Is running your own instance hard? Then at best you’ll inevitably have some users who lack the know-how or time to set up their own instance. At worst, federated systems often link identity to home instance, so you can’t switch to a new instance without giving up your profile. Or they may even require other instances to have a human agree to federate with you, which is a big ask for a one-person instance.
Or is running your own instance easy? So easy that anyone can do it? Then there should be no disadvantage in bundle that into the client app so that everyone does do it. But now you have a decentralized system.
Yes, and those users will use managed services, something that the "principled" decentralized community (not your keys, not your money/not your identity/etc) is completely against and invariably leads to re-centralization of the system around market players that go to serve this market. Case in point: Github, Coinbase, MtGox, Signal, any of the big cloud providers...
> At worst, federated systems often link identity to home instance
Why? I can have a domain name and move email providers freely. Same for XMPP, Matrix, websites in general, etc. The identity part of the system can be separate from the service provider.
If anything, this idea is more of an argument against decentralized services. It is an all-or-nothing approach: do you want to run this service with your identity? Great, then you need to be responsible in managing the service and secure your identity.
> Or is running your own instance easy? So easy that anyone can do it?
There is no such thing. Nevermind the case for those simply can not control the hardware where they run their systems, UI/UX of decentralized systems is always an afterthought. Even something as "easy" as bittorrent requires so much of a learning curve that most people simply do not want to be bothered to learn.
Besides, it's not just "running". It's keeping it up. Paying for operational costs. Decentralized systems by definition need to be able to do everything by themselves. There is no way to achieve any kind of economies of scale.
Worst of all: it's not having any one to blame/be responsible for things when it breaks. Oh, you got scammed into downloading a keylogger: fuck you, you lost all of your keys. Oh, you "just" bought something with Bitcoin from a site that seemed legit, but they delivered a counterfeit product? "Consider it an lesson in how to look for things online"
What I am trying to say is that decentralization vs centralization should be considered as a continuous spectrum of choices and trade-offs that need to be made by users. Federated systems allow basically everyone to be whatever is best for them on this spectrum, while this "decentralize all the things!" and treating it as binary choice does little to non-technical users and basically guarantees they will be confined in the walled gardens.
In a fully decentralized network you can meet new people and moderate your own view of the world without putting any burden on others to adapt to what you want. Moderation can be done with a system like this: https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderati...
This really depends on the design. Email is "federated" but that doesn't require you to get anybody else to use your email server in order for you send or receive emails with them.
What I'd kind of like to see is a system that separates hosting and accounts from moderation.
So you have a host, like email, and a username on the host. Then you have a forum, which has operators/moderators (who are users), but the forum is host-independent. Maybe it only actually runs on a specific host at a given time, but the operators can move it without anybody noticing and anybody can use it regardless of who their own host is.
It makes it so you can be a forum operator without having to be a host.
I can run a single-user Mastodon instance and follow people from any other instance. They can follow me as well. I can send emails from my personal server to anyone on gmail, and vice-versa.
Where do I need to "attract other users" to my instance? It's quite the opposite!
With Mastadon if say I'm on another instance and the host of that instance blocks yours (because they don't agree with your politics or whatever) then won't I be unable to see your feed? I'd have to setup my own Mastadon instance to get around this? What if I'm not technically inclined enough to do this? Then I'm subject to the whims of the moderators of the instance.
What if I live in China and they block access to the biggest instances so I'm cut off from all the big communities and can't participate?
What if an instance of Mastadon crashes and the admins can't be bothered restoring it. As a user on that instance haven't you lost everything?
These are the problems decentralized networks are solving, being subject to the whims of other people.
First: Mastodon, with an "O".
Second: I already had this discussion before. This "blocking" of instances is something that is going on only on Mastodon, AFAIK, because most of the current members are conflating the idea of federation with tribes. They want to be insular at this point. This will change as soon as there are more people using ActivityPub like email or Matrix and stop associating the instances with the identities/ideologies of its members.
So, no. You won't have to "setup your Mastodon" instance to get around this. You can do it, but you also can just find a more professional hosting provider that is not managed by a fourteen year old or tweenagers that love to spout their love for diversity and yet can only tolerate any conversation that is exactly aligned with their existing preconceptions of their uniform peer group.
> What if I live in China and they block access to the biggest instances so I'm cut off from all the big communities and can't participate?
What if you live in China and they block the decentralized service altogether? What if they use the decentralized nature of the service and set up honeypots to find dissidents? "Decentralized" != "Private" != "Secure"
> What if an instance crashes (...) the admins can't be bothered restoring it.
If it is important to you, then (a) you run your own service or (b) you pay someone that actually cares about this. With a decentralized service, the only alternative you have is (a). Then not only you have to make this choice, but also everyone that you would like to join the network.
My point all along is that federated systems are already enough for those that do not "want to be subject to the whims of other people", while decentralized systems shut out those that don't care about it or would rather trust/delegate these concerns to someone else.
"Decentralized systems" bring no benefit that can't be had by federated systems and remove all sorts of free options from the potential users. It is limiting instead of liberating.
Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it, given that he retracted it on the grounds that too many people subverted the idea to justify all of bad practices related to social software.
Anyway, archive is your friend: https://web.archive.org/web/20050217051819/https://www.jwz.o...
This right here is the main thing that will never let any fully-decentralized system become mainstream. Two problems:
- Most people do want "middle-management". They don't want to deal with security risks, technical issues, understanding how the protocol works just to be able to share memes and score points with their social peers. All they want is to open their browser, see what their friends/peers are posting and be done with it.
- This trade-off between federated systems/giving up control does not exist. A federated system can degenerate into a fully-distributed graph. Those that want to keep full control over their system can easily do with a federated system: they just run their own instances.
Decentralized systems for social networks fail the Zawinski test and do not provide one single use-case that can not be done with a federated alternative. I fail to see any benefit of pushing it except for buzzword investors.