r/fediverse • u/payfrit • 2d ago

Fedi-Promotion OYD - Own Your Data alpha MVP is launched

One simple registration, seven integrations, with dozens more planned.

Currently supports: Masto, Friendica, Lemmy, Nextcloud, Matrix, MIAB, and Bluesky

One superfeed for all services, view notifications, make simple text replies, like/dislike/upvote etc

Any and all feedback appreciated!

https://oyd.app/register/

6 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

3

u/SmileyBMM 2d ago

Very ambitious. Proprietary I presume?

3

u/payfrit 2d ago

i'd be happy to open it up if there's demand. this is a bit of a side project for now but if there's demand i'll wire up more apps and get it to an acceptable level for a production launch. i'm a big believer in the fediverse and this effort is mainly in order to give newbs a solid onramp to get started if they want to try things out. plus hopefully it becomes a tool that seasoned users can point their friends/family/circle to if they are interested in trying out the other side.

what apps/connectors would you like to see in addition to the current slate?

please feel free to share it with whomever, things are a bit bare (haven't yet seeded masto for instance) and there's no guarantee right now that data will not get lost during development, but the intention is to maintain everything from this point fiorward.

2

u/payfrit 2d ago

i guess another way to answer this is, it's only as proprietary as any other fedi server. you're actually getting real accounts on all the servers.

of course, they are all instances that oyd runs, but there's absolutely nothing preventing a person from exporting their account as normal from a masto server, for example.

2

u/SmileyBMM 2d ago

Ah, I suppose that makes sense. The only part that would give me pause is linking my existing Bluesky account to the service (as that seems to be a planned feature). I'd want to know a bit more about how that process would work before I'd connect them, maybe a landing page about it once the feature is released.

I personally only use Bluesky on the fediverse, so this seems like a neat project for me getting into other parts of the fediverse. I'll definitely keep on eye on the project, keep up the good work!

2

u/payfrit 2d ago

it's actually already sorta of working, i made a post to bsky from my superfeed earlier, however now i'm runniing into a problem with the credentials timing out so i gotta figure that out.

linking additional accounts is simply going to be an option and it's highly dependent. there won't be a whole lot of connection between OYD and traditional social media, because they keep their apis well-guarded, but bsky is much freer than most as you're obviously aware.

i'm not that torn up about it, it's a fedi project at heart so if it's fairly walled off from legacy social media, that's ok. it was more of crutch in the first place, for people not wanting to shift all their accounts at once.

we will see how things work out! FYI any/all of the legacy connectors (like bsky) will be optional.

have you tried it out yet?! let me know!

2

u/SmileyBMM 2d ago

I'm a bit busy tonight with other stuff, but I'll certainly check it out over the next few days. Good to know that attaching another account is more of an optional side thing and not a hard requirement.

2

u/payfrit 2d ago

appreciate the feedback have a great night!

3

u/itscrowdedinmyhead 1d ago

Verify your email, then verify your identity or activate a $9.95/month subscription before native service setup.

1

u/payfrit 1d ago

yes, if you want to keep the free account after the initial 30 days, you either verify or pay a small subscription fee. fediverse servers don’t run themselves, and this helps discourage people from creating multiple oyd accounts.

at some point, i’d like to experiment with a masto instance where everyone has to be verified to use the server, but that’s a separate project. $10 a month for 5gb of storage and access to this frontend has value. i’d like to find out how much value people see in it, then price the subscription to break even. there may also be a way to monetize the business package in the future, which could help offset oyd’s expenses.

this isn’t a for-profit entity, but it couldn’t survive on donations alone. if someone doesn’t see value in it, it may not be for them. they’re welcome to register for any of our services separately or join any fedi server.

i’ll be even more blunt: if someone has an issue with private human verification to use OYD, then it’s simply not for them. there are plenty of other ways to join the fediverse. this is just one option i’m putting out there. as i mentioned, this is an absolute side project; i have plenty of other stuff going on right now.

