[arch-d] RFC 9518 - Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards

[Eliot Lear <[e-mail]>]

All,

In case you missed it, RFC 9518 
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc9518/> was published this past 
week, based on draft-nottingham-avoiding-internet-centralization.  In my 
opinion, Mark has put together an important document that is worthy of 
some attention and discussion.  His may not be the only view, and there 
are questions I would imagine could be further explored.  Here are a few 
that come to mind:

  * Are there interchange standards for "Social Networking" that would
    allow one to pull up tent and move? For instance, there is a bit of
    a discussion about Nazis on Substack.  Here's one view.
    https://ianbetteridge.substack.com/p/substack-and-platform-risk.
  * What can we take from the combination of Mark's points around
    governance and federation?  Are there federation governance models
    that can be used to reduce "lock in" for a particular function?
  * And then there was this little tidbit from the FTC just this week.
    https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2023/12/interoperability-privacy-security.
    This one, to me, is interesting, because even open standards cannot
    stop this sort of centralization because of
    authentication/authorization policies, but not having open standards
    surely shuts down the possibility.

My hope is that RFC 9518 does not end but rather promotes discussion 
about this topic.

Eliot