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Mastodon is a great Federated protocol, but the problem with /any/ federated protocol is that it is federated. I've commented about this before, email is feder

Mastodon is a great Federated protocol, but the problem with /any/ federated protocol is that it is federated. I've commented about this before, email is federated, and we saw what happened there: Everybody moved to gmail. Federation will lead to all the same systemic issues. A better approach is to use P2P/decentralization, rather than a hosted instance owning your account/identity, you own your account/identity and you can reuse it across any/all services. Even if those services die or go away, you will always exist. This isn't just "talk" though, we've spent the last 4 years of our lives working on giving away truly Free and Open (MIT/Zlib/Apache2) software to help people build stuff like this: https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8 https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi... Now there are dApps in production that have pushed terabytes of daily traffic. We're still working through some scaling up kinks, but we're making fast progress.

needz 8y ago
That's a very interesting project! I hope it catches on.
stcredzero 8y ago
I've commented about this before, email is federated, and we saw what happened there: Everybody moved to gmail. Federation will lead to all the same systemic issues. What are the systemic issues? Why did everybody move to gmail? I liked the ability to just let my email collect and search it. I liked the spam filtering. That's why everybody moved to gmail. The systemic problems I saw with email had to do with server security and spam. How is it that those problems aren't solvable federated, but solvable P2P?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  Everyone moved to gmail because it was free with a really high storage limit, which was unheard of at the time, and your email address would stay the same when your ISP changed. Hotmail was the hotness before that for pretty much the same reasons, minus the high storage limit.
  - marknadal 8y ago
    @rainbowmverse @stcredzero @AnIdiotOnTheNet It is true that people switched to gmail because of what you say. I don't disagree. The point is that even with federated services, consumers will choose the most convenient one (and they should!). But that still means users are dependent upon that service. Imagine if Facebook became ActivityPub protocol compliant. They (like Google with Gmail) would have more resources to make the most convenient/amazing Mastodon experience. Is this itself bad? No. Is it that companies have more resources, that is bad? No. It is simply that the following is better: If you have a P2P/decentralized protocol, even if Google/Facebook were to create a killer app/experience for it that everybody "switched" to, there... - data - account - identity - friends - etc. Would and could still exist regardless of the backend (federated, centralized, or not). This is not true with ActivityPub / Mastodon. Imagine if you could have switched to gmail and automatically "kept" all your emails? And then you could just as easily switch to a different competing email interface, and it "kept" all the emails/data you had in gmail? That is the kicker here, by "kept" I do not mean "migrates from one to the other", by "kept" I mean the application interface just reused the same existing underlying data. Extra point: Very few people are going to switch for encryption/privacy alone. But if gmail/activitypub/facebook/mastodon was P2P/decentralized (like is possible with our system), then you can have competing apps (analog: gmail vs hotmail) that are still end-to-end encrypted (analog: neither gmail's or hotmail's servers would be able to read/decrypt your data) because that is happening in the app (the "client") not on the federated server (like with activitypub/mastodon) or the centralized server (gmail/facebook).
    - youseecomrade 8y ago
      It's just EEE, they'll slowly introduce better features (with a colossal marketing budget) and after they gain the userbase back they'll close it down. Until I see a solution for this problem I'm not going to advocate/adopt any of these services.
rainbowmverse 8y ago
Nothing about GMail's dominance is related to centralization. Everyone moved to Google because they offered (I think) a full gigabyte instead of the mere megabytes that was standard at the time. And it also had a really slick web interface that didn't require setting up software. People could finally use it for work, or to send pictures without managing space or an email client. "Never delete anything" was the big selling point. Every mail host has a web interface now and provides lots of space, but it took too long. Inertia keeps GMail dominant, not centralization.
18pfsmt 8y ago
I thought Mastodon was default whitelist whereas email was default blacklist, no? In other words, if you don't explicitly take action (i.e. follow) nobody can send you a message on Mastodon? I thought that was how it was implemented, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

needz 8y ago

That's a very interesting project! I hope it catches on.

stcredzero 8y ago

I've commented about this before, email is federated, and we saw what happened there: Everybody moved to gmail. Federation will lead to all the same systemic issues. What are the systemic issues? Why did everybody move to gmail? I liked the ability to just let my email collect and search it. I liked the spam filtering. That's why everybody moved to gmail. The systemic problems I saw with email had to do with server security and spam. How is it that those problems aren't solvable federated, but solvable P2P?

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Everyone moved to gmail because it was free with a really high storage limit, which was unheard of at the time, and your email address would stay the same when your ISP changed. Hotmail was the hotness before that for pretty much the same reasons, minus the high storage limit.
- marknadal 8y ago
  @rainbowmverse @stcredzero @AnIdiotOnTheNet It is true that people switched to gmail because of what you say. I don't disagree. The point is that even with federated services, consumers will choose the most convenient one (and they should!). But that still means users are dependent upon that service. Imagine if Facebook became ActivityPub protocol compliant. They (like Google with Gmail) would have more resources to make the most convenient/amazing Mastodon experience. Is this itself bad? No. Is it that companies have more resources, that is bad? No. It is simply that the following is better: If you have a P2P/decentralized protocol, even if Google/Facebook were to create a killer app/experience for it that everybody "switched" to, there... - data - account - identity - friends - etc. Would and could still exist regardless of the backend (federated, centralized, or not). This is not true with ActivityPub / Mastodon. Imagine if you could have switched to gmail and automatically "kept" all your emails? And then you could just as easily switch to a different competing email interface, and it "kept" all the emails/data you had in gmail? That is the kicker here, by "kept" I do not mean "migrates from one to the other", by "kept" I mean the application interface just reused the same existing underlying data. Extra point: Very few people are going to switch for encryption/privacy alone. But if gmail/activitypub/facebook/mastodon was P2P/decentralized (like is possible with our system), then you can have competing apps (analog: gmail vs hotmail) that are still end-to-end encrypted (analog: neither gmail's or hotmail's servers would be able to read/decrypt your data) because that is happening in the app (the "client") not on the federated server (like with activitypub/mastodon) or the centralized server (gmail/facebook).
  - youseecomrade 8y ago
    It's just EEE, they'll slowly introduce better features (with a colossal marketing budget) and after they gain the userbase back they'll close it down. Until I see a solution for this problem I'm not going to advocate/adopt any of these services.

rainbowmverse 8y ago

Nothing about GMail's dominance is related to centralization. Everyone moved to Google because they offered (I think) a full gigabyte instead of the mere megabytes that was standard at the time. And it also had a really slick web interface that didn't require setting up software. People could finally use it for work, or to send pictures without managing space or an email client. "Never delete anything" was the big selling point. Every mail host has a web interface now and provides lots of space, but it took too long. Inertia keeps GMail dominant, not centralization.

18pfsmt 8y ago

I thought Mastodon was default whitelist whereas email was default blacklist, no? In other words, if you don't explicitly take action (i.e. follow) nobody can send you a message on Mastodon? I thought that was how it was implemented, but please correct me if I'm wrong.