this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
818 points (96.6% liked)
Fediverse
17433 readers
12 users here now
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".
Getting started on Fediverse;
- What is the fediverse?
- Fediverse Platforms
- How to run your own community
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
No they wouldn't, that's the point of a GUID - they are globally unique.
However, I've changed my mind. For the nice-URL factor, having @instance is better and provides extra info.
But they can only be globally unique if each instance has its own range of unique ID's, otherwise they'll have to check with the other instances to make sure the GUID they want to use hasn't already been used. With new instances spinning up all the time you can't really manage this.
I agree that the @instance provides a little more info, and it fits nicely in line with how user profile and community URLs are handled.
There was also a github issue report about putting the title in the URL, like reddit does, but I think this goes too far - lemmy has the ability to change the title and putting the title in the URL would just confuse things or lead to exploits (eg you put naughty words in the title then change it afterwards, but the URL still has the original title).
GUIDs are globally unique because of maths and clocks not because of checking. When you generate a GUID you can be confident no GUID the same has ever been generated using that algorithm, ever, anywhere, and you don't have to check.
However, someone pointed out you could run a malicious instance that copies GUIDs from other instances and federates them out to deliberately cause issues, so this idea is out.
Ah fair, I guess I misunderstood GUID's.