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Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

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Re: Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

#71

Post by lorean_victor »

ericyd wrote: post #57
lorean_victor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for taking the time to read through it regardless. I wrote this as a brain dump, and shared it mostly with the intent of learning more about the topic (which thanks to this thread, I already have), so I feel it is ok if it doesn't change the life of billions of people. the last part of the post, however, is dedicated to assessing whether such an idea would have any real bearing on, as you've put it, "the popul…

I'm not sure I have strong feelings about it, but here are a few thoughts: 1. I think a more universal content aggregation / discovery tool would be beneficial for many people. Google might be the analog that comes to mind. This makes me wonder how such an aggregator/search tool would operate in a decentralized way. Would each user/node be responsible for maintaining its own index? My question to you is how does this…

thanks for the thoughts.

1. I suspect something like Google, indexing feeds instead of websites, and also mapping what is a reaction to what, perhaps. something that makes a bit suspicious about the potential of this though, is the fact that we've had nice rss readers for so many years and none have embarked on something like this, although I think there was a huge potential if they could properly index youtube channels / podcasts for example (all already on rss). would love to find someone in feedly or inoreader teams to ask more.

2. its not only about self-publication / self-distribution though. this is already affecting normal users, to the extent that it resulted in a few break-aways from twitter (none successful of course), and even the whole twitter management changing and attempting to capitalise on the desire. none of this is enough (or is ever going to be enough) to really force big social media to meaningfully change on its own, but situations where we have a stable market dynamic that constantly produces disgruntled costumers who are still locked in the system without much choice, the change typically ends up happening through regulatory intervention (I mean that's their job), so yeah this point might be more relevant from a regulatory perspective rather than a direct market force.

and no worries. if I wanted only nice comments I would've only shared the post with friends or on linkedin / threads. the value, for me, is in these discussions, even if the language sometimes gets a bit spicy.

Re: Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

#72

Post by lorean_victor »

digdugdirk wrote: post #70

What happened to Content-Centric-Networking? That seems to be an ideal model for a fully decentralized network, p2p or otherwise. Are there specific technical hurdles preventing adoption? Or is the allure of large companies hoarding all the data too good to pass up?

what do you mean by "content-centric-networking"? perhaps I have some reading to do.

the "allure of large companies hoarding all the data" might be a factor independently though. I personally believe a proper content discovery service is key to any form of decentralisation, and that is, as far as I can imagine, highly dependent on centralised entities amassing and then processing large amounts of data. I mean we sold our data to Google and in return got the current decentralised web where anyone can make a website and get traffic if the content is good enough (or SEO-hacky enough).

Re: Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

#74

Post by digdugdirk »

lorean_victor wrote: post #72
digdugdirk wrote: post #70

What happened to Content-Centric-Networking? That seems to be an ideal model for a fully decentralized network, p2p or otherwise. Are there specific technical hurdles preventing adoption? Or is the allure of large companies hoarding all the data too good to pass up?

what do you mean by "content-centric-networking"? perhaps I have some reading to do. the "allure of large companies hoarding all the data" might be a factor independently though. I personally believe a proper content discovery service is key to any form of decentralisation, and that is, as far as I can imagine, highly dependent on centralised entities amassing and then processing large amounts of data. I mean we sold…

The wikipedia article is a decent high level overview: [1]

"Content-Centric Networking (CCN) diverges from the IP-based, host-oriented Internet architecture by prioritizing content, making it directly addressable and routable. In CCN, endpoints communicate based on named data rather than IP addresses. This approach is a part of information-centric networking (ICN) architecture and involves the exchange of content request messages (termed "Interests") and content return messages (termed "Content Objects")."

It seems well suited for a distributed p2p style network in my mind, but its definitely not anywhere near my area of expertise.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_centric_networking

Re: Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

#75

Post by TulliusCicero »

myaccountonhn wrote: post #47
iteratethis wrote: post #46

I think world scale social networks as in an open "town square" are borderline impossible. Which is not that surprising as it's quite unnatural to talk and be seen by the entire world. However, if you do try it, I still believe a central network is superior. I would opt for baseline moderation (content should be legal) after which any further moderation should be in the hands of the user, not the network. Bluesky has…

I think there is a huge issue with centralized social media. Why are unelected tycoons in the US dictating what the rest of the world should be allowed to see? What happens when they neglect languages and regions? It can go horribly wrong: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb... . Decentralized social media gives us a chance to take back control.

Decentralized social media sounds better in theory, but in practice is less effective.

People are voting with their feet. Or phones, I suppose.

It's like all the FOSS types who yelled about how IRC is superior as millions migrated to Slack and Discord. Your bullet point list is nothing in the face of usability.

Re: Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

#76

Post by wmf »

digdugdirk wrote: post #70

What happened to Content-Centric-Networking? That seems to be an ideal model for a fully decentralized network, p2p or otherwise. Are there specific technical hurdles preventing adoption? Or is the allure of large companies hoarding all the data too good to pass up?

ISPs won't deploy IPv6 and CCNx is much more complex than IP. Getting ISPs to cache content for free also sounds like a fantasy.

Re: Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

#77

Post by ianopolous »

Absolutely. We've pioneered portable identity (and links and data) in a decentralised social web in Peergos: https://peergos.org/posts/decentralized-social-media This is also pull based interestingly, but also has visibility controls being E2EE.

I don't think society needs public, or at least public by default, social media. This is even more true now in the age of LLMs and mass data harvesting.

Re: Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

#78

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

> Personal instances will be pretty rare

Personal instances of the US Post Office are also pretty rare, my dude. You gonna go deliver your mail yourself? If so, why write a letter?

You want total distributed decentralization? Use Gnutella. It's equivalent to giving your letter to your neighbor and asking them to deliver it, and they ask their neighbor, etc, until it reaches a back alley in Algeria, and then that Algerian calls you on the phone, and if you're home, you read the letter out loud live on the phone. Turns out that's a pretty crap way to deliver letters. But it's decentralized!!

People: Stop being so fucking obsessed with decentralization. It's not that great. I'm sure you're all having lots of fun inventing crap technology to solve an already solved problem, but you're just codesturbating.

Re: Can we get more decentralised than the Fediverse?

#79

Post by lorean_victor »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #75
myaccountonhn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a huge issue with centralized social media. Why are unelected tycoons in the US dictating what the rest of the world should be allowed to see? What happens when they neglect languages and regions? It can go horribly wrong: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb... . Decentralized social media gives us a chance to take back control.

Decentralized social media sounds better in theory, but in practice is less effective. People are voting with their feet. Or phones, I suppose. It's like all the FOSS types who yelled about how IRC is superior as millions migrated to Slack and Discord. Your bullet point list is nothing in the face of usability.

its not about "usability", in general, though. do you think reddit is truly usable?

as a content consumer I would love to be somewhere where there is engaging content and content discovery. I go to mastodon, my feed is empty and the search doesn't work. I bounce.

as a content publisher, I would go wherever the audience is. I go to mastodon, users have a hard time finding me, no one gets my stuff. I bounce.

now I (personally), as a consumer, hate the fact that I need to follow people at least on 3 platforms to get their content proper. as a publisher, I (again, personally) hate the fact that I am forced to at least partition the discussion on my content. but I'd tolerate these pain points for content / audience, because the main role of a social media is to give me content / audience. being nice and not having all these pain points is secondary.

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