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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 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.