# Dumb question: relationship of Solid to The Fediverse? **URL:** \ **Category:** General Discussion\ **Created:** [December 6, 2018, 5:17am UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/dumb-question-relationship-of-solid-to-the-fediverse/798 "2018-12-06T05:17:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![saneletters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@saneletters](https://forum.solidproject.org/u/saneletters)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 5:17am UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/dumb-question-relationship-of-solid-to-the-fediverse/798/1 "2018-12-06T05:17:42Z")
This is probably an ignorant question on many different dimensions, but as a newbie to this world of users controlling their own data – and encouraged by it – I’m trying to get the lay of the land. What’s the relationship of Solid to the [Fediverse](https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse/) and its apps like Mastodon and Diaspora? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![JollyOrc](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.solidproject.org/jollyorc/32/253_2.png) [@JollyOrc](https://forum.solidproject.org/u/JollyOrc)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 8:09am UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/dumb-question-relationship-of-solid-to-the-fediverse/798/2 "2018-12-06T08:09:14Z")
Not a dumb question, don’t worry. Some confusion arises as “Pod” is a term that is used to refer to a Fediverse instance and the personal Solid data store as well. But these things are acually completely unconnected right now 🙂 Although there are people interested in bringing these two together. (I’m one of those) Technical background: Solid provides the underpinning so that people can store their data in their own place and give access rights to it to other people and apps. Solid is not really a presentation layer - so you cannot browse things, and there is no timeline that shows you the content from all your friends and people you want to follow. The Fediverse is a set of web servers that store your data and handle the timeline and all that. It is entirely possible to create a Fediverse server that instead of handling the presentation _and_ the data storage just does the presentation layer and then stores all the data on your Solid pod. ---
**Author:** ![linonetwo](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.solidproject.org/linonetwo/32/4039_2.png) [@linonetwo](https://forum.solidproject.org/u/linonetwo)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2018, 12:33pm UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/dumb-question-relationship-of-solid-to-the-fediverse/798/3 "2018-12-06T12:33:22Z")
You can add this thread to the topic [http://forum.solidproject.org/c/connection-to-other-initiatives](http://forum.solidproject.org/c/connection-to-other-initiatives) ---
**Author:** ![aschrijver](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.solidproject.org/aschrijver/32/463_2.png) [@aschrijver](https://forum.solidproject.org/u/aschrijver)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 10:12pm UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/dumb-question-relationship-of-solid-to-the-fediverse/798/4 "2018-12-11T22:12:38Z")
Some more newby statements that may be relevant in this regard: - I believe moving your account (including followers, toots, etc.) from one federated (ActivityPub) server to another is still not possible and well-defined. May be a use case for Solid there. - The ActivityPub standard leaves authentication / authz to implementers, advises OAuth2, I believe (no time to check now). Another use case? - Also the solid-spec mentions [Followers and Following](https://github.com/solid/solid-spec/blob/master/README.md#friends-lists-followers-and-following) as TBD, and these are also part of ActivityPub - Solid-spec also has a link [Feed Discovery](https://github.com/solid/solid-spec/blob/master/README.md#feed-discovery) in the ToC for which there is no paragraph text, but these are also AP / ActivityStream concepts. - Upcoming [PixelFed](https://pixelfed.org/) may have overlap with, complement, or be a competing alternative to what @timbl is suggesting in [Photos manage my pictures/images/slides?](http://forum.solidproject.org/t/photos-manage-my-pictures-images-slides/454?u=aschrijver) (and ImageSnippets mentioned there). ---
**Author:** ![Xanthec](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Xanthec](https://forum.solidproject.org/u/Xanthec)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2018, 1:45pm UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/dumb-question-relationship-of-solid-to-the-fediverse/798/5 "2018-12-29T13:45:24Z")
Did you look to the Zot Protocol ? [Specs](https://project.hubzilla.org/help/developer/zot_protocol) [Intro](https://start.hubzilla.org/page/admin/zot_intro) It seems to me that the concept of _nomadic identity_ fits really well with Solid pods. ---
**Author:** ![aschrijver](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.solidproject.org/aschrijver/32/463_2.png) [@aschrijver](https://forum.solidproject.org/u/aschrijver)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 6:02am UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/dumb-question-relationship-of-solid-to-the-fediverse/798/6 "2019-01-20T06:02:11Z")
> [@Xanthec](#): > > It seems to me that the concept of _nomadic identity_ fits really well with Solid pods. If that is the case it would be very interesting to the people building ActivityPub apps for the Fediverse. An opportunity… ---
**Author:** ![aschrijver](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.solidproject.org/aschrijver/32/463_2.png) [@aschrijver](https://forum.solidproject.org/u/aschrijver)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2020, 12:20pm UTC](https://forum.solidproject.org/t/dumb-question-relationship-of-solid-to-the-fediverse/798/7 "2020-01-19T12:20:54Z")
FYI, referencing Github issue related to ActivityPub in node solid server (the label is ‘revisit’ so the issue is not really closed): > > > http://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub > > Implement AP where applicable. LDP container… representation as AS2 collection of items (semantic overlap), and actor's \`outbox\` should be high priority. Response body in \*compact\* JSON-LD is required. > > Going forward, full fleshed ActivityPub implementation should probably be an extension, if the core node-solid-server is to operate as a server in federation mode..