So run your own server.
That seemed to me like it should have been the next evolution of the net, and still seems that way. All right there in your browser (which was also a server, it United those two groups of functions) democratising the internet...
Mastodon to me feels like it was built with the explicit goal to keep out anybody non-technical, and for technical people, only the type that wants to corner you at a party and discuss the deep philosophical and moral choices of your Linux desktop environment.
Easy is seldom truly free.
Moaning that federation is not decentralisation without even considering running their own instance, and when you suggest that, they turn around and say 'oh it's too hard'...
Oh how I miss the times of interest-based forums with ACTUAL moderation, large IRC channels where assholes got kicked and none of this amorphous mass of people and bots producing unmoderated brainrot that then gets turned into AI slop-based timelines optimised for the sole purpose of stimulating people's dopamine receptors until they burn out...
No, Mastodon was not designed to keep out anybody non-technical. In any given social circle, there is almost undoubtedly at least ONE person who can fire up a server and administrate it. You only need one sysadmin for your whole community - the rest can be moderators, and members can chip in some coin here and there to keep things running. That's about the simplest and most sustainable model I can possibly picture. If you don't know of someone in your social circles who runs a community, that's fine: start out on a public/larger one in the meantime to get things started, and you can move over later! If this is still too hard for someone, that's fine, there are countless centralized services they can remain on, like Facebook, iMessage, WhatsApp, SMS, etc.
Poor and uneducated people exist.
it isn't? I'm not aware of any relay servers being run but the AT protocol makes affordances for this functionality. Are those features a lie? I read the protocol specification only a few weeks ago, perhaps this is new?
You're correct that the grandparent's PDS isn't the same as a Mastodon homeserver but that's probably a good thing; the network functions much differently than the ActivityPub federation
> A world of full self-hosting is not possible with Bluesky. In fact, it is worse than the storage requirements, because the message delivery requirements become quadratic at the scale of full decentralization: to send a message to one user is to send a message to all. Rather than writing one letter, a copy of that letter must be made and delivered to every person on earth.
https://dustycloud.org/blog/how-decentralized-is-bluesky/
> The cost of running a full-network, fully archiving relay has increased over time. After recent growth, our out-of-box relay implementation (bigsky) requires on the order of 16 TBytes of fast NVMe disk, and that will grow proportional to content in the network.
https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lbvbtqrg5t2t
> The fediverse currently hosts around 27,000 servers (many more users, but let's focus on servers). Adding just 5 more servers would be a blip in terms of the affect on the network. Adding 5 more servers to an ATProto ecosystem with that many fully participating nodes would be an exhausting number of additional messages sent on the network. ATProto does not scale wide: it's a liability to add more fully participating nodes onto the network. Meaningfully self-hosting ATProto is a risk to the ATProto network, there is active reason to disincentivize it for those already participating.
https://dustycloud.org/blog/re-re-bluesky-decentralization/
[plus more]
https://mathewingram.com/work/2024/11/28/is-bluesky-really-d...
https://en.futuroprossimo.it/2024/11/anatomia-di-bluesky-e-d...
Anyone can host their own data.
Bluesky has said they have zero intention on opening advertising because the platform isn’t built for that paradigm.
No investor or potential buyer would get ROI from an open network. If they tried, anyone could open a new public good atproto network and users could easily migrate their data.
The very thing that gave Twitter value was it owned all its data. Bluesky does not own anyone’s data. They just host it.
Bluesky has a new crypto investor with a board seat, but there are no signs the investor has made any demands.
I think Bluesky will beat the odds.
The whole appeal of email-style decentralization is that even in those cases, Google can only block you from GMail - not email as a whole, which would be far more deleterious, and is the ever-present threat in non-decentralized platforms.
1. https://www.litmus.com/email-client-market-share
2. https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/most-used-email-clients
...and what a miserable bunch most of them were: 2 MB attachment limits and 10 MB mailbox quotas?! GMail had to drag all of them kicking and screaming into the 21st century when they debuted with a 1 GB mailbox quota.
People add their Gmail account to their iPhone and get Apple Mail.
Virtually all email goes to Gmail between personal accounts and GSuite stuff.
Just install some software from your distro PM and go through some configs. Nothing stopped some hacker from bundling configs with a point and click installer for android eg - A mail server doesnt need 100% uptime - or for servers.
As for reaching others, ive never had problems because my domains had dkim and whatever else was available set up - could be easily automated like web certificates were, and i never send spam... How is that inherently more difficult? I'm genuinely curious, not trying to argue - just citing my own experience.
What's to stop major servers ("gmail" and "hotmail" of AP) from blocking you? Obviously some aspects are different from mail as it is geared for wide distribution rather than directed communication, but it's not obvious to me that the decentralization problem is solved by a model that seems superficially close to email.
Again, im not trying to troll you as im unfamiliar with AP - i genuinely don't know.
Sender-reputation management and anti-spam automation is far advanced and far more stringent for email than it is for Mastodon/the fediverse. Setting up a Mastodon instance is a matter of installing a package and going through a browser wizard comparable to setting up a Wordpress instance, not difficult at all.
