Recent searches
Search options
Myth: The #Fediverse™ Is Decentralised™
I run my own #Mastodon instance just for myself. An instance of one. What does that mean on today’s fediverse?
It means I’m on mastodon.social.
What?
That makes no sense!
Let me explain:
Since I have my own instance, surely I decide who I follow and anyone can follow me, right?
Wrong.
For ~1M accounts, Eugen decides. If he blocks my instance, a large number of people who follow me today will no longer be able to.
So I may as well be on his server.
The same goes for other large servers.
Look at how many of the people you interact with are on the handful of the largest servers and imagine that just those handful of servers blocked your server.
Come, let‘s take this further…
Apparently Facebook/Meta is “joining” the fediverse. How nice of them. Now imagine that the largest instance is run by Zuckerberg. (Or <insert your favourite Silicon Valley billionaire here>.)
Imagine they become large enough to do the same thing to mastodon.social…
@aral The problem is ... how big is "too big"? How should the governance structure for servers with > 1 users look? I don't assume you're suggesting that everyone runs their own "server of one".
@decathorpe Not on the fediverse, no. It just wouldn’t be feasible with the current design. But on the Small Web, yeah. That’s what it’s being designed for :)