Disclaimer

I‘m not asking if you want to federate or not and why. The question is if a defined ruleset would make it more transparent for everyone and more future proof.

Since we are seeing major divides due to the (de)federation of threads and now the federation of flipboard, we might wanna discuss future rules so to not fight about everything.

I can see arguments for both sides but some of the technical ones are more compelling since peeps who are unhappy can always move, an overextended instance will have to close. So I‘d take this as the basic principle:

  • no federation with instances bigger than half the fediverse (arbitrary number, could be no bigger than all of it as well)
  • no federation with instances that push ads with their posts
  • no Federation with instances that use altered versions or proprietary versions of AP.
  • no one way federation

These are obviously just ideas. There are several „unions“ of instances already that implement more or less of these ideas but I think its something that should be discussed instead of just yes or no.

Also, I‘d suggest we make such rules permanent as in if any instance changes in this way, it gets auto defederated.

This would make interaction more clear and easy for users to choose their instance. For example, If someone wanted the possibility of twitter federating, they‘d not go to an instance that has this ruleset.

Any other ideas?

  • MajorHavoc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    11 months ago

    This is terrific. Thank you for starting this discussion.

    I don’t think we can or should wait for individual users to make these decisions. Server admins are the ones who understand the risks and so should make this call. Guidance for server admins based on past experience (cough XMPP!) should be quite welcome.

    I might refine the bit about altered API versions to really focus on the real problem: proprietary extensions. We probably want to leave the door open to try out additions to the spec that come with detailed RFCs.

    But we know from XMPP that proprietary extensions are a huge problem.

    • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comOPEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      I agree. The „altering“ was meant „without proposing the change to the core protocol“ and as in „doing on your own because you want to be different/working towards proprietary versions“

      And thank you. :)