I suspect this has been discussed elsewhere, at great length (I’m sure I’ve seen a version of @trwnh’s critique of NodeInfo before), but it’s on-topic so…
My understanding is that NodeInfo began as a feature of Diaspora, and thus became part of the ad hoc Diaspora protocol. Allowing all instances of software that federated over it to be listed by sites like the federation.info (created by @jaywink ). It was then retrofitted to OStatus/AP software to allow instance monitoring sites to list all fediverse instances.
I agree that the collection of instance stats for this purposes (and any other) raises privacy issues. These need to be carefully considered in the design and use of NodeInfo, or any potential successor.
For example, it’s obvious that a stats collection standard must not be part of the expectations of vanilla AP, so an FEP is definitely the right place for it. I also think its better to make it as explicit and modular as possible. So I’m not sure about folding it’s functions into another tool like hosts-meta.
But to me, the instance mapping allowsed by NodeInfo continues to have the same obvious benefits it’s always had, including;
- helping newbies find suitable instances to join
- helping people wanting to try out different fediverse software/ services find suitable instances to join
- giving us rough data about the size and active use of the fediverse network as a whole
- giving us rough data about the popularity of different server software, with both instance operators and people using them
- giving us rough data about where the growth of the verse, is happening; which software, and to some degree which countries or language groups
- giving us rough data about whether people keep using the accounts they’ve created
I’m pretty sure there are ways of improving NodeInfo so it does a better job of these things (and others), while also addressing any potential privacy risks we can think of. Also, where possible, reducing its server load and bandwidth use for both instances, and mapping sites.
Side note on terminology: the phrase “instance monitoring” (which I’ve used on the fediverse.party wiki, for example) is derived from the use of software and services that do realtime monitoring of uptime, traffic etc, on a server. But the word “monitoring” has some unfortunate associations in a social media context. I will be using “instance mapping” to describe this from now on.