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Are we decentralized yet?

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Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#261

Post by fsflover »

grumbel wrote: post #254
fsflover wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still no one cares. They just hop to the next centralized platform It's a wrong interpretation. Since they leave, they obviously care. They just don't know that decentralized platforms offer long-term solution.

> They just don't know that decentralized platforms offer long-term solution. The crux is that most "decentralized" platforms don't offer long-term solution either. The whole concept of Federation only works as long as everybody is nice to each other, once that stops happening or bus-factor kicks in, you are back to all the problems of centralization and lock-in, since everybody is a user on a server they don't contr…

> The whole concept of Federation only works as long as everybody is nice to each other

I don't see how it can be true. Is everybody nice to each other on the Internet? On Mastodon, disagreements lead to independent islands not federating with each other, which is fine, too.

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#262

Post by OneDeuxTriSeiGo »

immibis wrote: post #260
hoidofyolen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, Bluesky the company would have to implement auth on the communication between relay and AppView, cut off everyone from using their relay, and specifically stop ingesting content from non-Bluesky PDSs. There would be time when we realize that's happening to get another AppView up and running. There are arguably enough resources in either the ATproto dev community or other funding sources that another App…

Who would use the new network? It would just be Mastodon Vs Twitter again. All the people you want to read the tweets of would (still) be on Blue Sky, not Black Sky or Red Sky or President Zelen Sky or whatever. "Convince a HN user that a corporation with the ability to cut you off from your feed sources for more profit won't do exactly that and just because they use something decentralised-ish today doesn't mean the…

> "Convince a HN user that a corporation with the ability to cut you off from your feed sources for more profit won't do exactly that

It's not just a technical restriction though. It's also a legal restriction. Bluesky PBLLC is a public benefit corporation and they are at least in moderate part beholden to their charter.

More importantly, their initial investment contract requires them to further the decentralisation of social media and exposes them to legal consequences should they deviate from that mission.

Those combined make it effectively impossible for them to lock in bluesky. Doing so would require technical changes that would be under no uncertain terms against the charter of the company and against the terms of the investment contracts that initially funded the company. It's a poison pill that would kill the company and destroy any "shareholder value" the moment they try to lock down the service or lock in the users.

You aren't going to see them try this type of brazen lock-in because it'd be explicitly harmful to every investor/VC and saddle the company in legal hell until it smoulders into ash.

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#263

Post by grumbel »

fsflover wrote: post #261
grumbel wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just don't know that decentralized platforms offer long-term solution. The crux is that most "decentralized" platforms don't offer long-term solution either. The whole concept of Federation only works as long as everybody is nice to each other, once that stops happening or bus-factor kicks in, you are back to all the problems of centralization and lock-in, since everybody is a user on a server they don't contr…

> The whole concept of Federation only works as long as everybody is nice to each other I don't see how it can be true. Is everybody nice to each other on the Internet? On Mastodon, disagreements lead to independent islands not federating with each other, which is fine, too.

> Is everybody nice to each other on the Internet?

For most part, yes. ISPs still carry traffic as is and don't just block random hosts because they don't like them. This is however slowly changing in Europe due to ever increasing censorship and age verification. The Great Firewall of China hasn't been nice either. And Claudflare has also become rather annoying with its constant never ending CAPTCHAs.

> On Mastodon, disagreements lead to independent islands not federating with each other, which is fine, too.

How is that different from Twitter, Facebook or any other centralized service? All of them are just independent island that don't federate with each other. If that's ok, what problem is federation solving exactly?

To me the goal of decentralization is "Get rid of the middle man between me and my audience". Federation ain't doing that, it puts far too much control in the hands of the server.

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#264

Post by atprotofanboy »

danabramov wrote: post #38
d4mi3n wrote: post #2

Neat! I'm not surprised at the findings here. BlueSky (for the average user) is pretty much a drop in replacement for Twitter. Despite the smaller total numbers in Mastadon, it's great to see that the ecosystem seems to be successfully avoiding centralization like we've seen in the AT-Proto ecosystem. I suspect that the cost of running AT proto servers/relays is prohibitive for smaller players compared to a Mastadon…

>I suspect that the cost of running AT proto servers/relays is prohibitive for smaller players compared to a Mastadon server selectively syndicating with a few peers, but I say this with only a vague understanding of the internals of both of these ecosystems. This isn't quite right. ATProto has a completely different "shape" so it's hard to make apples-to-apples comparison. Roughly speaking, you can think of Mastodon…

[dead]

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#265

Post by immibis »

OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote: post #262
immibis wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would use the new network? It would just be Mastodon Vs Twitter again. All the people you want to read the tweets of would (still) be on Blue Sky, not Black Sky or Red Sky or President Zelen Sky or whatever. "Convince a HN user that a corporation with the ability to cut you off from your feed sources for more profit won't do exactly that and just because they use something decentralised-ish today doesn't mean the…

> "Convince a HN user that a corporation with the ability to cut you off from your feed sources for more profit won't do exactly that It's not just a technical restriction though. It's also a legal restriction. Bluesky PBLLC is a public benefit corporation and they are at least in moderate part beholden to their charter. More importantly, their initial investment contract requires them to further the decentralisation…

OpenAI managed to escape its nonprofit status, becoming incredibly closed and self-serving. There's no reason to expect any other VC-funded nonprofit won't do the same.

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#266

Post by lukev »

smt88 wrote: post #195
lukev wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this problem isn't fatal, and can be mitigated directly. The internet itself is extremely decentralized and while both of these things can be issues, it works in practice. I disagree that building economics into the protocol is the way forward. There's so much power and creativity that can be unlocked when the substrate is free.

