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Comment by lijogdfljk | Hacker News Reader

How does federation propagation happen?

Ie if i start my own server, how quickly could someone on, say, mastodon.art see my posts? Would they even see them at all?

I use them as an example, because i know they're fairly locked down on who they federate with. In doing so, maybe they only whitelist? Maybe they blacklist? Maybe they automatically blacklist any servers that aren't perfectly aligned with their own blacklist?

Federation feels a bit convoluted in a way that email doesn't. Then again email became so convoluted that only a few big players are even really allowed.. so maybe Mastodon is heading in the same direction?

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> how quickly could someone on, say, mastodon.art see my posts? Would they even see them at all?

As soon as someone from there follows you. Post federation is based entirely on that.

The bootstrapping process here is social, not technical, and usually looks like "follow a few people and some of them will follow you back and boost your stuff".

Since you asked about .art specifically, I run a single user instance and I can follow people there. I'm pretty sure they just blacklist aggressively.

If you reply to people on something like .art, would they see your post? I need to read the spec about how federation works, as i have no clue haha.

Which might be a significant barrier. Non-tech users might have no clue who sees what. If ServerA can talk to ServerB. etc

Why yes, if you reply to someone they will see you reply, unless they or their admin has blocked you or your instance. Just like any federated network.

> unless they or their admin has blocked you or your instance. Just like any federated network.

That's kinda the part i'm questioning though. You as a user have to look at how each server handles federation to know what is visible.. maybe?

For sake of argument, it might be possible to one-way-federate. Ie read posts from mastodon.art, but if i reply my post might not be seen by mastodon.art users. This is just an example, i have no clue, but i'm illustrating where confusing could arise as rules get more complex on how federation works.

Hopefully it's black and white. If i as a user can see mastodon.art posts, then they can see me. Anything more complex than that (like one-way federation) would be prevented by the software for sake of a simplified UX.

Federation isn't symmetrical: I might be able to read mastodon.art posts, but be blocked such that people there can't see me. But that's not really an issue. Being part of the fediverse is learning that people may not want to hear about you, for reasons unknown to you. Maybe bad reasons. But that's ok. You are not owed an audience. And maybe, if you are blocked, there is a good reason for that. On the fediverse there is a high value in the interactions and the relationships, so if a connection is to happen the individuals will do what is needed to make it happen.

Maybe an instance blocks you. Maybe not. Fret not, it will be ok; you will have interactions with other people anyway.

Eh, i disagree. If i have the option to join a niche community or be external to it - i feel you just made an argument against federation. I should join the community, so that i'm not arbitrarily blocked for reasons out of my control. If i get kicked out at least i'll know, and it was likely due to my own actions.

Ie imagine mastodon.art has a good Blender community. I'm joining Mastodon for exactly that community. If i join mastodon.social, i may as well .. not. It's blocked by mastodon.art. It's not even worth my time signing up if my goal is to be part of a specific community.

I'm not trying to build a general audience or have my general posts heard by the public. I'm trying to be part of a specific community. Federation seems bad here, if the community you're interested in is not fully open at least. As mastodon.art most certainly is not.

if you’re not trying to have your posts heard by the public, then why would you be concerned who mastodon.art is federated with? wouldn’t you just join there and enjoy the specific community…

> I’m not trying to build a general audience or have my general posts be heard by the public.

> i’m trying to be part of a specific community.

> Federation seems bad here if the community is not fully open.

these seem to entirely contradict each other.

> then why would you be concerned who mastodon.art is federated with? wouldn’t you just join there and enjoy the specific community…

Because the community is closed, currently lol.

> these seem to entirely contradict each other.

Yea, i think we agree? My point was (roughly) that Federation contradicts being part of a community if you rely on Federation to be part of the community.

Ie don't use federation if you need to be part of a specific community. And in my case, well, i guess i just don't join lol. If the community is at max capacity, too late. Maybe one day they open, but such is life. Federation isn't designed for this, it seems, and that's fine. "This" being, distributing a community. It seems communities are centralized.

We agree fundamentally: federation is not compatible with community-on-a-server, and the latter is being phased out by the Mastodon devs. The future is in groups that can span multiple servers and fully use federation.

Ooo neat, i'll have to look into Groups. Thanks!

Right there's https://a.gup.pe/ but it's a hack and isn't meant to work long term. The long term thing is proper group actors and stuff in ActivityPub, and it's being discussed here I believe: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/standardizing-on-activ...

If you reply to someone using a hotmail address via your gmail account, would they see your email?

Depends, does hotmail have gmail blocked? As in the case of Mastodon.art

> As soon as someone from there follows you. Post federation is based entirely on that.

There's also relays which will send out your posts (assuming your instance is subscribed to a relay) to all the other instances (but not users - this just puts them in the "federated" timeline, not individual ones) subscribed to that relay as a kind of "wider Fedivee view".

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