Robert Frost once wrote that good fences make good neighbors. Today, many developers feel the same way about the internet—longing for a world where websites and their servers each live in separate spaces, free from entanglement. Aside from the oligarchs, just about everyone likes the idea of a federated web.
The term federated alludes to federalism, the philosophy that guides the political structure of the United States. Each of the states retains sovereignty, and the entire country benefits from that independence. The internet works similarly. As an ideal, it offers a combination of resilience, flexibility, and distributed power that burns brightly for those who value freedom. In reality, the web today is a mix of independent islands and tightly integrated silos. There are many examples of sites that work together at arm’s length, embodying federated web design. There are also walled gardens, where a central administrator dominates all interactions, embodying control as a modus operandi.
