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Thought-provoking article: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html I do agree that decentralization is the wrong ideal to aim for. I'm working on ForgeFed not because I want to decentralize code hosting but rather because I want to help create a libre and interoperable ecosystem for code collaboration. 4 comments
@a while there is certainly something in this article, it misses some salient points entirely. There are, actually, a fair number of smaller instances that have chosen not to federate with the largest instances, just for the reason that they are too big. Even if this isn't applying a reasonable amount of pressure on the large instances to encourage people to move to smaller instances, that still doesn't mean "federation is dead". @a the fact that there are 2-3 huge instances with half of the user base could be interpreted as a failure in decentralization. It could also be viewed as successful when compared with a single instance having 100% of the user base. It just has to be spread out enough to keep one group from holding all the cards, and in particular a commercial or governmental group. By that metric the fediverse is an enormous success.  @a I enjoyed reading this article, but the author's points are not strictly correct, so I don't agree. However, they are right to note that there is something wrong with user distribution on Fediverse! |
Gregory's Server
@a I think a reasonable amount of decentralization — Ie., 10 large ‘instances’ federated together, with a very long tail of others — is a LOT more plausible than an Internet ‘democracy.’ This is a ‘balance of power’ approach, and it has been a stable approach to prevent total control for centuries. I wish this wasn’t the case, but I suspect it is.