Or like happened with the original decentralized web. there was once a thing called a “blog” that you could host on your own server from your home, but these days everyone is “blogging” through fb twitter and instagram (or your choice of a few platforms). Why is this time different?
The fediverse, like email and most other human systems that benefit from economies of scale will have a Pareto distribution with very large free providers > ISP / work and community instances > individual instances. Banking is decentralized and interoperable, this doesn't prevent banking giants from existing the world over - I expect them to exist, I also am in favor of smaller regional and local banks and credit unions.
To start with, yes banking giants exists but everyone finds this undesirable to a certain extent and regulators would object if suddenly eg elon musk decided to buy out goldman and chase.
banks are highly regulated and enjoy completely different economies than email. Banks of the same nation are often legally required to be interoperable with others. Yes, there are still big players and you can eg get sanctioned by the US - which is why BRIC countries are working on alternative banking networks.
with banks, most jurisdictions would disallow a merger of two large banks specifically from decentralization considerations - guess what would happen if two email providers merge? exactly nothing.
With email, if gmail decide to ban you, you are unable to communicate with 90% of people with no recourse. A support engineer can decide to ban you on a whim and besides crying on social media, you can’t do much.
With banks, you need a large and powerful nation to tell other banks not to play with you, and you can contest this decision legally.
Most importantly, with banking money is the product and every transaction brings revenue, so there’s a strong incentive to cooperate. With email - and AP - cooperation incurs a cost on all parties instead and benefits are distributed and vague in monetary terms.
Finally, banks are required to deal with you as a customer - provided you meet certain requirements. An email provider can ban you for no reason and your only recourse is arbitration.
Compare to bitcoin. Will you still be calling it decentralized when one pool controls 90% of compute (i don’t think this can really happen tbh as there are disincentives to go 51% without abusing the network)?
Don’t get me wrong AP sure feels in the right direction compared to eg FB. Just on the principle of being able to run it completely in your own. However it would be nice if whatever new alternative that grew popular treated users, rather than providers, democratically.
To reiterate my point (and perhaps what you said in your first sentence) this is completely unrelated to the decentralized nature of email, and is proof that decentralization is ill-suited to avoid that problem: legislation and oversight are what works for banking. "Decentralized" has never meant "there are no dominant players"
Edit: when it comes to tech platforms or protocols, the ability to decentralize is binary: it's present or absent. There is one Twitter/Instagram namespace with no other instances, there are countless email MTA and MDA and standards for interoperability defined in RFCs. That GMail is dominant is not a fault of the protocol - it happened to be a superior product for reasons not included in the protocol like generous mailbox storage quotas, and superior spam identification.
1. To start, if decentralization does not "solve the problem" then what do all AP platforms bring to the table? There was already a decentralized facebook before mastodon - it used to be called a "web site". You could get a feed with just what you wanted by subscribing to rss feeds, which were also decentralized. You were not tied to 140 characters per post either, and nothing stopped someone from making an rss client that clipped posts at 140 characters in the the feed or whatever. What problem does AP solve for me? Indexing all that content? The hosting? If the whole thing is about getting banned from the domain twitter.com, open your own domain and publish your content - problem solved. 2. If we're solving a solved problem, why not bring something new to the table? eg anonymity of nosr. 3. If "decentralization is not the solution", how come other protocols - eg mentioned above - claim (convincingly imho) to offer an actual improvement if not solution? 4. You claim "decentralization is not the solution" then define some ad hoc line in the sand regarding what is "decentralized" and then make some bold claims based on that. Decentralized could mean many things: could be like ssh keys, could be like gpg keys with directories and web of trust, could be like dns or certificate authorities. Could be like email. Like torrents or like i2p, or kad. All of these are slightly different. Heck, could even mean like fb vs twitter - you are free to move to a different platform. Takeout your data, import contacts - done.
Where you claim that decentralization is not the answer i will say maybe insufficient decentralization is not the answer - with email, AP, and many other protocols, the platform ("domain") is the first class citizen so you get strong platforms and weak users. Regulation will help here just like it helped with banking - ie wont. What makes banks cooperate is mutual desire for profit.
Banks are truly fungible for the most part - make users first class and you will get the same for platforms
Personal websites still soundly lost to the Yahoo, MSN and AOL home pages (remember those?) Pareto distributions are everywhere, even with systems whose decentralized nature is as unquestionable as websites - I'm probably sounding like a broken record now, but it's clear as day to me.
You mention of old-school websites crystalized some inchoate thoughts I had. The fediverse is the spiritual successor to Web 2.0 / the blogoshpere in the age of social media and mobile apps. Instead of RSS feeds, loosey goosey comment and pingback implementations, everything is in a fairly well-defined spec that allows the conversations to be viewed on one web application or app by simply scrolling. What AP brings to the table are:
A. the ability to own the platform as an individual, or as a collective of like-minded people. There's a qualitative difference between r/math and Mathstodon, even both are on on the surface self-moderated Math communities. Even if such communities are blocked and defederated from the rest of the world, I think there's incalculable value in the community self-reliance as an end to itself without being mediated by a profit-seeking entity. I acknowledge this is an ideological proclivity, YMMV.
