a on Nostr: the consequences of plain json is having to do all the janky hacks and making sure ...

the consequences of plain json is having to do all the janky hacks and making sure everyone else agrees to do the same. if i were a spec designer i would just have everyone pre-expand all terms so that there's exactly one canonical representation over the wire. i'd also force all objects to be objects, so no ambiguity between "foo" and {"id": "foo"} because a big problem with as2/ap is the lack of any sort of proper data modeling or schematic constraints

wrt mastodon network, you have an alternative option: write them off completely. you can either fork the network and try to define some common profile that's actually consistent and well-documented, but in doing so you might as well just start over and do proper data modeling and versioning etc etc. it really depends how much you care for the existing userbase, which i am personally caring less and less about with every passing moment