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There's a tension here between different views of what Mastodon should be. Is an instance more like an email server (where it just acts as a gateway) or a web
by panic 8y ago
There's a tension here between different views of what Mastodon should be. Is an instance more like an email server (where it just acts as a gateway) or a web forum (with a community of people on each instance)?
It seems like the ActivityPub protocol itself is designed from the "email server" perspective, but as different instances try to differentiate themselves and attract users, I bet the platform will swing more and more toward "web forum". It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.
- TuringTest 8y agoEven if each instance has its own community, that's no reason to force users to create a different account at each instance. Given the federated protocol, it's a reasonable expectation carrying around the same identity across instances.
- ok-repl 8y agoI feel like the product signals a strange mix of the two, which has to at least be resolved in terms of what's user-facing (e.g. UX-wise)