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I think it's more the abandonment of federated protocols in favor of centralized services, than the abandonment of a specific protocol. An only tangentially re

by subway 9y ago

I think it's more the abandonment of federated protocols in favor of centralized services, than the abandonment of a specific protocol. An only tangentially related anecdote: SMTP and later XMPP offered beautifully portable social graphs. In fact, in 2012, I found it so portable that I decided to migrate off the self-hosted postfix/dovecot/ejabberd install I'd run on my own domain for years to GApps. Cue the replacement of GTalk with Hangouts, and now I really don't have much of a choice but to pay Google each month, or discard/re-establish the social connections I've built over the last decade and a half.

Xeoncross 9y ago
Email is the only truly successful decentralized protocol which is why the OP's statement mentions it. A) Wide global adoption B) Decades of use
- jimktrains2 9y ago
  > Email is the only truly successful decentralized protocol HTTP?
  - radarsat1 9y ago
    HTTP is a transfer protocol, not a semantic protocol. Email at least lets you identify the sender/receiver and other metadata and separate them from the message, HTTP is just "this is the filename, this is the data.." It's not much more than a TCP stream really.
    - jimktrains2 9y ago
      > Email at least lets you identify the sender/receiver I'm not sure of your point. Http also allows you to identify the server. Forwarding mail servers are analogous to caching and forwarding proxies. > other metadata and separate them from the message Just like http. > HTTP is just "this is the filename, this is the data.." It's not much more than a TCP stream really No, it isn't. No more than SMTP, IMAP, and pop3 are.
      - radarsat1 9y ago
        By "sender" and "receiver" I mean person, not server. I truly don't understand why you're on about servers and transport protocols when this thread is about social networks.
        jimktrains2 9y ago
        > By "sender" and "receiver" I mean person, not server. What's the difference? An email address isn't a person, nor does it represent one. > I truly don't understand why you're on about servers and transport protocols when this thread is about social networks. Because it was mentioned that SMTP is the only decentralized protocol, and I disagreed.

by subway 9y ago

Xeoncross 9y ago

Email is the only truly successful decentralized protocol which is why the OP's statement mentions it. A) Wide global adoption B) Decades of use

jimktrains2 9y ago
> Email is the only truly successful decentralized protocol HTTP?
- radarsat1 9y ago
  HTTP is a transfer protocol, not a semantic protocol. Email at least lets you identify the sender/receiver and other metadata and separate them from the message, HTTP is just "this is the filename, this is the data.." It's not much more than a TCP stream really.
  - jimktrains2 9y ago
    > Email at least lets you identify the sender/receiver I'm not sure of your point. Http also allows you to identify the server. Forwarding mail servers are analogous to caching and forwarding proxies. > other metadata and separate them from the message Just like http. > HTTP is just "this is the filename, this is the data.." It's not much more than a TCP stream really No, it isn't. No more than SMTP, IMAP, and pop3 are.
    - radarsat1 9y ago
      By "sender" and "receiver" I mean person, not server. I truly don't understand why you're on about servers and transport protocols when this thread is about social networks.
      - jimktrains2 9y ago
        > By "sender" and "receiver" I mean person, not server. What's the difference? An email address isn't a person, nor does it represent one. > I truly don't understand why you're on about servers and transport protocols when this thread is about social networks. Because it was mentioned that SMTP is the only decentralized protocol, and I disagreed.