Warning: Some posts on this platform may contain adult material intended for mature audiences only. Viewer discretion is advised. By clicking ‘Continue’, you confirm that you are 18 years or older and consent to viewing explicit content.
You can share an article from a user of a different instance. In this case, your instance will have to look up the rel=“author” tag and check whether the URL is a fediverse instance. I’m not sure whether this is scalable as compared to a tag that directly indicates that the author is on the fediverse. Imagining a scenario where there are 100, 1000, 10,000, or 100,000 instances on different versions.
The tag is to promote that the author is on the fediverse. If the rel=“author” tag points to twitter for example, maybe Eugen Rochko + team didn’t want a post on the fediverse to link to twitter.
These are my thoughts and idk if they’re valid. But I think just reusing the rel=“author” isn’t the most elegant solution.
I know that mastodon already uses rel=“me” for link verification (I use it on mu website + my mastodon account), but that’s a different purpose - that’s more for verification. There’s still no way of guaranteeing that the rel=“author” tag points to a fediverse account. You’re putting the onus on the mastodon instance.
There’s also no guarantee that the rel=me points to a fediverse instance, mastodon already has logic to deal with thus without reinventing the wheel with what’s effectively a proprietary solution.
I think the difference lies in two things:
You can share an article from a user of a different instance. In this case, your instance will have to look up the rel=“author” tag and check whether the URL is a fediverse instance. I’m not sure whether this is scalable as compared to a tag that directly indicates that the author is on the fediverse. Imagining a scenario where there are 100, 1000, 10,000, or 100,000 instances on different versions.
The tag is to promote that the author is on the fediverse. If the rel=“author” tag points to twitter for example, maybe Eugen Rochko + team didn’t want a post on the fediverse to link to twitter.
These are my thoughts and idk if they’re valid. But I think just reusing the rel=“author” isn’t the most elegant solution.
I know that mastodon already uses rel=“me” for link verification (I use it on mu website + my mastodon account), but that’s a different purpose - that’s more for verification. There’s still no way of guaranteeing that the rel=“author” tag points to a fediverse account. You’re putting the onus on the mastodon instance.
There’s also no guarantee that the rel=me points to a fediverse instance, mastodon already has logic to deal with thus without reinventing the wheel with what’s effectively a proprietary solution.