I have very mixed feelings about this. On one hand, E2EE is a good thing. On the other hand, I don’t see any mention of making it interoperable with other fedi platforms; on the contrary, the “executive summary” explicitly says this is only for Mastodon.
we begin with a proposal for Client-Side Key Management for Mastodon Web, Mastodon Android, and Mastodon iOS
Will this end up like XMPP where you have to message someone unencrypted first to see whether they’re on a client/platform with E2EE capabilities? Will Mastodon users, as is the quite accurate stereotype, assume everyone is using Mastodon and be annoyed when the recipient replies saying “I’m not on Mastodon”? Will it end up being green bubble/blue bubble?
The whole point of the fediverse is interoperability and choice, yet people who act as if Mastodon is the fediverse constantly undermine that.
<rant>
This is in part because of Eugen himself (creator of Mastodon); he’s always promoted Mastodon on its own and never mentioned the fediverse at large. The Mastodon homepage doesn’t talk about the fediverse, it doesn’t mention a wider network of other platforms, and it doesn’t mention any of Mastodon’s “competitors” like Misskey, Pleroma, Friendica, Hubzilla, Zap, etc.
- Misskey’s homepage directly mentions Mastodon, Pleroma, and Pixelfed
- Pleroma’s homepage mentions Misskey, Mastodon, Pixelfed, and others
- Friendica mentions Funkwhale, Hubzilla, Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed, StatusNet, GNU social, Quitter, and diaspora*
- Hubzilla mentions diaspora* and Friendica
- Zap mentions ActivityPub
This is why I always bring up the fediverse and make sure I mention the alternatives any time Mastodon comes up in a conversation on the podcast or in person or elsewhere on the internet. Mastodon is the only one that strives to create a monoculture and it has largely succeeded.
I dislike Mastodon.
</rant>