. Last tended to <ahref='https://code.incremental.social/thepaperpilot/pages/commit/7e55a8c0b94ea781e2fd3f7fd9bcad3f93654018'title='Wed Aug 7 16:31:30 2024 -0500'><timeclass='dt-updated'datetime='Wed Aug 7 16:31:30 2024 -0500'>2024-08-07</time></a>
.</span></p><hr><details><summary>Referenced by:</summary><ahref="/garden/social-media/index.md">Social Media</a><ahref="/garden/the-indieweb/signature-blocks/index.md">The IndieWeb/Signature Blocks</a><ahref="/garden/weird/index.md">Weird</a></details><p>A placeholder name for a theoretical new federated network that is client-centric, in contrast to the server-centric <ahref="/garden/fediverse/">Fediverse</a>. Many of the ideas here will be implemented as described or similarly by people much smarter than me as part of <ahref="https://github.com/commune-os/weird/discussions/32"target="_blank"rel="noreferrer">Agentic Federation on Iroh</a>, an initiative by the <ahref="/garden/weird/">Weird</a> developers.</p><h2id="motivation"tabindex="-1">Motivation <aclass="header-anchor"href="#motivation"aria-label="Permalink to "Motivation""></a></h2><p>The current fediverse, while in theory fully <ahref="/garden/decentralized/">Decentralized</a>, in practice suffers many of the issues associated with centralization. This is primarily caused by the friction of having to pick a server and the non feasibility of individuals buying a domain and setting up a single user instance - both of these causes lead to a handful of large servers with the bulk of the users. You can see this in action by looking up the relative sizes of lemmy and mastodon instances. <ahref="https://mull.net/mastodon"target="_blank"rel="noreferrer">Single-user Mastodon Instance is a Bad Idea</a> goes over the non feasibility of self hosting and how it contributes to a handful of servers having the majority of the users.</p><p>The promise of federation is the ability to interact with the whole network, while being able to fully choose and customize how you yourself interact with the network. In practice though, clients are severely limited to what they can do based on the server software. Of particular note, Lemmy and Mastodon show content in different formats (threads vs microblogs), and no clients allow changing how they're displayed, or respecting the format of the source of the content. Clients also are unable to change sorting algorithms or how downvotes are handled - those are all dependent on the server. <ahref="https://raphael.lullis.net/a-plan-for-social-media-less-fedi-more-webby/"target="_blank"rel="noreferrer">A Plan for Social Media - Rethinking Federation</a> similarly criticizes how much of the decisions are dependent on the server, which most people won't be able to or willing to self host.</p><p>The pick a server problem is such a problem because not only do you have to pick what server has moderation policies you align with, but that you're also linking your identity with that server. Smaller servers tend to be more focused or niche, which is unlikely to fully encompass any person's entire identity. Why would I confine myself to being <code>thepaperpilot@writinglovers.com</code> if I'm more than a writing lover? Additionally, I'm risking that the community at that instance won't grow away from things I want to associate with, such as fascism or crypto. My identity could end up being associated with things I drastically don't want it to be.</p><p><ahref="https://nostr.com/"target="_blank"rel="noreferrer">Nostr</a> fixes the pick a server problem with a properly decentralized identity, however it's done so by associating itself with crypto and the alt right, and fixing that culture problem is more effort than it's worth. It'll be difficult to gain broad adoption as anyone using the platform will have to take care to explain how they're using nostr but aren't alt right.</p><p><ahref="https://atproto.com/"target="_blank"rel="noreferrer">ATProto</a> by bluesky offers a version of federation built for a handful of large instances, but allowing smaller servers to be spun up that can implement custom sorting algorithms, views, etc. This fixes a couple of the problems where you're unable to change certain things dictated by the servers, but doesn't quite go f
