7 ms·

> I don't entirely understand why you assume that one node will come to dominate such that it will be equivalent to a centralized system? One, or a small numbe

> I don't entirely understand why you assume that one node will come to dominate such that it will be equivalent to a centralized system? One, or a small number, and because this is the history of these types of things. > The term "federation" is borrowed from political science for a reason. Just like in the USA, multiple federated states who share broad-strokes policies maintain interoperability while also maintaining their own sovreignty. The USA is actually not a federation, and purposefully stopped being one (it turned in a confederation, removing the right to leave, effectively centralizing it under federal control) when the country was founded. (Edit: I reversed the terms confederation and federation here, but what I mean is that the founding of the US removed sovereignty from the states.) This is where the rubber meets the road: any decentralized system will need to be able to answer the question "how do we [the govt, usually] forcibly remove content from the network?" The way you answer that question will be the way the network centralizes. The history of true confederations (Colonial States, Personal Computing, the Internet) is that they are temporary chaotic moments before we revert back to the mean of centralization (United States, SaaS/FB/Gmail/centralized communication and iphones as tracking devices, PRISM). This is all an instance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law. Our culture is not confederated, and so we wont be able to build scalable confederated systems within it.

hannasanarion 8y ago
> The USA is actually not a federation, and purposefully stopped being one (it turned in a confederation You have it backwards. The USA was a Confederation (a weak alliance of almost entirely independent nations) under the Articles of Confederation, 1776-1789 Then in 1789 it became a Federation (a strong national union of autonomous but not independent states) with the new Constitution. In a confederation, the central government has negligible power and states can come and go as they please. The EU is arguably a confederation, and it's pretty much the only modern example, because confederations rarely last long. Historical confederations include the CSA and Holy Roman Empire. That is not the model that the Fediverse wants to uphold (otherwise it would be called the confediverse). Mastodon is intended to be structured as a Federation, like the United States, Germany, or Malaysia, with a strong but limited central power that maintains unity among the federated members, while mostly letting them do their own thing.
- wdewind 8y ago
  Sorry yeah, I reversed the terms, in response to this: > The term "federation" is borrowed from political science for a reason. Just like in the USA, multiple federated states who share broad-strokes policies maintain interoperability while also maintaining their own sovreignty. which is not true, under a federation the members do not maintain sovereignty, and this is the important point. The Colonial States gave up their sovereignty when they became federated. Everything else, besides the terms reversal (my bad), it seems we agree on? > The EU is arguably a confederation, and it's pretty much the only modern example, because confederations rarely last long. Exactly! > That is not the model that the Fediverse wants to uphold So what are we even arguing about here? We agree decentralization wont last long. If you're using the US as an example of a desirable "light hand" federation I guess that's just where we agree to disagree.
davepeck 8y ago
> One, or a small number, and because this is the history of these types of things. It's worth teasing this apart. There is a befuddling belief on the part of some decentralization advocates -- and of some decentralization detractors! -- that decentralization must imply an even distribution of power or influence. That strikes me as unrealistic in the extreme; meaningful networked ecosystems essentially never converge to uniform distribution. Power laws are the norm, not the exception. I try to avoid "decentralized"'s linguistic baggage by using the term "federated" instead. Email is federated; Gmail is its behemoth... and that's okay. (As for Mastodon: today, the majority of the network's traffic resides on the largest 5 of 3500+ publicly announced instances. It's power laws all the way down.)
- wdewind 8y ago
  > There is a befuddling belief on the part of some decentralization advocates -- and of some decentralization detractors! -- that decentralization must imply an even distribution of power or influence. No, it's that if you observe that power laws are the norm, as you stated, then you start to see decentralization as a process, not a state of being. The idea that a network (or governance structure) "is decentralized by design" makes no sense. If you know decentralization is temporary, it's hard to take Mastodon etc. seriously.
  - davepeck 8y ago
    Alas, I don't quite understand the point you're trying to make (and I'd like to!) Perhaps this will clarify things: I think "decentralized by design" is linguistically ambiguous, because "decentralized" has a bunch of odd baggage -- do you think it's reasonable to say that email is "decentralized by design", and why (or why not)?
    - wdewind 8y ago
      Sorry, I'll attempt to clarify: most human networks obey power laws in terms of centralization. For instance, the vast majority of the content is produced by a tiny minority. Sometimes humans make networks in which this is no longer true, that is content is produced basically equally among all, or at least most, members of the network. These are decentralized networks. These types of networks are not sustainable or large for a broad host of reasons, and so they form only temporarily. But they are desirable, and valuable, which is why they still form at all. Email exists well within our very centralized federated political and cultural system, and so no, it is not meaningfully decentralized. We do have some small, decentralized networks (artist communes, maybe qualify?) within the US, but they do not scale. Mastodon will also fall prey to the same issues: as soon as it is big enough for anyone to care about, regulation will come, and regulation will require significant centralization.

