ActivityPub isn't anything more than JSON over HTTP(s); there's no reason at all that you couldn't simply tunnel all the traffic using hidden services over Tor using nothing more than the Tor daemon to create a hidden service and the proxy functionality to route all outbound HTTP traffic over Tor.
this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
15 points (89.5% liked)
Fediverse
28380 readers
1477 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It should works using .onion domain, but as lemmy currently doesn't support changing your domain name nor having multiple domains (to make the instance reachable using an onion domain and normal domain), you can only federate with other instances that use onion address because other instances on normal network won't be able to reach your onion address to send their activity messages.
Instances with public domain names could successfully federate with onion instances, as long as it's capable of accessing both networks.
Onion instance talks to the public instance through an exit node, public instance can reach back to the onion instances through its hidden service.
But that doesn't remove the requirement that both ends needs to be on the Tor network, but at least one end doesn't have to have an onion address. And obviously, the onion instance will have limited ability to interact with non-Tor-enabled instances, and one of them being public renders the usage of Tor somewhat moot.
That's pretty much exactly what they said.
so it would create a second whole feddiverse
I wasn't clear enough in my original post. I was mostly referring to the idea of creating a sort of "Hidden Fediverse" which would be separate from the regular clearnet fediverse.
Most instances won't be routing onion addresses, it will only work between instances that have it set up.
I wasn't clear enough in my original post. I was referring to the idea of creating a sort of "hidden fediverse" which would be separate from the one over the clearnet.
You can connect to most instances over Tor, but hosting a server over a Tor hidden service would cause problems as it can't be connected to by stock servers. (If you convince others to run other Tor hidden service instances, they could probably federate with each other)
You can connect to most instances over Tor
I was not enough in my original post. I was generally referring to your second point about hosting a sort of "Hidden Fediverse".
Depends on the specific instance. Some services run where they are natively accessible through tor, but most don't.
Just remember that ActivityPub is a sharing protocol, and individual admins are fully capable of seeing everything. There is no end to end encryption, everything is stored in plain text.
Some services run where they are natively accessible through tor, but most don’t.
This was mostly what I was referring to. Does there already exist a sort of "hidden fediverse"? As in a fediverse that is only accessible over Tor/i2p?
If you can authenticate to that web endpoint, you can do RESTful things with it.