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A decentralised system doesn’t have a flagship instance. Just sayin’.
We’re not an alternative as long as we adopt their success criteria. Let’s do better.
@aral also I want to kick every instance that "warns" people that they are "leaving instance"
@aral we could have an instance that is devoted to various navies' flagships
@aral as long as the instance list is not randomized in the Mastodon app and large instances do not impose a cap on the number of users, there are technically flagship instances
If any of them were to be banned by a government, it would significantly harm the Fediverse
@aral whereever I am is the flagship instance ;)
@aral is there an instance called flagship?
@aral This gets mooted every time the Fedi gets a new influx.
This too, shall pass.
@aral I think the argument goes that because picking a server is so confusing, newcomers need a flagship server for easier on-boarding. They can then migrate when they're more familiar with the fedi.
The trouble with this argument, is that we can't typically import content archives when we migrate, so folks tend to stay on the flagship server. Which then gets bigger and bigger, undermining decentralization.
@ApostateEnglishman @aral this.
Do we know if the team working on #ActivityPub is going to enable posts migration?
@patrickleavy @aral One of the larger tech accounts told me the functionality already exists, it just hasn't been implemented for some reason, leading some to speculate that @Gargron may not be quite as dedicated to decentralization as he claims to be.
I don't believe that. I think Eugen is as honest as the day is long, and truly cares about what users want. But only he knows why improved account portability hasn't been made a priority. 
@ApostateEnglishman @aral perhaps a flagship server that presents servers by interest and rankings. Rankings could reflect stability and peacefulness, I’m not sure. But don’t present umpteen servers to a newcomer. That can be overwhelming.
@aral Hard disagree. This is like saying email isn't decentralized because Gmail exists. Decentralized =/= homogeneously distributed.
If .social disappeared overnight my server's federated timeline would hardly change much. And another large server would quickly step in to fill their role as "newbies' first instance".
IMO it's all about any server being replaceable, even the largest "flagship" instance.
@neatchee Enjoy email if Gmail marks your server as spam. The very defining characteristic of a decentralised system is uniform power distribution.
@aral uniform power distribution is an ideal to be sought, not a litmus test for decentralization.
Social dynamics inherently preclude uniform power distribution in any system that is predicated on human interaction.
The only solution to the "problem" you've defined is programmatic enforcement of user distribution which reduces individual user choice and undermines principles of self-selection that are fundamental to the advantages of a federated platform.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
@neatchee @aral
> Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
This is not relevant to email or the fedi.
I’m mostly done with #email due to my boycott against MS & Google. Even if I were willing to feed them w/data of marketing value, they block my server. This means ~90% of email users are out of reach to me. You can argue sematics about whether to call email decentralised all you want but either way we do not get the benefits well-designed decentralisation could offer. From a utilitarian standpoint all email users are subject to the MS+Google fiefdoms for ~90% of their traffic. It’s effectively no different than being trapped in those walled gardens yourself when the other person is on the other side of that wall.
The fediverse has this same shitty consequence too. Because of #Cloudflare, which has centralised probably more than ½ the federation under a single giant US corporation who dictates terms and decides who can access what.
Not only is Cloudflare itself a centralised walled garden, but it gives admins who do not grasp decentralisation the possibility to grow beyond their means.. to poach and hoard 100s of thousands of users at no cost to themselves -- courtesy of a data abuser who greedily adds counts to their assets.
Calling this “good” just conveys a shitty standard. It’s unacceptable. Even if someone stands up their own instance and sets it to block Cloudflare nodes and FBthreads, anyone else who connects can simply boost content to FBthreads and Cloudflare-centralised pawns.
@neatchee To respond to @aral’s comment that we can do better, there are a couple things we could do to do better:
* design a network that does not use HTTP. Deviating from that protocol kills Cloudflare.
* encrypt messages using public keys of hosts that are approved recipients. Obligate boosts to be confined to a subset of those keys. Use the DMCA for good-- to prevent boosts going to FBthreads and Cloudflare nodes, for example.
So, when I try to join, I fill a simple form and get presented with a short list of instances described somehow, so I choose according to my needs. If I want to join a big instance, still I can.
@aral certainly not a flagship instance in conjunction with a protocol that is designed to suffocate smaller instances.
@aral I disagree, a decentralized system can have a flagship instance.
Unfortunately if we stay on our own small ship and gatekeep heavily, other people in the bigger ships will decide the rules of the sea for us.
I think we should make the Fediverse as user friendly as possible.
If you hate having a flagship instance, then maybe you have a flagship federation of a series of large servers that you automatically join if you ask a service to "Choose for you". But we need a flagship something if we are to make decentralization mainstream. Isn't that the goal? To normalize decentralization so that we don't make the same mistakes again?