*nod*, there's a tension already underway between people who wish to find others (e.g. contacts from other dying networks), and people who don't wish to be found (harassment victims), who would rather not interact with the network at large (discriminated groups), and who would like to impose their own set of requirements and interaction rules on the entire network. I have a hunch that federation as it is could make room for very diverse requirements and interaction modes, perhaps with add-ons for communities with additional requirements. the add-ons don't necessary need to be implemented on the servers; much could be done through apps or additional websites, sort of like plenty of stuff is implemented on smartphones without having to modify the phone network or even the operating systems running on the phones. add-ons, whether for apps or servers, are probably the best place in which to experiment with additional features, before integration into mainline. challenges are to be expected when the additional features conflict with the preexisting underlying protocols (e.g. activitypub), but that's the case even if you were to modify the mainline programs, since the fediverse interacts with plenty of other non-mastodon implementations. there's surely room to advance the protocol, but there's some more inertia there.