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What is a federated network? For what reasons do I want to explore them? Thanks!

• phailhaus 5y ago
  Seconded! I honestly don't know what this is, and it looks like the site doesn't try to explain it at all. :/
  • iamevn 5y ago
    A federated network is a group of systems that agree on a protocol to communicate and share resources. Email is one of the classic examples where. Anyone can build and run their own mail server. As long as a server supports SMTP, users on it server can communicate with users on any other email server. No need for special cases which depend on which server you're sending mail to.
    • eitland 5y ago
      Good answer. Email is the classic example. I'd like to add another to more clearly show whatvis new here: Mastodon is like Twitter, except anyone can host their own instance and you (and others) can follow each other across instances, just like mail in iamevn's example. Pixelfed does the same for images, it is kind of an Instagram clone where you can follow others. Writefreely enables the the same for blogging. Also to the degree it is practically possible it is often possible to follow accounts across types, for example a Mastodon account can follow a Writefreely account. Oh, and they are mostly (all?) open source, and since everyone can create their own instance it is harder to block out people (you can of course block people you find annoying etc, but Mastodon cannot receive a request from a government and suddenly you are thrown out from the network, they have to apply pressure to every instance around the world and then you could always create your own instance.) If you think this sounds insanely cool then you are right. There are a list of names elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27010161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27010161