| ▲ | bit1993 3 days ago |
| Allot of people have a social media account rather than a website and allot of people use gmail rather than host their own mail. Decentralized means do it yourself, but most people just want something with batteries included that works well and don't really care about centralization. |
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| ▲ | blooalien 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > "Decentralized means do it yourself" ... Not necessarily. Just one famous example; BitTorrent is decentralized but for most people it's just "run this app, download files". "Decentralized" just means "doesn't rely on a centralized service to accomplish a goal". As long as the application isn't too complex to install and use, most folks won't care one way or the other whether it's decentralized or not, as long as it accomplishes the goal they're looking to accomplish. |
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| ▲ | cramsession 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There has to be a payoff though. BitTorrent is actually pretty hard to get working correctly, track down the torrent files... people do it because it's the only way to get some content and a way to get content you'd otherwise have to pay for. With social media, there's not much reward and most people's friends already post for free on other networks. Not saying it's not worthwhile, but it's hard to extract this lesson from BitTorrent. | | |
| ▲ | l72 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | But it can also be specialized forums like https://startrek.website/ which is hosted using Lemmy but you can use your federated login. It can help bring back indie forums and websites that aren’t controlled by Reddit or meta. | |
| ▲ | blooalien 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yeah, for sure. Anything trying to be a social network in a properly peer-to-peer fashion would have to be as simple to use (or simpler) than existing social networks, and / or offer some genuinely unique and desirable feature(s) in order to attract any serious critical mass of users. | | |
| ▲ | cramsession 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Interestingly the original Napster was a pretty good social network! I really liked being able to browse through all of a user's shared files. We should bring something like that back. | | | |
| ▲ | bit1993 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | "Anything trying to be a social network in a properly peer-to-peer fashion would have to be as simple to use..." In practice this issue arise something like this: A decentralized service is launched it is so decentralized the user has to store their own private keys. Later a centralized solution is launched where the user does not have to go through the trouble of storing the private keys, everything is managed for them... everyone joins the centralized service. |
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| ▲ | s5300 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | bawolff 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Perhaps, but i feel like under this definition, bluesky and friends, dsspite all their talk, really does fit in the centralized camp. | | |
| ▲ | blooalien 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > ... "under this definition, bluesky and friends, dsspite all their talk, really does fit in the centralized camp." In my mind, I put them somewhere in-between, leaning a tad more toward "centralized" because they still rely on an individual to host the service no matter how "federated" they are. Until they're truly peer-to-peer, there's still that aspect of centralization involved. We need something kinda like BitTorrent but for messaging / social connections. | | |
| ▲ | rectang 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Maybe Bluesky is analogous to Github, if the AT protocol truly does allow for migration away to an alternative? Although Git repositories are portable, PRs, issues, actions and such aren't — so even if the migration away from Bluesky is lossy the comparison seems apt. |
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| ▲ | didibus 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I really like their listed user experience goals: 1. Cross-platform engagement Create content via one platform and engage with users on other platforms. 2. Moderation choice Voluntarily opt into moderation policies that reflect the experience you want. 3. Data portability Data portability and credible exit are built in (you can take your data and followers with you). 4. Advertising disincentive Portability prevents lock-in or captive audiences, which disincentivizes advertising. 5. Algorithmic choice Users can choose the feeds and algorithms that work for them. It's not do it yourself, it's more having more control if you want too. |
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| ▲ | bit1993 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The issue is only developers know the benefits of those features. Most people just want to view content or post and get their likes. That is why they use social media rather than post on their own website. I don't think this is a technology problem, its more of a socioeconomic problem. People tend to choose the centralized option and projects that start out decentralized tend to end up centralized WWW-Social media, Email-Gmail, Git-Github, Bitcoin-Coinbase etc | | |
| ▲ | didibus 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I think that used to be true, but influencers and such I believe would value some of the freedom of moving to other platforms and keep both their content and follower. Also, I think many users would now appreciate more control over the moderation policies they want applied, and also be able to choose between different feed algorithms to find one that promotes things that they prefer. Would most people still probably use the one big "instance"? For sure, but I think you'd still have a good 20-30% that would use alternatives. Assuming it all just-worked. Which I think is what this article is trying to say, the AT protocol can provide these features and ease of use. I don't know if that's true, but it seems to be the claim. | |
| ▲ | l72 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is where tech family and friends need to play a role. Host these services for them! My family just thinks Jellyfin and Navidrome is another Netflix or Spotify they have access to. And most of them prefer Jellyfin as content doesn’t disappear and is much more curated. |
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| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | alexisread 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Decentralised here means keeping companies honest by avoiding lock-in. It's fine to have the centralisation if it's easy to switch. BlackSky users don't need to care about the details, but if they don't like the community they can move their data elsewhere. Try doing that with Instagram. |
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| ▲ | dingnuts 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | They can also liberate their identity, which is the real innovation of the AT protocol | | |
| ▲ | jazzyjackson 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Didn’t they just adopt DNS? I mean I guess you have a DID people can follow ( tho afaik there’s no other identity server for resolving DIDs besides bsky app), but the way to tell that someone is who you think they are is their handle being connected to their domain | | |
| ▲ | johnecheck 3 days ago | parent [-] | | did:web (DNS) is just one option for identity. did:plc is what you want, it's not reliant on ICANN or BlueSky.
