the centralized internet is inevitable
# forumj
Jacob O'Bryant
04/10/2023, 1:58 AMJacob O'Bryant
04/10/2023, 2:03 AMreminds me of https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2022/11/14/scaling-mastodon/, though that article is written from less of a bird's eye view.
they both have similar conclusions though: instead of trying to decentralize stuff, it might be better to just try to make sure the centralized stuff has good governance
(this idea is one of the things that makes me wonder if structuring TFOS as a nonprofit might be a good approach)
j
joerter
04/10/2023, 3:31 PMThere is a strong natural tendency towards centralization even for decentralized protocols. Most email users are on Gmail, git and GitHub, and even most new mastodon users started with mastodon.social.
j
Jacob O'Bryant
04/10/2023, 5:01 PMyeah, certainly
I guess the relevant underlying question I sometimes think about is: to what extent is it realistically possible to limit centralization, and would that actually be desirable?
e.g. my reasoning around the "unbundled social media" model is that imo it's one "notch" down on the decentralizationcentralization ladder, and would come with marginal benefits, but isn't so far in the direction of decentralization that it's unrealistic.
But maybe even that just isn't gonna happen--maybe Substack is right and it's better to just build yet another big centralized thing. and whenever the current big centralized thing becomes too much of a dinosaur it gets replaced by some other big centralized thing (like twitter -> substack right now)
Jacob O'Bryant
04/10/2023, 5:02 PMthat's a somewhat existential question for me lol, or at least for this phase of my career
j
joerter
04/10/2023, 9:33 PMFor sure, I wrestle with that same question. I think for people that are tech leaning or passionate about this space it’s easy to see the merits of decentralization. But for others, they just want to use the most convenient app that everyone else is using currently
5 Views