Protocols are what computers use to communicate with each other. No protocols means no interaction between different computers/servers. Without protocols, none of the things you ask for can be possible.

By “Protocol” I was referring specifically to ActivityPub and the difficulties of engineering against that standard and then the compute resources required to perform the federation tasks. And in addition, the work of inventing a new protocol and the systems around it, as oppose to relying on the protocols and systems that already exist, which I presume would be mostly sufficient to run what I suggest. Obviously at a general level a “protocol” is required for any interoperation between platforms or servers over the internet, so I’m honestly not sure where you’re coming from with this feedback.

Federated services don’t have single sign on. On the contrary, single sign on is a centralized service …

I’m not talking about the fediverse currently having SSO.

I was brief in the top post, in part to start a conversation but because it was originating from mastodon. But the “platforms … dedicated to …” part of my post was referring to the idea that a system of trust would be committed to amongst the suggested platforms where they’d be mutually trusted sources of authentication.

Duplication is used on federated services for a few reasons …

I said “over engineered” not “just for fun”.

The premise of my post is to question and ponder the tradeoffs involved. Keeping in mind that social media has for a long time and continues to operate through centralised servers with many many people being very happy with it, the UX and development issues created by the underlying design of the fediverse may not be worth the technical features.

Implicit in my post is the idea that decentralised/federated social media might be a bit of technological idea that technologists like without thinking through the practicalities and usability issues. Many have bounced off of the fediverse for essentially this reason … because in the end the point of social media is the social part not the independent decentralised data resilience part.

I like the fediverse as much as anyone … I was here before the reddit migration promoting lemmy and kbin on mastodon. But I’d prefer an open and free social media space that works for people rather than one that’s futilely married to a tech idea and particular implementation (ActivityPub).

In the end, I’m wondering if there’s a middle way and have simply put up my first attempt at a set of ideas.

Otherwise, beyond the substance of your reply, I have to say that your reply was unnecessarily condescending. My post was rather short, so thinking it was without any meaning or coming from a completely ignorant place makes some sense, but without really having much to offer to the actual issues or discussion in your reply (you seem to have missed the essential thrust of simply having a few large servers committed to being open and working together as an easier alternative to big-corp social media), you managed to also make it clear that you thought my ideas were silly or juvenile. Perhaps I am being silly, but I feel your tone and presumptions were unnecessary.