hannasanarion 8y ago

> The USA is actually not a federation, and purposefully stopped being one (it turned in a confederation You have it backwards. The USA was a Confederation (a weak alliance of almost entirely independent nations) under the Articles of Confederation, 1776-1789 Then in 1789 it became a Federation (a strong national union of autonomous but not independent states) with the new Constitution. In a confederation, the central government has negligible power and states can come and go as they please. The EU is arguably a confederation, and it's pretty much the only modern example, because confederations rarely last long. Historical confederations include the CSA and Holy Roman Empire. That is not the model that the Fediverse wants to uphold (otherwise it would be called the confediverse). Mastodon is intended to be structured as a Federation, like the United States, Germany, or Malaysia, with a strong but limited central power that maintains unity among the federated members, while mostly letting them do their own thing.

wdewind 8y ago
Sorry yeah, I reversed the terms, in response to this: > The term "federation" is borrowed from political science for a reason. Just like in the USA, multiple federated states who share broad-strokes policies maintain interoperability while also maintaining their own sovreignty. which is not true, under a federation the members do not maintain sovereignty, and this is the important point. The Colonial States gave up their sovereignty when they became federated. Everything else, besides the terms reversal (my bad), it seems we agree on? > The EU is arguably a confederation, and it's pretty much the only modern example, because confederations rarely last long. Exactly! > That is not the model that the Fediverse wants to uphold So what are we even arguing about here? We agree decentralization wont last long. If you're using the US as an example of a desirable "light hand" federation I guess that's just where we agree to disagree.

davepeck 8y ago

> One, or a small number, and because this is the history of these types of things. It's worth teasing this apart. There is a befuddling belief on the part of some decentralization advocates -- and of some decentralization detractors! -- that decentralization must imply an even distribution of power or influence. That strikes me as unrealistic in the extreme; meaningful networked ecosystems essentially never converge to uniform distribution. Power laws are the norm, not the exception. I try to avoid "decentralized"'s linguistic baggage by using the term "federated" instead. Email is federated; Gmail is its behemoth... and that's okay. (As for Mastodon: today, the majority of the network's traffic resides on the largest 5 of 3500+ publicly announced instances. It's power laws all the way down.)

wdewind 8y ago
> There is a befuddling belief on the part of some decentralization advocates -- and of some decentralization detractors! -- that decentralization must imply an even distribution of power or influence. No, it's that if you observe that power laws are the norm, as you stated, then you start to see decentralization as a process, not a state of being. The idea that a network (or governance structure) "is decentralized by design" makes no sense. If you know decentralization is temporary, it's hard to take Mastodon etc. seriously.
- davepeck 8y ago
  Alas, I don't quite understand the point you're trying to make (and I'd like to!) Perhaps this will clarify things: I think "decentralized by design" is linguistically ambiguous, because "decentralized" has a bunch of odd baggage -- do you think it's reasonable to say that email is "decentralized by design", and why (or why not)?
  - wdewind 8y ago
    Sorry, I'll attempt to clarify: most human networks obey power laws in terms of centralization. For instance, the vast majority of the content is produced by a tiny minority. Sometimes humans make networks in which this is no longer true, that is content is produced basically equally among all, or at least most, members of the network. These are decentralized networks. These types of networks are not sustainable or large for a broad host of reasons, and so they form only temporarily. But they are desirable, and valuable, which is why they still form at all. Email exists well within our very centralized federated political and cultural system, and so no, it is not meaningfully decentralized. We do have some small, decentralized networks (artist communes, maybe qualify?) within the US, but they do not scale. Mastodon will also fall prey to the same issues: as soon as it is big enough for anyone to care about, regulation will come, and regulation will require significant centralization.