> In the 90s app-centric view of the world this is a non-issue, because following other people is the client’s job, for better or worse. Your computer crashes,

> In the 90s app-centric view of the world this is a non-issue, because following other people is the client’s job, for better or worse. Your computer crashes, you lose who you were following. If you want to publish who you’re following that’s you or your client’s job. If all the state related to following is on the client, then the client has to either consume the stream of all messages (on a push model) or regularly poll its sources across its entire follower set (on a pull model), both of which are extremely inefficient. Some pressure in the direction of centralization is intrinsic to the problem.