Wouldn't it be better and simpler to just revert that trend to how it was before the big tech behemoths put everything behind walled gardens?
That's... kind of the point of the fediverse? A decentralized network built on non-proprietary software makes walled gardens and centralization by corporations infeasible. Identity is controlled by the end user.
It brings me back a few years ago where everyone just had to use blockchains instead of... a database, when it made no sense. It should be decentralization in the sense of offer, not technical decentralization.
Mastodon and the like feel flat to me. Again, maybe I'm missing a key piece here.
> A decentralized network built on non-proprietary software makes walled gardens and centralization by corporations infeasible
I don't think so. I don't think any of this will gather enough momentum to make a dent to the established networks (Twitter, FB, TikTok, Reddit, etc). That ship has sailed, imho
I'd rather build something new and actually have a userbase than be something akin to a subreddit with fleeting users. It will be a lot more hard work, but it's worth it.
Also, Mastodon sucks. This whole "let's be free together" but also "don't step out of line" culture is disgusting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28495086.
> The obsolute worst thing about the Fediverse (Mastodon et al) right now is the onboarding process. You have to "chose an instance" before you can even start understanding what that's about - and if you chose wrong you might find your instance gets switched off leaving you high and dry in the future.
That's the problem. It's unnecessarily complex and other than a subniche, people in the real world are not interested in it. They just don't care about this at all.