I am wondering about a #federation behavior: say I have three #Fediverse instances A, B, and C. Important: instance A blocks instance C.
We have a person pA on A, pB on B that follows pA, and pC on C that follows pB.
What happens when pB boosts a post from pA? (When) can it reach C or pC?
I expect that, for #Mastodon it should not happen but I'd like to confirm this and to know whether it is also true for other platforms and what it depends on.
My understanding of 'blocks' is that A doesn't pull from or accept requests from C. So although someone on C could see a reverence to a post on A, they could not see the content of it (unless the person on B screenshotted it, for example).
@simon_brooke it is my understanding as well, notably due to the "signing" mechanism, but I am not sure how "efficiently" this works and whether it relies on the "goodwill" of instance C or is a more fundamental part of the protocol or of the sending method, meaning that transmission of the data would stay integrally under A's control.
I'm especially interested in whether this depends on the platforms.
@tfardet When you view a post, your instance fetches it from the instants from which it originates. So the fact that B has an instance of the post is irrelevant: C will attempt to fetch it from A. As A blocks C, this will return a status 403 ('Forbidden') error.
@tfardet However, as B certainly has a copy of the post, there is nothing to stop someone from writing a patch to the software that would allow B to act as a relay - this would be against the letter and the spirit of the protocol, but not actually impossible.
@simon_brooke thanks, that's indeed how I understood that Mastodon worked; would you know whether it is also the case from other platforms? As you mentioned, it does not seem to be strongly required and I imagine that some implementations may not work that way.
What I'm especially wondering about is whether we would need B to misbehave or if C could fetch the information from B even if it is not misbehaving.
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