https://www.docs.bsky.app/blog/feature-bridgyfed

I think single account ActivityPub implementations are addressing a weakness of the Fediverse: one’s identity (handle, username) is tied to an instance they have no control over. If that instance shuts down users lose everything. With a single account instance, you take that control back. And since it doesn’t need to scale the architecture can be much simpler and can be deployed to much cheaper infrastructure.

The demo was not straightforward, though. And I didn’t quite get how a user can follow Mastodon users, for example.

I don’t think what you say contradicts with what I said. If we separate “identity providers” from “content hosts” a person could easily go get as many accounts as they like (just like getting many gmail accounts) and then use them to log in to any content networks they are interested in. I didn’t suggest that everyone should have their own instances of anything.

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough in my wording. I didn’t mean to say everybody shoukd/must have a single account. And separating identity from content doesn’t necessarily enforce it. Think about crypto wallets. They provide some sort of an identity, but anybody can have an infinite number of them. Now, I’m not saying crypto wallets should replace fediverse identities. I don’t even have one. But, I could log into all fediverse instances with a single account, that would make things much easier for everybody:

• New comers would just get an identity without stressing over which instance to pick for a handle
• People who care about their privacy would just create as many identities as they like
• People who want the convenience of having a single account would get it
• Those who want a different account for each of their interests (gardening, music, politics) could still do that easily

Thanks for the explanation and the links. It’s good to hear that there are people working towards this goal.

I use identity to mean “account” here. Like a Google account that can be use both in Gmail and YouTube.

Having several instances of Mastodon is probably not that big of an issue. I would expect one of them to win over time. But it’s not straight forward to use a Mastodon account when interacting with lemmy, PeerTube, PixelFed, etc. If I could get the identity (my handle) from a single place (like some neutral non-profit) and could use it on everything, that would be better. But I guess that’s not happening any time soon.