am i understanding farcaster’s design properly that it focuses on consistency (or consensus) across all hubs?

versus activitypub’s every-server-for-itself approach (and nostr to some extent)

Yes, that’s right. All hubs converge on the same state as long as they get all messages. Hubs will sync with each other to catch missed messages. But there is no explicit consensus mechanism or penalties right now (other than a poor peer score).

Timestamps are not trustworthy, just like a personal blog

didn't realize that. pretty interesting

how is timestamping handled?