It absolutely doesn't "work in practice" for the web. Read-only sites, like personal blogs, are easy to self-host but vulnerable to DDoS attacks if targeted. Writeable sites, like anything with a form or message board, are now too expensive to run because of spammers and hacking bots. We're now all paying rent to Cloudflare or Substack or whatever because you can't just be an isolated island on the open web anymore.

What are you talking about? Tons of people run personal blogs/websites, with an enormous variety of hosting structures.

I call that working in practice. The fact that any individual self-hosted site could not survive a DDOS does not negate the fact that, well, the internet actually does exist.

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#267

Post by fsflover »

grumbel wrote: post #263
fsflover wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole concept of Federation only works as long as everybody is nice to each other I don't see how it can be true. Is everybody nice to each other on the Internet? On Mastodon, disagreements lead to independent islands not federating with each other, which is fine, too.

> Is everybody nice to each other on the Internet? For most part, yes. ISPs still carry traffic as is and don't just block random hosts because they don't like them. This is however slowly changing in Europe due to ever increasing censorship and age verification. The Great Firewall of China hasn't been nice either. And Claudflare has also become rather annoying with its constant never ending CAPTCHAs. > On Mastodon,…

> How is that different from Twitter, Facebook or any other centralized service?

1. You can make your own server federating with anyone you want. This achieves your goal, doesn't it? And, like everything, it has its cost.

2. You can freely move between the islands. Keeping the essentials like followers, known structure of the system. This forces the servers to compete and prevents creation of walled gardens and enshittification like with Twitter and Facebook.

Same effects work in the Internet itself, which made it survive to a large degree free to this day. Facebook and Twitter, as you noticed are those similar islands. Mastodon achieves a similar, decentralized structure on a lower level, increasing the resilience further and making it easier to move between the islands and create your own one.

Decentralization obviously doesn't on its own protect anything from the governments, but it helps.

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#268

Post by robertlagrant »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #113
robertlagrant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a quick buck? How long has bluesky been funded for with no return?

Quick meaning it's short term from when it starts. The time before it starts doesn't factor in.

A quick buck would be the time from when you put your money in to when you get back your money and a profit.

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#269

Post by grumbel »

fsflover wrote: post #267
grumbel wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is everybody nice to each other on the Internet? For most part, yes. ISPs still carry traffic as is and don't just block random hosts because they don't like them. This is however slowly changing in Europe due to ever increasing censorship and age verification. The Great Firewall of China hasn't been nice either. And Claudflare has also become rather annoying with its constant never ending CAPTCHAs. > On Mastodon,…

> How is that different from Twitter, Facebook or any other centralized service? 1. You can make your own server federating with anyone you want. This achieves your goal, doesn't it? And, like everything, it has its cost. 2. You can freely move between the islands. Keeping the essentials like followers, known structure of the system. This forces the servers to compete and prevents creation of walled gardens and enshi…

> This achieves your goal, doesn't it?

Running a server isn't practical for average people. It's also nothing new, people could do since the dawn of the Internet, they don't need a Fediverse for that.

> You can freely move between the islands.

I can freely move between Facebook and Twitter too. Again, not seeing what the Fediverse is doing here for me. The Fediverse does not prevent walled gardens, the federation is an optional server-provided feature that can be switched off any time they want. You can't even move your data from one server to the other unless both servers cooperate.

And Lemmy specifically isn't even GDPR compliant, there is no way to export my comments in the UI. There are also other huge issues such as message-ids being tied to the server, so you can't even resolve a URL from one server with another (something Usenet did better 40 years ago, which is why I can still find old post today).

> Mastodon achieves a similar

If Mastodon decides to run ads and enshittify, it's just like Twitter again. There is nothing to prevent that, outside of being small and unpopular.

> Decentralization obviously doesn't on its own protect anything from the governments, but it helps.

I am not worried about the government, I am worried about overzealous mods and server admins, who are already running rampant on the Fediverse and the Fediverse provides no infrastructure to help me here. That's an area where I much prefer Twitter and Co., they are pretty hands-off with moderation as long as you don't violate the law. On the Fediverse thought-policing is getting sold as a feature.

Re: Are we decentralized yet?

#270

Post by fsflover »

grumbel wrote: post #269
fsflover wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is that different from Twitter, Facebook or any other centralized service? 1. You can make your own server federating with anyone you want. This achieves your goal, doesn't it? And, like everything, it has its cost. 2. You can freely move between the islands. Keeping the essentials like followers, known structure of the system. This forces the servers to compete and prevents creation of walled gardens and enshi…

> This achieves your goal, doesn't it? Running a server isn't practical for average people. It's also nothing new, people could do since the dawn of the Internet, they don't need a Fediverse for that. > You can freely move between the islands. I can freely move between Facebook and Twitter too. Again, not seeing what the Fediverse is doing here for me. The Fediverse does not prevent walled gardens, the federation is…

> If Mastodon decides

There is not entity "Mastodon" that could decide anything. It's like saying "if the Internet decides to show you ads". It's a meaningless phrase.

> there is no way to export my comments in the UI

It's just a technical, UI problem, which anybody can solve, as it's free software.

> Running a server isn't practical for average people.

This is not the point. Like with repairs, you don't have to know how to do it to benefit from the right to repair. You can pay anybody in the free market to do your repairs or set up a Mastodon (or web) server for you. This solves the monopoly problem even for ordinary people. This is why you need free software btw - and it's not the case with Facebook or Twitter. You can't freely move between them. Once you leave them, you loose all your followers and specific features.

> That's an area where I much prefer Twitter and Co., they are pretty hands-off with moderation as long as you don't violate the law

This is not even funny. Twitter promotes nazi content according to the latest investigations.

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