• lloram239@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    11 months ago

    It’s federated, not decentralized. Which even Mastodon itself doesn’t seem to realize or care, since they falsely advertise themselves as decentralized.

    Decentralized means there is no central authority.

    Federation just means there are many centralized authorities, that might or might not communicate with each other.

    I really don’t see what Mastodon is supposed to solve in the long run. The server has full control and can do whatever it wants. Just look at what happened Threads.net. Big company joins the Fediverse and instead of celebrating, everybody starts thinking about defederating them. This approach is doomed to fail if it ever gets popular.

    Nostr looks like a much more promising approach, with proper cryptographic identities and signatures. Nobody owns you there. Servers are just dumb relays. If one steps out of line, you can just use another one.

    • spaduf@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      look at what happened Threads.net. Big company joins the Fediverse and instead of celebrating, everybody starts thinking about defederating them. This approach is doomed to fail if it ever gets popular.

      Let’s not forget threads planned to monetize every interaction it was aware of, regardless of any direct interaction with Facebook/Meta. The public pushback probably went a long way towards setting a precedent against that sort of activity. We’re really breaking new ground here and have a chance to take back what is increasingly an essential function of society from folks who would rather fill every waking moment of your life with ads.

      • lloram239@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Let’s not forget threads planned to monetize every interaction it was aware of,

        So does GMail. Making money running a bit of the network should not be a problem, quite the opposite, that just means the network won’t run out of money. This kind of arbitrary enforcing of political ideology should have no place this low in the network structure.

        Let’s not forget we’re really breaking new ground here

        We really aren’t. It’s just repeating what EMail and Usenet have done for 40 years.

        • spaduf@slrpnk.net
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          GMail does not build an ad profile based on your emails. Let alone emails sent between two people outside of gmails network. This is absolutely a false equivalence.

    • 1984@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      People underestimate the need for something like this. Society is only going to become more and more censored and monitored as technology evolves. It’s not possible to escape that, so using communication where you are private is going to be extreamly important.

      Also it needs to be able to resist being banned by governments.

    • Coffee Junky ❤️@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      How does a completely decentralized platform handle data that should be removed? If some asshole starts posting CP or other fucked up shit, what exactly happens? With mastodont the server admin has the control to remove whatever he or she wants. Not perfect, but you have plenty of servers to choose from (or you can start your own).

      You want something like society, mostly free but still with some ground rules. If it’s completely free there is also lots of scams and shady stuff. In the long run I think a platform like that will be banned by governments.

      • lloram239@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        11 months ago

        How does a completely decentralized platform handle data that should be removed?

        You make a blacklists of forbidden content and relays can use or ignore it. It’s up to the relay, there is no central authority that can make content go away globally. Nostr is build to be censorship-resistent.

        In the long run I think a platform like that

        It’s not a platform, it’s just a protocol and apps using that protocol.

      • lloram239@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        It completely puts the whole system in question. If federation is optional and defederation happens for ideological reasons, what’s even the point of it? It just means that communication can get disrupted at any point at the whim of any random server admin.