@darius @cwebber that is to say, we have a kind of behavioral cap imposed by the limitations of popular programs, their standards and the associated technologies. with mastodon, we are left with artifacts like the *instance* that reflect the limitations of HTTP and DNS. to achieve a different architecture, possibly to escape HTTP and DNS entirely, we need different plumbing. until we have that plumbing, we're stuck with federation as we know it -- and not because it's bulletproof.