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Creating a federated platform is technically quite feasible. E-mail, the Web, Usenet (before it was overrun by spam anyway), IRC... plus these days, stuff like

Creating a federated platform is technically quite feasible. E-mail, the Web, Usenet (before it was overrun by spam anyway), IRC... plus these days, stuff like PeerTube and Mastodon. Sure, not every one of these is "successful", but the trend is there.

blfr 8y ago
The trend is definitely not there. The trend is away from IRC towards Slack, away from open web to walled gardens (or trashpiles) of Facebook, away from Usenet towards unfederated forums like this one.
- simias 8y ago
  I agree but: >[...] away from Usenet towards unfederated forums like this one. We're actually one step beyond that already, the era of forums is behind us, now people open a Facebook page or Subreddit when they want to create a community around a given topic instead of powering up a new PHPBB instance like they might have 15 years ago. Forums like HN are getting increasingly niche. I don't like this trend but I think it makes complete sense. Centralized solutions offer generally better user experience (you don't have to monitor 10 different websites or watch your emails for notifications, you don't have to create dozen of accounts etc...), they're easier to develop, easier to maintain and, perhaps critically, easier to monetize. These days I only see the cryptocurrency communities betting on a decentralized future (instead of merely wishing for it without much hope like I do).
notafraudster 8y ago
The trend is away from federated services. Email, the Web, and Usenet were all created before the modal HN user was born. Of those three, Usenet is basically not a going concern (beyond paid binary newsgroups for piracy, honestly). The Web is increasingly siloed off. What federation there is exists largely thanks to commercial CDNs and peering, not user-facing federation that benefits user freedom. I'm not sure IRC was ever motivated as a federated model. It's true users can run an IRC server, but the main advantage of IRS compared to previous attempts at multi-user chatting (whether asynchronous like BBSes or synchronous like early chat platforms) was that it allowed confederation of servers into server networks. But also my impression is certainly that IRC is moribund with many long-time users having pivoted to Slack or Discord, both centralized. Rather, where federation is growing, it's largely recent, fringe experiments. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, let a thousand flowers bloom. Mastodon might end up working out for some definition of working out. I doubt PeerTube will. But in any case, it's more accurate to say that some of the early internet was built on decentralized platforms, some of which were federated, and that recently some tech enthusiasts have recently written some interesting, maybe promising federated platforms. There is definitely not a trend toward federation.
xena 8y ago
Creating and maintaining something are entirely different problems. People need to be paid for electricity and internet costs. People need to eat.

blfr 8y ago

The trend is definitely not there. The trend is away from IRC towards Slack, away from open web to walled gardens (or trashpiles) of Facebook, away from Usenet towards unfederated forums like this one.

simias 8y ago
I agree but: >[...] away from Usenet towards unfederated forums like this one. We're actually one step beyond that already, the era of forums is behind us, now people open a Facebook page or Subreddit when they want to create a community around a given topic instead of powering up a new PHPBB instance like they might have 15 years ago. Forums like HN are getting increasingly niche. I don't like this trend but I think it makes complete sense. Centralized solutions offer generally better user experience (you don't have to monitor 10 different websites or watch your emails for notifications, you don't have to create dozen of accounts etc...), they're easier to develop, easier to maintain and, perhaps critically, easier to monetize. These days I only see the cryptocurrency communities betting on a decentralized future (instead of merely wishing for it without much hope like I do).

notafraudster 8y ago

The trend is away from federated services. Email, the Web, and Usenet were all created before the modal HN user was born. Of those three, Usenet is basically not a going concern (beyond paid binary newsgroups for piracy, honestly). The Web is increasingly siloed off. What federation there is exists largely thanks to commercial CDNs and peering, not user-facing federation that benefits user freedom. I'm not sure IRC was ever motivated as a federated model. It's true users can run an IRC server, but the main advantage of IRS compared to previous attempts at multi-user chatting (whether asynchronous like BBSes or synchronous like early chat platforms) was that it allowed confederation of servers into server networks. But also my impression is certainly that IRC is moribund with many long-time users having pivoted to Slack or Discord, both centralized. Rather, where federation is growing, it's largely recent, fringe experiments. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you, let a thousand flowers bloom. Mastodon might end up working out for some definition of working out. I doubt PeerTube will. But in any case, it's more accurate to say that some of the early internet was built on decentralized platforms, some of which were federated, and that recently some tech enthusiasts have recently written some interesting, maybe promising federated platforms. There is definitely not a trend toward federation.

xena 8y ago

Creating and maintaining something are entirely different problems. People need to be paid for electricity and internet costs. People need to eat.