Disclaimer
I‘m not asking if you want to federate or not and why. The question is if a defined ruleset would make it more transparent for everyone and more future proof.
Since we are seeing major divides due to the (de)federation of threads and now the federation of flipboard, we might wanna discuss future rules so to not fight about everything.
I can see arguments for both sides but some of the technical ones are more compelling since peeps who are unhappy can always move, an overextended instance will have to close. So I‘d take this as the basic principle:
- no federation with instances bigger than half the fediverse (arbitrary number, could be no bigger than all of it as well)
- no federation with instances that push ads with their posts
- no Federation with instances that use altered versions or proprietary versions of AP.
- no one way federation
These are obviously just ideas. There are several „unions“ of instances already that implement more or less of these ideas but I think its something that should be discussed instead of just yes or no.
Also, I‘d suggest we make such rules permanent as in if any instance changes in this way, it gets auto defederated.
This would make interaction more clear and easy for users to choose their instance. For example, If someone wanted the possibility of twitter federating, they‘d not go to an instance that has this ruleset.
Any other ideas?
As we discuss this new ruleset, I think I will leave my instance to start a new one called The United Instances of Lemmy. From this instance I will then half-heartedly yet aggressively send my users to meddle in other instances affairs on my behalf to impose my interpretation of these Fediverse rules without context alongside a few other instances that share my same limited definitions of right and wrong at the expense of everyone remotely involved.
This has already been done. There are already instances with shared, written identities. I know you’re trying to portrait it as something horrible but committing to a shared goal is not inherently bad. You could try to actually help people now make the same mistakes again and again.