I have this weird idea for a distributed and private Mastodon instance:
- the instance would be Tor-only
- anybody* could help host an instance they like by installing and running some software (let's say a "node")
- the nodes would connect with each other and coordinate which one should do what (storage, database, http, etc)
- by using OnionBalance one can split the traffic among all the "http" instances
*not really "anybody" because this would make it trivial to take down the instance
@afilini have you looked at Scuttlebutt yet?
@pete @afilini Also lot of "this content is missing because it is outside of your network" notices in place of replies, seeing replies to nonexistent threads (without option to request them from the network), etc.
This place also doesn't show/know about everything, but at least if you want to get a full(er) view of a thread or profile you can view it on its "native" instance.
@pete @afilini That, or a combination approach of automatically connecting to servers that do have whatever content that can't be displayed, and lazyloading to take away the delay between starting up the application and being able to start browsing content. Load the stuff that I follow or tags I have favorited or whatever first, populate the reply threads second and then (optionally) load more content for me to discover.