The Federated Web is not The Dark Web, but you know, some idiot journalist will eventually conflate the two terms.
@kaniini But not all of the federated web is using TOR, nor is all of The Dark Web using federated communication apps.
@kaniini @deadsuperhero In that case if they federated with any instances outside TOR then there would be ActivityPub and OStatus data zipping in and out of exit nodes to and from the instance. Would kind of make using TOR pointless. So if it federated it all it would only do so with other instances within TOR.
It would be a different federation entirely...the "dark federation" (sounds like a Star Trek thing 🤔).
@tobias @kaniini It'd be interesting to see a truly p2p-client style approach to federated networking (on the desktop or mobile end, without the need for a server at all)
There have been a few recent approaches to the problem. Scuttlebutt approached it in a fairly novel way by assuming that data connections probably aren't persistent, and would rely on an alternate mechanism for fetching and storing updates to data.
@deadsuperhero yeah lol :"))
@deadsuperhero Haven't they already?
@deadsuperhero The Dark Federation
@deadsuperhero but what if somebody sets up a mastodon on the TOR network. what then, huh?!