A few weeks ago, we mentioned implementing messaging in Normals. Currently, only one-on-one calls are possible, but we’ve managed to get it working while maintaining privacy, the rules, and the philosophy. If it’s well-received by the community, we might consider expanding the chat to group chats, but this is still a costly architectural decision that we would need to cover. However, we hope you find it useful. As Team Lead for https://normals.me/, I’m available to answer any questions related to this, both functional and architectural.
The basic description, security and architecture information is in the announcements thread on Mastodon and Normals.
#fediverse #Chat #VideoCall
Nice work. Is this intra instance only or can one normal user call another normal user on a separate instance?
Thanks! Right now calls are between Normals accounts only. There’s no standard for calls in ActivityPub yet, it covers posts, follows and replies, not real-time audio or video, at least not yet. So there’s nothing we could federate a call over yet :(, and as far as I know Mastodon, Lemmy and the rest don’t have calls either.
Federated calling does exist on other networks (Matrix, and XMPP with Jingle), but not in the ActivityPub Fediverse. If a standard shows up, we’d love to look at it, as long as calls stay e2e encrypted.
You could format a message with xmpp connection data, so both parties could “dial” and talk, if the client is aware of the format. A bit contrived, but workable.