Would something single sign on (SSO) even be possible? I think the convenience of having a single account for the family of federated platforms would be wildly convenient.
Of course folks could continue to have individual accounts on each platform if they wanted.
I also understand that it would create a very tempting target for hackers and it would need to use MFA (multi factor authentication).
Just a thought and I would like to see you all have to say.
Asking after having this discussion.
Doesn’t SSO undo the decentralised nature of the Fediverse? What would it even add? You can already access a lot of different ActivityPub platforms from one (e.g. Lemmy can access kbin, Mastodon can access both) and that will only increase as development on these platforms increases.
Not really. The content of what is in the fediverse is still distributed and not owned or living in a single instance.
It would add the ability to simply your username/instance/password administration.
It would also allow an account to have an ability to create a community because if I find someone on Lemmy that has similar interests as I do it’s likely I would enjoy their content on other platforms.
Right now people have to post all of their social media in their profile and then I have to go log into those platforms and go find them to follow them.
If I found someone that I want to connect with on multiple platforms it be would be great if I could choose them through a “Follow Me Across The Fediverse” option where I could pick what platforms I follow them on.
I think it could add a lot to the sense of community.
An Sso account would mean one identity across all instances, which can be tracked and monitored.
Users using different account on different instances with different passwords are a lot more difficult to track.
Googles entire operation is about connecting users across different websites using identifiers and so on, because that’s where the value is. All that data under one profile is highly valuable to them.
It’s always like this by the way - users give up privacy for convenience or “safety”.
Later, you add ads when it’s too convenient to move away from the service.
You could still make separate identities if you choose. At present you’re still using a single one to interact across the fediverse (unless, of course, you make another one in the same way), so no additional loss of privacy
But it would still require there to be some centralised account provider though, right?
I think that optimistically as the Fediverse is developed you won’t need to have different accounts (unless you want to) as an account on one platform will be able to interact with another platform in exactly the same way as one created on that platform would.
No, any server instance could support sso as long as they agree on the protocol. If the one you’re using now turned it on tomorrow you’d be able to use it elsewhere.