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The problem with federated web apps

Posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 02, 2023

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Trying to make web applications federated is a popular effort. Examples include things like the “fediverse”, as well as various other efforts, like attempts to make distributed software forges, and so on. However, all of these efforts suffer from a problem which is fundamental in building federated applications built on top of the web platform.

The problem is fundamentally this: when building an application on top of the web platform, an HTTP URL inherently couples an application and a resource.

Let's take the Fediverse as an example. Suppose some user profile is hosted at https://example.com/johnsmith. This URL can be used by Fediverse clients to retrieve machine-readable profile information, but visiting it in a web browser, or clicking a link to it from some other location, results in loading a specific application served from example.com and chosen by the operator of that server.

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