Re:Social media and the concentration of power
by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC on Tuesday March 26, 2019 @04:38PM
(#19495805)
> providing cheap solutions
Wut?
I mean, otherwise yout point still stands, and I agree, but I think it's even stranger with "cloud" stuff, in that it's very much not cheap.
Re:Social media and the concentration of power
by scottshepard on Tuesday March 26, 2019 @05:50PM
(#19496348)
Cheaper than building your own datacenter, or buying your own server space and paying a dedicated engineering team to monitor a cluster for you. I can do things on my own or with a small team that would be well out of my reach without AWS or GCE.
Re:Social media and the concentration of power
by franky47 on Tuesday March 26, 2019 @05:44PM
(#19496312)
It depends on the point of view, for startups looking for a tech solution at a small scale to test their products, these solutions are usually much cheaper than doing everything by yourself. It's only when you start to scale that you realise the financial impact and the lock-in that the platform have upon you, and at this stage it's too late for the paradigm shift to operate.
One tech field where this kind of centralization is now at similar levels with social media is cloud computing, where a handful of giant actors (AWS, Azure, GCE) hold 99% of the market, providing cheap solutions at the hidden cost of an increased centralization of power.
I believe the paradigm shift on social media cannot operate on the application layer if it is not also met with a similar paradigm shift on the platform layer, otherwise it will only transfer this power to hidden entities. Decentralization is becoming more than a buzzword, especially with net neutrality under assault.