B. gives more editorial power to users over what they see (though this is woefully underspecified, but apps can and do fill the gap)
C. Better aggregation and discovery than websites. Closed and centralized social platforms are inherently great at this, but RSS feeds, not so much. If you find a website commenter particular insightful, you can't "subscribe to their newsletter" - you can with AP.
2. why not bring something new to the table? eg anonymity of nosr.
It's good to have many approaches tried out and available to people. I want the balance of power to be shifted more towards people - protocols are just implementation details. Id people choose to fo with the megacorp-hosted implementation of an interoperable standard (like Threads is claiming to aspire to), so be it. The existence of AP does not preclude nostr or AT, or Wordpress or Ghost
3.If "decentralization is not the solution", how come other protocols - eg mentioned above - claim (convincingly imho) to offer an actual improvement if not solution
I suppose everyone has well-reasoned and well-intended bases for their opinions, even when we disagree. I don't believe any protocol can counteract economies of scale without detrimental effects to smaller players, which is why I don't they can solve it - it'd be fantastic if they pull if off - I don't think they will - but I'm glad someone is trying. I wish nothing but the best to each project
> 4. You claim "decentralization is not the solution" then define some ad hoc line in the sand regarding what is "decentralized" and then make some bold claims based on that. Decentralized could mean many things: could be like ssh keys, could be like gpg keys with directories and web of trust, could be like dns or certificate authorities. Could be like email. Like torrents or like i2p, or kad
I don't know what kad is, but most of the things you list on your spectrum of decentralization had dominant players, whether it's DNS, gpg keys, CAs, or torrent trackers. I'm not going to split hairs on whether the dominance of keybase meant gpg is not really decentralized.
That being said, > I don't know what kad is, but most of the things you list on your spectrum of decentralization had dominant players, whether it's DNS, gpg keys, CAs, or torrent trackers. I'm not going to split hairs on whether the dominance of keybase meant gpg is not really decentralized.
Most of what i mentioned is indeed semi centralized - but also semi decentralized. it and that was the point - there is no one true way to “decentralize” - is the star trek federation decentralized? is banks’ culture?
You make some very general claims regarding what decentralized systems don’t solve, but whatever your argument, you base it off some specific model of what is decentralized (you define a binary criterion). Whatever you claim, you can claim only for that model and indeed! that model doesn’t attempt to solve many problems that found in previous decentralized models and that are desirable to solve, and hence my criticism.
We’ve designed a slightly more advanced wordpress. Let’s celebrate! I would hope for something more imaginative. And indeed some are trying.
And, people are free to work on what they like of course - who am i to judge? Well, unfortunately i find myself to not be in the position and with a strong enough passion about this to do something myself, but im affected just as everyone alive is.
I do see seemingly better attempts as we’ve discussed, and in this particular case im worried that worse is the enemy of better, due to network effects. Any traction of a worse platform takes away from a better one.
Finally, gpg keys existed way before keybase and are actually one of the actually distributed and decentralized systems, so it’s curious that you picked specifically on this example.
gpg keys are entirely local first. Actually decentralized and usable to the individual user level. On top were built various webs of trust by mutual signing and publication of public keys to various public directories.
Keybase were able to package this neatly with added features and they enjoy some network effects but their data is public - you could spin up a compatitor before the end of the year ( it is dec 31 :) without losing any data. Or with a completely separate web of trust, that could also trust keybase keys.
ssh keys are similar in this regard, except the usage patterns are different and so keys are trusted on an individual basis or when signed by some organization/“community” wide ca. Im sure you know all this already.
Both of these last two examples demonstrate that in some cases decentralization does work, well. If we go with your “decentralized” model - “power to the states, not the people” - inevitably you get monopolistic players that kill off the standard as youve observed yourself. Like happened with email, with jabber, with rss, with browsers, like will happen with AP.
This is not a faster, quieter, cleaner or more efficient dishwasher. This is the exact same one we had last year, except with chrome finish, touch buttons and built in wifi. It will get picked up by the same sort of people that bought the old version - namely ones buying their first one or whose 10 machine broke.
It will fail and be unsatisfactory in fundamentally the same ways, since nothing changed in the mechanical specs. And in 10 years some extra features will be added like a voice assistant, to justify the raised priced on the same old crap.
Had to set up SPF/DKIM/DMARC, then it started working again.
Also, if you want to operate a home server, you also have to be willing to have a public file upload endpoint capable of receiving and storing arbitrary data on your server (because that's how ActivityPub works), and people send your server a lot of data, and a lot of that data will be extremely unsavory, and it will be your responsibility to make sure you remove anything illegal that someone on another server uploads to yours.
I wasn't willing to take that risk, myself.
On top of that, the whole Fediverse is extremely political. Email providers don't care much what you write or with whom you communicate outside of spam, so it works quite well. Meanwhile Fediverse is blocking people and servers left and right, it's completely unusable unless you follow the group-think on whatever server you are on.
Real decentralization is what Nostr is doing, where serves are just dumb relays, user-ids are public-key pairs and all the intelligence is in the client. BlueSky's AT-protocol should be capable of similar stuff, though in practice is still very much focused around the main BlueSky server.