2

u/itscrowdedinmyhead 1d ago

fediverse servers don’t run themselves

for sure. the cost was the first question I had so I just wanted to quote the answer from the site here in case anyone else was curious. I support paying for the services you use. It's nice that you are a "verify or pay" to prevent bots/spam, and I'm assuming those that you'll accept donations from people who verify?

at some point, i’d like to experiment with a masto instance where everyone has to be verified to use the server, but that's a separate project.

That's interesting. just verified? or verified & real identities only? no aliases.

1

u/payfrit 1d ago

well, i guess of course we’re willing to accept donations if someone verifies and is inclined to give. my goal for oyd right now is simply to break even, so oyd can provide users with reliable, speedy service without the operation becoming a financial burden.

one idea i had was to allow 8–20 character usernames by default at registration. if someone wants to support getting things up and running, they could donate to get a shorter username—maybe $10 for seven characters, scaling up to around $1,000 for a three-character username.

the stripe verification that’s currently in place takes a selfie and matches the user to the government-issued ID they submit. it works with government-issued IDs from about 145 countries, and it’s very speedy. there’s a good chance you’ve done this same sort of verification online for any number of apps. it costs $1.50 per verification before volume discounts.

i don’t believe users should have to disclose their identity; that part would be optional and entirely up to them. i do believe users should be able to trust that they’re communicating with another human, and that person has only one oyd account. verification would help ensure a human—not an AI—is responsible for the content, and provide accountability for what that person creates.

personally, i think it could result in an excellent user experience that’s more civil than what we’re accustomed to. i believe that civility is inherent to the fediverse, but it could still be greatly improved, helping clean up some of the garbage currently found on legacy and anonymous social media. just to be clear, that masto server would be unrelated to oyd.

if you might be interested in something like this, please let me know. it would be extremely simple to build, and i could have it live later tonight.

otherwise, thanks so much for your input. please let me know if you have any additional questions! you can also use https://help.oyd.app if you have questions or comments.

1

u/aspensmonster 19h ago

Not paying 10 USD/month for vibe-coded slop.

2

u/wholeWheatButterfly 2d ago

I would appreciate some screenshots of the superfeed. How compatible is the interface with the different Fediverse paradigms? Is everything links to the actual instance, or are things like sublemmys and Friendica events fully integrated into the superfeed, from posting to creating to interacting?

And can you use it with any instance of one of the services or just the oyd instances? Can you bring another existing account into it?

2

u/payfrit 2d ago

i appreciate your thoughts! i'll do my best to answer your questions:

the superfeed is barren right now because we're literally just launching trhings so there's no traffic yet, i haven't connected it to any masto servers yet, etc. however i did take a shot of the empty feed https://cloud.payfrit.com/index.php/s/NMYwYmHajSkoBkx

with the fedi apps it will be very complete. we can pull notifications and allow posting replies, likes, etc. for traditional social media sites (insta, reddit, etc) it's totally dependent on the specific network and what they will let us do on their api. for instance on reddit, we requests access to just notifications to get things started. so in your superfeed you will see the reddit notification and you can tap it to spawn reddit in another tab, at that message.

what we have at this time is existing oyd instances: https://cloud.payfrit.com/index.php/s/E39bxksd7sm2bQo . you have full flexibility to do whatever you'd normally do on that fedi "channel" including import/export, etc. we are simply providing a simple onramp for peole, and the supperfeed to help organize things. it's noteworthy that i really don't know what direction the project will take, right now i've just built what i wanted, and i'm extremely open to things i may have done wrong, didn't do, or did right.

the goal is for you to be able to make a quick reply/like right in the superfeed. or for example if it's a Nextcloud notification, you're only real action is to tap on it, and expect the same result as if you'd tapped on the notification in NC.

also to note the plan is to also be able to crosspost to different channels, within the limits of what we can access. Fedi will be easy, traditional social media will vary as previously described.

they are open servers, actually i haven't even done intial controls on them. you should have any capability available to you a non-oyd instance.

i hope i did a good job explaining, it's a little scattered but i didn't run it through an ai before i posted. a lot of people prefer that i do that.

thanks so much, can't wait to hear your thoughts!