/how do we demonstrate who we are?
  • how do we manage channels/streams of topical content while maintaining the user’s own degree of comfort with security/identity/privacy
• Over all of that - how do we leave agency with the person over all of this? Wanting to manage a unified identity for our convenience in authentication could be opposed to wanting personal security and privacy from hostile agents

Islek:

• meta-account that people follow all other accounts through, eg ATProto
• follow media types?
• services like appviews of bluesky but databases replaced with inbox/outbox of meta-account

Linktree-like cross-platform verification prior art:

• https://weird.one
• https://linkat.blue/
• https://docs.nextgraph.org/en/introduction/
• https://rebase.pages.dev/ (PM: bumblefudge lol)
• https://medium.com/3box/idx-a-devkit-for-open-identity-48edc88e8e85
• https://linkstack.org

Portable KYC prior art:

• https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rwot11-the-hague/blob/cb4ae0c10a5f6bb11549c916c9247021399597ef/final-documents/onchain_identity_verification_flows.pdf
• https://kycdao.xyz
• https://github.com/circlefin/verite (bumblefudge also PMd this somehow)

Johannes: what is the ideal UX? and then how close can we get?

• as a user, I want multiple identities, for different aspects of my life (“personas”)
• for each one, I want to be able to use that persona everywhere, in different places and services, not create new identities/identifiers
• separately: do you really want to follow everything about a person? or only some?
• probably also follow separate by persona, or by place (eg web site)
• do people intentionally do different things on different accounts/networks? to approximate personas?

Scott:

• Hubzilla handles personas with single account, multiple channels
• as for multiple accounts, Hubzilla has one top-level account, but supports multiple networks/protocols
• Need to be able to link accounts and indicate that differently from showing that one is a bridged clone of another
• Federated Single Sign On: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/61cf/fep-61cf.md

Sascha:

• temporary accounts on OwnCast. can comment anonymously and then later log in and attribute those comments to your named account
• account directory! with linked accounts per person
• bidirectional linking in each account
• follow UI should offer linked accounts

Damon:

• accounts vs personas/profiles: Discord is good prior art!
• Hubzilla has good ideas, channels maybe needs polish

Johannes in chat: There’s also the trick that Mozilla Persona (RIP) did to pretend that existing platforms implement it, by essentially having a metadata search path: try the actual service, if it does not support Persona, go to a fallback facade that Mozilla operated implementing Persona and delegating to the underlying platform.

Evan:

• maybe three problems:
  1. which account of someone’s to follow
  2. which accounts are them (verification)
  3. how to manage and indicate this on your own accounts
• mutual followers are a good bottom-up ecosystem signal

Samir:

• three things:
  1. personas
  2. which account to follow (don’t want to miss stuff!)
  3. tagging
• specifying your own “personal interaction policy”

Johannes:

• separate identifier (eg account) vs identity (person)
• want to link all the identifiers for an identity, ideally in a single place
• closed systems do this more easily, but can do decentralized

Scott Jenson:

• signed up for BookWyrm, thought it would use his existing account, confused when it didn’t!
• just wants good stuff in his feed, to be able to use multiple tools/services
• also wants personas
• “user must choose” is always bad UX

Five things:

1. search for someone, which account to follow?
2. search for someone, which accounts are actually them?
3. I have all my accounts, how do I indicate where people should follow me and not?
4. how can I do different things with different personas?
5. how can I express “interaction preferences” for how I want other people to interact with me? …?

Islek: building something! beta (https://hereus.notion.site/208a3d99d20980f08dc8c4b3d53bf014?pvs=105)

Johannes:

• web is/was great!
• need a space that has people, identity, other atoms
• need to define terms?

Raphael:

• started top down with lots of our tech and tools
• we should instead look at fundamentals
• we have LD, that should solve this!

Sascha:

• choosing a server is hard!
• many accounts on different servers is also a problem
• “sign in with your fediverse account,” across services!