Simple Social Network

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Darius Kazemi

1y ·
Public

·
friend.camp

Has anyone made a DMs-only fediverse client? Like something that looks more or less like iMessage or Signal but you address people via their fediverse handles and it handles DMs as first class (and only-class) content?

Has anyone made a DMs-only fediverse *server*? Like if I want to join fedi but only to direct message people and be in group chats I could join a server and it would have a nice client view like the one in the previous paragraph?

alexandra catalina

@darius could that be done as a matrix server that uses mastodon for auth?

AtmanRising

@darius The return of ICQ!

Darius Kazemi

I'm thinking no discovery of topics or people. No hashtag support. None of that shit. Basically just email-over-activitypub. You give it addresses for people you want to talk to and then it happens. Just like with phone numbers and SMS/MMS. Make it e2e encrypted if you like, or not.

The difference from email is I could have my nice iMessage like experience over here, and you can be stuck in Mastodon DM user experience hell on your end if you so choose. Choice!

Mr.Nuclear Monster

@darius I feel like it’d be real tough to make this with the knowledge that mastodon DMs are about as secure as sending the message on an airplane with a banner hanging off the back

Gracious Anthracite

@darius

I feel like encrypted DMs is kind of base requirements for anyone interested in building a modern DM client and I don’t think ActivityPub has any provisions for that in the spec?

Chris Radcliff

@darius Do fediverse DMs support end-to-end encryption? If not, I suspect it would be difficult to make a client that is DM-first without leading folks into an insecure pattern.

Delib

@darius XMPP has those abilities. Federation with activitypub (like mastodon) is brand new, but xmpp has always been 'fedetated' across its own servers. There are also gateways to most social networks you could imagine. The 'DM"s van also be end2end encrypted.

#xmpp

Aswath Rao

@darius
Kind of, sort of, not quite, but more in some respects. It is not a client app, but browser based; it is not fediverse - only one server (host's) involved & others' are not; auth based on IndieAuth, Fedi can be added; 1-1 for now, but for text, voice & video & e2e encrypted; easy to extend to multi if only text

Григорий Клюшников

Smithereen right now is the exact opposite of that — it's a public-posts-only server :D

Fedor Indutny

@darius ...is it vastly different from email when used like this?

𝙂𝙚𝙣𝙪𝙞𝙣𝙚ly 𝙂𝙖𝙧𝙮 🌤️

@darius This may not be what you want but the closest I know of is XMPP messaging like Jabber. There are Fedi servers that serve these apps. See https://fedi.directory/tag/instant-messaging/

RhetRx

@darius I imagine someone could build something that _looked_ like that, but would you also be expecting the privacy/encryption services that the other routes provide? That may be harder.

Idris Elbow Macaroni

@darius

*imagines an AP client that shows people you logged in*

*is struck dead mentally by the concept of a mIRC-styled interface for a specific AP server that only federates internally*

(ARC, AP Relay Chat)

😱

David Fleetwood - RG Admin

@darius This is not a bad idea so long as e2e could be done in an open way. I'd like to see oauth2 client support in ActivityPub apps too, I shouldn't have to create an account for every server. An AP compat identity server that others could auth against would be ideal.