All communities have leaders, whales, whatever you want to call them. Even Bitcoin is now controlled by a small group of mostly Chinese people. Decentralization does nothing other than put control in the hands of an unpredictable and potentially unaccountable group of people, whereas centralized systems have people you can point to and hold accountable (or so we hope). There is a reason it's never worked throughout history, and why decentralized systems always collapse into a more efficient centralized form.
Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
21–30 of 146 posts
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#22They promise privacy, but in a decentralized system, do I have to trust every node admin?
You have to trust your node admin and the admin of any node you talk to (ie your friend's node)
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#23Tresorit also announced an end-to-end encrypted social network where the company can't see the users' content. I think that's probably the angle privacy-focused Facebook alternatives will need to take. Unfortunately, they chose a strange-looking Hungarian name for it, so probably nobody will ever pay attention to it because of that:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/prevaat-the-privacy-focus...
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#24I did try to mention this before, with creating a Slack clone [0]. PHP and MySQL which is what this is written in are not very sexy but they're perfect for when you want the entire world to be able to use it. There's reasons why PHP has been so successful with WordPress and Facebook. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16567271
The reason why bitcoin is so popular is because it's a "protocol" and not a specific implementation. If there was really going to be a distributed social network, it shouldn't require downloading anything at all.
Maybe instead, we can use a some already agreed upon protocol... like... english language!
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#25I did try to mention this before, with creating a Slack clone [0]. PHP and MySQL which is what this is written in are not very sexy but they're perfect for when you want the entire world to be able to use it. There's reasons why PHP has been so successful with WordPress and Facebook. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16567271
> for when you want the entire world to be able to use it True in 2004, today options are plentiful.
I think that's the point.
More options = more skills needed.
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#26All communities have leaders, whales, whatever you want to call them. Even Bitcoin is now controlled by a small group of mostly Chinese people. Decentralization does nothing other than put control in the hands of an unpredictable and potentially unaccountable group of people, whereas centralized systems have people you can point to and hold accountable (or so we hope). There is a reason it's never worked throughout h…
Like e-mail or the web, perhaps?
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#27All communities have leaders, whales, whatever you want to call them. Even Bitcoin is now controlled by a small group of mostly Chinese people. Decentralization does nothing other than put control in the hands of an unpredictable and potentially unaccountable group of people, whereas centralized systems have people you can point to and hold accountable (or so we hope). There is a reason it's never worked throughout h…
Email is a decentralized system.
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#28Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own bullshit that we fail to realize that the average Facebook user has no idea what "decentralized" means; nor cares that their personal data is being sold. This is another example of faux outrage that will pass with the next news cycle.
Leaving aside "an average facebook user" (which is just an average person really), and weather they understand what decentralised means, I believe most people would care if they were aware of why the data is sold.
If you said to someone "I'm going to collect information about you whether you like it or not, and then sell it to someone who wants to manipulate your thinking", then I suspect they wouldn't be so keen on the data being collected (let alone sold) in the first place.
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#29I can not see me using this ever
Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network
#30I did try to mention this before, with creating a Slack clone [0]. PHP and MySQL which is what this is written in are not very sexy but they're perfect for when you want the entire world to be able to use it. There's reasons why PHP has been so successful with WordPress and Facebook. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16567271
> for when you want the entire world to be able to use it True in 2004, today options are plentiful.
And in 2004, people said the same thing.
Perl, Python, JSP, ASP, CF - people argued for and used all of those on major projects in 2004.