@bender@twtxt.net I’m not a yarnd user, but automatically unfollowing on 404 doesn’t seem right. Besides @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org’s example, I could imagine just accidentally renaming my own twtxt file, or forgetting to push it when I point my DNS to a new web server. I’d rather not lose all my yarnd followers in a situation like that (and hopefully they feel the same).

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org that’s the thing: Twtxt doesn’t care much about followers. It is not that kind of social media. Yet, I agree with the exponential back off approach. I just don’t want to keep constantly trying to fetch that which will not resurrect, nor want people to continue hitting my endpoint, which will not resurrect. 😊

@bender@twtxt.net Based on my experience so far, as a user, I would be upset if my client dropped someone from my follower list, i.e. stopped fetching their feed, without me asking for that to happen.

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org @bender@twtxt.net I’d certainly hate my client for automatic feed unsubscription, too.

(@anth@a.9srv.net’s feed almost never works, but I keep it because they told me they want to fix their server some time.)

Imagine if SMTP behaved like this. It would be mayhem! SMTP bounces are certain number of retries, thus alerting the user that the email address, or server, is wrong. By the way, this same problem happens on the various implementations of ActivityPub (Mastodon, all “romas”, all “keys”, and GoToSocial, which I use). Some have implemented a process to drop federation, after certain number of delivery attempts fail.