Kind of a weird #Fediverse question: do any platforms in this space offer an API for user account registration?
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Kind of a weird #Fediverse question: do any platforms in this space offer an API for user account registration?
One hypothetical idea I've been kicking around is the notion of "pre-registration" for the Fediverse. Basically, a person fills out their profile, imports data archives from other networks, and maybe even finds their mutuals somehow. When they're done, their account gets created on a random vetted instance, data gets backfilled, and follow requests get sent out to the mutual contacts they've found.
I think it's a good idea, and possibly a good showcase for both the #ActivityPub C2S API and possibly LOLA. However, I don't think any particular platform supports all of the required pieces yet.



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Kind of a weird #Fediverse question: do any platforms in this space offer an API for user account registration?
One hypothetical idea I've been kicking around is the notion of "pre-registration" for the Fediverse. Basically, a person fills out their profile, imports data archives from other networks, and maybe even finds their mutuals somehow. When they're done, their account gets created on a random vetted instance, data gets backfilled, and follow requests get sent out to the mutual contacts they've found.
I think it's a good idea, and possibly a good showcase for both the #ActivityPub C2S API and possibly LOLA. However, I don't think any particular platform supports all of the required pieces yet.



@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org hoooo-boy... that's an interesting idea. I love it, could even get funded by NLNet.
I especially like the server recommendation piece... what if it looked at your migrated post content and suggested a server based on your worldview? Ha!
Anyway. NodeBB does, you can create users via our API. Getting content backfilled would be more difficult since that's kind of not the purpose of the API, but not insurmountable.
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@deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org to expand a bit on that point, I recall a talk by @pluralistic@mamot.fr about how there's some Canadian bill that essentially made the use of adversarial APIs illegal.
Not sure where we stand today, though.
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Kind of a weird #Fediverse question: do any platforms in this space offer an API for user account registration?
One hypothetical idea I've been kicking around is the notion of "pre-registration" for the Fediverse. Basically, a person fills out their profile, imports data archives from other networks, and maybe even finds their mutuals somehow. When they're done, their account gets created on a random vetted instance, data gets backfilled, and follow requests get sent out to the mutual contacts they've found.
I think it's a good idea, and possibly a good showcase for both the #ActivityPub C2S API and possibly LOLA. However, I don't think any particular platform supports all of the required pieces yet.



@deadsuperhero i like the idea, but the message in the first screenshot implies that having an account on one of these is a requirement of getting one on fedi, rather than just something used as a way to import stuff
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Kind of a weird #Fediverse question: do any platforms in this space offer an API for user account registration?
One hypothetical idea I've been kicking around is the notion of "pre-registration" for the Fediverse. Basically, a person fills out their profile, imports data archives from other networks, and maybe even finds their mutuals somehow. When they're done, their account gets created on a random vetted instance, data gets backfilled, and follow requests get sent out to the mutual contacts they've found.
I think it's a good idea, and possibly a good showcase for both the #ActivityPub C2S API and possibly LOLA. However, I don't think any particular platform supports all of the required pieces yet.



@deadsuperhero No idea about the API for account creation, but a tool like that to find people you follow in other platforms sounds useful
Just my two cents about the current wording tho: In the 1st picture a new user might think that the Fediverse depends on having an account in one of those plarforms, it'd be better to make it clear that this is only for your tool and not for the fediverse itself. Additionally, I don't really think that choosing an instance at random is a good idea.
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@julian@activitypub.space @general@activitypub.space Thanks, that means a lot! It's something that I've been thinking about for a long time. I think joining the network and starting over from scratch in a new space make for a very difficult prospect when it comes to getting people to join.
what if it looked at your migrated post content and suggested a server based on your worldview? Ha!
God... I don't think that's a can of worms I hope to ever open.

