• marx2k@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Quick question and this may have been answered or obvious…

    Is it not possible to federate with onion sites via tor or i2p sites?

    • Perhyte@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can only federate via tor or i2p if both sides support those protocols, because for federation to work between two nodes both nodes need to be able to initiate connections to the other. That means one-way bridges like tor exit nodes are not sufficient.

      I’d guess most Fediverse servers don’t support either of those protocols, so any new server trying to federate solely through them would have an extremely limited view of the Fediverse.

      Though I suppose theoretically nothing is really preventing a motivated group of server admins from setting up a parallel “dark Fediverse” containing only onion sites.

      • marx2k@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Good explanation, thanks. I figured it would have been the interface between in the onion and outside of it. That’s too bad. It’s been forever since I used tor but… would someone be able to set up an exit node specifically as a federation point with the outside world? Sort of working as a reverse proxy for a site or sites on the inside?