Any PDS should be able to resolve a did:web or did:plc. https://atproto.com/specs/did | | |
| ▲ | ItsHarper 3 days ago | parent [-] | | did:plc is currently centralized, it's 100% reliant on Bluesky. Lookups have to be done at https://plc.directory/ | | |
| ▲ | johnecheck 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Apologies, I was mistaken. I'd confused the self-certifying bit with decentralization. did:plc relies on trusting a central server to accept all valid events and not allow users to rewrite their history. |
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| ▲ | 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | bawolff 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean, facebook is pretty easy to switch from, just stop going to their website. Personally i'm a little doubtful that bluesky is decentralized in a way that matters. | | |
| ▲ | bee_rider 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I think Facebook is pretty useless and just not using the site is a great way to transfer away from it. But I feel like to engage with the idea of switching away constructively, I’d have to find some value in the content I had on the site. | |
| ▲ | l72 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Until you kids school uses it for organizing information for parents or that’s the only place a niche group you like is. Getting banned from Facebook means loosing access to all of that. Kinda like getting banned from YouTube could mean loss of access to email, groups, drive and a bunch of other services. Hell I’ve heard of company contractors getting banned from Google Play’s Developer and everyone in the company then getting banned from all Google services! If I get banned from a Lemmy community that doesn’t ban me from other communities or other servers and I can always run my own if I need to. |
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| ▲ | rzazueta 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Naw, decentralized means not having everyone on one platform. ActivityPub-enabled sites (Mastodon, PeerTube, Lemmy, etc.) can be run by just about anyone, and can serve multiple users. So, if you have the technical skills and the willingness to host an ActivityPub-enabled instance, you can serve it for others who either don't have the skills or ability to manage it themselves. If you keep it limited just to the folks in your own communities - people you know, friends of friends, etc. - then you limit a lot of the issues that arise from running huge instances - moderation, privacy issues, etc. We took something natively decentralized - TCP/IP internet - and handed it off to handful of companies to run, thus centralizing it. That was a mistake, especially as they use the power they acquired to push back against folks, for example, trying to build independent community ISPs. We need to decentralize as much as feasible - it's not all self-hosting, but "just let the money perverts run things" has not worked out so well for us. The solution lay somewhere in the middle, where cooperative groups serve the needs of the communities that matter to them in exchange for fair compensation. |
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| ▲ | OneDeuxTriSeiGo 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > We took something natively decentralized - TCP/IP internet - and handed it off to handful of companies to run, thus centralizing it. That was a mistake, especially as they use the power they acquired to push back against folks, for example, trying to build independent community ISPs. This is not and was not ever true. IP was explicitly designed from the start to be difficult to operate without centralisation because the telecoms operators wanted to maintain their "monopoly" on communications infrastructure. That is why IP insisted on not separating the interface address from device/service identity despite knowing ahead of time this would make multihoming a nightmare (as it did with ARPANET) and despite this problem already having been solved by CYCLADES (it being basically the one feature they explicitly avoided adopting from CYCLADES). That among other things. This is in large part why BGP is and always has been such a clusterfuck. There were known issues ahead of time but they were willfully ignored as they made relying on the heavily centralised telecoms operators essentially always the path of least resistance. |
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| ▲ | abdullahkhalids 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why would decentralized technology be easy to use? Limewire was installed on over one-third of computers world wide in 2007 [1]. That's because even grandma could press next->next->next on a window setup file and it just worked. There is no technical reason hosting your email isn't as easy as that. Look at roof top solar panel. Literally hundreds of millions of households have roof top solar to generate decentralized power. The fundamental complexity in email hosting is hundred times less, but the software engineering community choose to not make it possible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LimeWire |
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| ▲ | Kye 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The distinction blurs with AT protocol. My data lives on Bluesky's PDS for now, but I can log in to that PDS from anything that supports AT. Like leaflet.pub Here's a post on one of my Leaflet publications under my own domain: https://foxes.kyefox.com/3lx46ftzhhc27 This post is stored in Leaflet's own lexicon in its own collection right next to all my Bluesky data. I could move this to a different PDS if I wanted. I could come up with a script to turn the collection into static pages or convert them to another platform's import format. Nobody cares about decentralization until they do[0] and AT seems to have the best answer for that eventuality. [0] https://kyefox.com/nobody-cares-about-decentralization-until... |
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| ▲ | binary132 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| DNS is decentralized |
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| ▲ | KingMob 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Sort of. In practice, there's a hierarchy of name servers, with authoritative root servers at the top of the tree, organized by ICANN. You can run your own name server, but there's no good way for large numbers of people to voluntarily opt out of the existing system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server | | |
| ▲ | binary132 3 days ago | parent [-] | | You misunderstood what I said. DNS is certainly a decentralized protocol and obviously not at all necessarily DIY. That’s all I was speaking to. Decentralized can be that simple. | | |
| ▲ | KingMob a day ago | parent [-] | | > DNS is certainly a decentralized protocol What you originally said could be interpreted as either DNS-the-system or DNS-the-protocol. I assumed the former, since that seemed more likely. Sure, the protocol could be used without the resolver hierarchy, but I would argue that's not a useful way to think about it, since it won't happen in practice. |
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| ▲ | pinoy420 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
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