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Top-level
Michael
@mmasnick personally still expect that re-centralisation will ultimately occur, as it did with email, which is now dominated by a small number of big players, with self hosting almost impossible these days. I did find these arguments quite compelling: https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2022/11/14/scaling-mastodon/ Hoping I’m wrong though. 5 comments
Michael
@anathema_device @mmasnick lol. I used to self host. Sadly deliverability was an ongoing problem, so now I just pay one of the bigger players. Of course it’s technically possible to self host email. It’s not even difficult. But it’s a constant battle to ensure your recipients actually receive your emails, and more often than not emails just disappear without trace, rhyme, or reason. 
Alexander The 1st
@michael @anathema_device @mmasnick Right; scalability is why, instead of people managing their own physical servers, whole companies just offload the work to AWS or Azure. At some point, you don't farm your own silicon for transistors, you let someone else do that.
Mike Masnick ✅
@michael i'm not sure I see that as quite as big a problem. This is the nice bit of the federated model. The fact that *SOME* can create their own instances, or that if a "centralized" instance decides to do evil stuff, it's much easier to leave... creates a pretty good incentive structure. A centralized player comes in and makes it easy for end users who don't want complexity, but the rest keeps them from acting as an evil for the network. |
Gregory's Server
@michael @mmasnick "self hosting almost impossible"
That's just not true. There are literally thousands of hosting companies, and almost all of them allow you to have your own email addresses, servers, the lot. The fact that most people don't bother, doesn't mean it's not possible or easy to do.