The main idea involves trying to raise the bar for both data portability and tying together different sets of data to build your own social graph. It's not something that's well-supported today, but I think it's worth making an effort towards.
Facebook has about 20 years of my life on it, and while it's not all bangers, there's some very real sentimental value in there: life milestones, occasionally good jokes, insights to how I was thinking and feeling during different phases of my life, art and poetry and philosophy. Being able to easily fish out what I want to move over would be a huge deal.
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@deadsuperhero No idea about the API for account creation, but a tool like that to find people you follow in other platforms sounds useful
Just my two cents about the current wording tho: In the 1st picture a new user might think that the Fediverse depends on having an account in one of those plarforms, it'd be better to make it clear that this is only for your tool and not for the fediverse itself. Additionally, I don't really think that choosing an instance at random is a good idea.
@luana@wetdry.world Totally good points, it's an old mockup from when I was first imagining the thing a year or so ago. There's probably a fair amount I would revise now, just to make the flow easier.
And yeah, "random instance" is maybe not the best, but maybe recommending an instance or alternatively letting a person put in an instance URL might be better?
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@deadsuperhero i like the idea, but the message in the first screenshot implies that having an account on one of these is a requirement of getting one on fedi, rather than just something used as a way to import stuff
@rnd@toot.cat Yeah, good point. It's an old mockup, and I'd probably approach it differently if I redesigned it today. This was more to communicate the idea of importing data from other sources for your Fediverse identity.
In other words, it's an illustration I needed to make in order to make the ideas in my head feel more concrete.
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@julian@activitypub.space @general@activitypub.space @pluralistic@mamot.fr Yeah, that's an interesting point. It kind of becomes a question of "what is adversarial?" Downloading your data archive for your own use seems pretty benign, sending a billion HTTP requests to a server probably isn't good though.
We could still probably do raw data imports, even though that's more manual and clunky. I don't think most big tech companies offer an API for data archive access. Not impossible to parse, though.
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Kind of a weird #Fediverse question: do any platforms in this space offer an API for user account registration?
One hypothetical idea I've been kicking around is the notion of "pre-registration" for the Fediverse. Basically, a person fills out their profile, imports data archives from other networks, and maybe even finds their mutuals somehow. When they're done, their account gets created on a random vetted instance, data gets backfilled, and follow requests get sent out to the mutual contacts they've found.
I think it's a good idea, and possibly a good showcase for both the #ActivityPub C2S API and possibly LOLA. However, I don't think any particular platform supports all of the required pieces yet.



@deadsuperhero nothing even close to being so elaborate, but the way invitations work for one of my services built on top of ActivityPub is to create a "blank" actor, and then when the user accepts the invitation they can update the account with their own details. Could definitely work with some additional plumbing to import stuff on top.
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@julian @deadsuperhero I've wanted for like 8 years to build an instance picker which lets people pick by moderation style and lets them browse from the public timeline as well, never managed to do it though. maybe those features could be part of this idea.
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Kind of a weird #Fediverse question: do any platforms in this space offer an API for user account registration?
One hypothetical idea I've been kicking around is the notion of "pre-registration" for the Fediverse. Basically, a person fills out their profile, imports data archives from other networks, and maybe even finds their mutuals somehow. When they're done, their account gets created on a random vetted instance, data gets backfilled, and follow requests get sent out to the mutual contacts they've found.
I think it's a good idea, and possibly a good showcase for both the #ActivityPub C2S API and possibly LOLA. However, I don't think any particular platform supports all of the required pieces yet.



@deadsuperhero That would... be amazingly useful? But have never heard of anything like it.
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@luana@wetdry.world Totally good points, it's an old mockup from when I was first imagining the thing a year or so ago. There's probably a fair amount I would revise now, just to make the flow easier.
And yeah, "random instance" is maybe not the best, but maybe recommending an instance or alternatively letting a person put in an instance URL might be better?
> @deadsuperhero@social.wedistribute.org said:
>
> alternatively letting a person put in an instance URL might be better?Noooooooo
No worse option for those new to the Fediverse
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@deadsuperhero nothing even close to being so elaborate, but the way invitations work for one of my services built on top of ActivityPub is to create a "blank" actor, and then when the user accepts the invitation they can update the account with their own details. Could definitely work with some additional plumbing to import stuff on top.
@mariusor@metalhead.club actually I think it'd be pretty cool to have someone independently working on adversarial APIs to hoover up stuff from big social (your own data, for migration, of course), but outside the purview of the US.
Then everybody else can tie in to that service and import data in.
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@julian the maintainer of the Caddy http server has a project which can aggregate multiple "take out" social media service files into a single timeline. I was considering using its ingestion logic coupled to an ActivityPub service a while back, but it's too far down my to do list at the moment.
Maybe some scrappy enterprising peeps can have a look see if it's actually feasible. -
Kind of a weird #Fediverse question: do any platforms in this space offer an API for user account registration?
One hypothetical idea I've been kicking around is the notion of "pre-registration" for the Fediverse. Basically, a person fills out their profile, imports data archives from other networks, and maybe even finds their mutuals somehow. When they're done, their account gets created on a random vetted instance, data gets backfilled, and follow requests get sent out to the mutual contacts they've found.
I think it's a good idea, and possibly a good showcase for both the #ActivityPub C2S API and possibly LOLA. However, I don't think any particular platform supports all of the required pieces yet.



@deadsuperhero nice, I had made a User story about the importing part https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-api/issues/51
I like the idea of lining it to registration and software/instance picker
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