2019-06-21 23:37:01 +00:00
# federation
2019-06-22 18:16:38 +00:00
In regards to [ActivityPub](https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/) (AP),
2019-06-22 00:09:22 +00:00
a big problem is a lack of clarity on what instances are blocked and why by various instances.
This is a documentation and accessibility issue as I doubt most instances create or publish either.
2019-06-21 23:57:50 +00:00
Much like users picking an instance to join because of a theme or the moderation policies, instances could join a federation because of a grand moderation policy.
2019-06-21 23:41:13 +00:00
2019-06-22 18:16:38 +00:00
The governance of federation is a bit outside of the scope of AP.
A fork of AP isn't nessisary as a system of trust notaries could overlay any federating protocol.
For brevity, an instance is referred to as a (node) below.
2019-06-21 23:57:50 +00:00
# decentralized authority
The other big problem is having central authorities like Google or Apple as moderation.
You can see a similar problem on the internet with certificate authorities.
2019-06-21 23:41:13 +00:00
If a CA is compromised, which they have and they will, then the trust is broken at the root and anything that inherited that trust needs to have it reestablished.
I’ m not eager to apply blockchain to something that is a governance issue.
An alternative is notaries.
2019-06-21 23:57:50 +00:00
# proxy consensus
2019-06-21 23:41:13 +00:00
2019-06-22 18:16:38 +00:00
The general idea is trusting more than one authority, polling them for a consensus on which nodes are filtered/restricted. Many nodes would simply proxy their inherited filters but can change what node they would inherit trust from.
2019-06-21 23:41:13 +00:00
2019-06-22 18:16:38 +00:00
Whitelisting may not be necessary.
What's the most a harassing node can do to a large node before it's blocked?
The manual process for communicating blocked nodes to other nodes.
A node should be able to subscribe to a larger node for their filters.
With multiple subscriptions a node could look for a consensus among trust notaries.
2019-06-21 23:57:50 +00:00
2019-06-21 23:58:31 +00:00
# design inspiration
2019-06-21 23:57:50 +00:00
- [SSL And The Future Of Authenticity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N4sb-SEpcg)
- [Convergence Notaries](https://github.com/moxie0/Convergence/wiki/Notaries)
2019-06-22 18:16:38 +00:00
# issues to watch
- [ ] https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/11129
- [ ] https://github.com/florence-social/mastodon-fork/issues/108
- [ ] https://github.com/florence-social/mastodon-fork/issues/110
- [ ] https://github.com/glitch-soc/mastodon/issues/1135
# similar projects to evaluate
- [ ] https://github.com/dzuk-mutant/blockchain