Why do so many tech people push this "federation is a panacea" idea despite all evidence to the contrary? I don't get it.

First, the obvious: if federation was clearly superior, it would've won. No medium since email has been federated and even that's dominated by a handful of players. Running your own email server is... nontrivial.

Second, users don't care abou tthis. Like at all.

Third, supposedly tech-savvy people don't seem willing or able to merely scratch the surface of what that looks like and how it would work.

Fourth, there's a lot of infrastructure you need such as moderation and safety that would need to be replicated for each federated provider.

Lastly, zero consideration is given to the problems this actually creates. Look at POTS. We have spam and providers that are bad actors and effectively launder spam calls and texts. You need some way to manage that.

The utility of federated networks increases a lot when bad actors cause harm to people. What had a minimal value and failed to get attention yesterday when they need was low may be drastically different today when that need is high.

Running your own email server is not trivial.

Federated networks are theoretically and systematically superior to centralized, that's why people push it.

Humanity and social media isn't about technological superiority. Current platforms have inertia. Why would people fragment when all they care about is basic actions, and their network is already built?

Federated networks have been burdened by an onboarding tax, but this, along with moderation, can all be abstracted away by AI.

Let's see the current reality: social media platforms are currently American-dominated. A serious geopolitical problem, especially considering the amount of time younger generations spend on it.

There is more and more reason for governments to get involved and force the fragmentation of these platforms.

For almost all of human history information has been centralized among a small actors, for some time period we had a large independent press but those days are gone.

Everyone has a stake in getting accurate information, and therefore they have an interest in owning part of that system.

Well for one we've seen how great and powerful federation can be, email is completely federated and the design of email has enabled hundreds of multibillion dollar companies.

Why wouldn't this also apply to social media? Why is it better for 5 players to exist rather than 1000s?

Isn't the web federated?

>if federation was clearly superior, it would've won.

no because we don't live in the best of all worlds. it starts to win pretty rapidly when centralized abuses of power become apparent. Bitchat (p2p mesh network messaging app) has been becoming quite popular in Uganda and Iran.

Decentralization is the basic guarantor for most of the freedoms we take for granted in democratic systems. Just because the average user doesn't exercise them, just like people who only start going on the treadmill when their chest starts to hurt at age 50, doesn't mean it isn't the answer.

If the better, truly good thing was always also the winning, "superior" thing, we would live in a very different world.