Fediverse or Decentralisation? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by tioute@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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Fediverse has emerged as the popular choice when people look for Twitter alternatives. Personally I found Mastodon was like the early days of Twitter, without half as much toxicity.

However, Fediverse comprises various instances operated by different people. Users sometimes need to switch between different instances, which can be annoying and challenging to manage effectively. I also feel it lacks the social media vibe.

Similarly, decentralisation, as seen in peer-to-peer networks, also emphasizes privacy and freedom of expression.

While exploring decentralised networks such as Nostr, Scuttlebutt, and WireMin, I found that Nostr has the highest level of recognition, whereas Scuttlebutt and WireMin have relatively small user bases currently. I believe their true value will only surface when they get big in the future. But the question is: will they indeed get big? Will decentralisation actually work?

Will Fediverse be the one to trigger the revolution and replace Twitter or Decentralisation?

What are your thoughts on this matter?

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[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago

I don't understand your post, I'm sorry to say. The fediverse is decentralized, after all. Or what are you trying to say?

[-] iso@lemy.lol 4 points 1 year ago

Its not exactly decentralized. Yes its splitted across several servers, but these servers still centralizes the users/data. In order for us to truly say decentralized, each user must keep their own data and no other authority should be able to interfere with this user's data.

[-] blue_berry@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

That's a very narrow defintion of decentralization. Nostr is more dezentralized than the fediverse sure. But its not like going full-steam dezentralization will necessarily result in the best service. For example content moderation would be pretty difficult then I imagine.

[-] 9point6@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean it is decentralised, there is no single central point controlling the fediverse, that's decentralised by definition. Yeah isn't not decentralised to the point of being fully p2p, with everyone hosting their own data, but that's just a different kind of/approach to decentralisation which has its pros and cons. Decentralised groups cooperating is still very much decentralisation by definition.

No one has to interfere with your data if you host your own instance after all, that's always an option.

[-] Anafroj@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm sorry to say that, but you get you're definition wrong. "decentralized" means "which has no center anymore". ActivityPub is decentralized. The usual criticism of the Fediverse by peer to peer networks such as Secure Scuttlebutt or Dat is not that ActivityPub is not decentralized, but that it will eventually "recentralize", like client/server models tend to do, when one instance capture all the traffic (like Gmail with SMTP, we already see signs of that with mastodon.social, but we're still very far from it to be a center). I think that maybe you've been exposed to that argument and misunderstood it?

What you really want to say is that ActivityPub is not p2p. You can criticize the fact that there is a server/client model behind it, which means that users don't really own their data and can lost it if the server goes down - that's a valid criticism.

To which I would answer that it's a tradeoff. :) ActivityPub is built on top of HTTP, the well known protocol on which the web is built. This makes it dirt simple to build an ActivityPub app. The difference of adoption rate between SSB, Dat or IPFS and ActivityPub has nothing to do with luck. It's HTTP and JSON, it's just simpler (and easier) to build on top of ActivityPub. Not only that, but it's a w3c standard. Which means, for people like me who have been burnt by building apps on top of the Beaker Browser only to see it abandoned, that we can trust there won't be any rug pull. That matters.

And of course, you can also… run your own server (look into self-hosting if you're interested in that, there's a vibrant community here on Lemmy about that). If you run your server, then you own your data and the other servers become your peers. The idea that only others (presumably big companies) can have servers is a very centralized way of thinking.