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> I'm not so certain the advantages are entirely obvious any more. What was it about Mastodon and Diaspora that caused you to reconsider the benefits of decent

> I'm not so certain the advantages are entirely obvious any more. What was it about Mastodon and Diaspora that caused you to reconsider the benefits of decentralized networks? Genuinely curious as I haven’t used either very much.

dredmorbius 7y ago
It's mostly a sense that advocates of radical decentralisation seem to be operating a bit more on hopium than a solid rational basis, and that the actual goals and mechanisms aren't clearly or coherently articulated and reasoned. Both Mastodon and Diaspora are mostly working out quite well, and have done far better than numerous other platforms or services. Mastodon has active development and generally has been implementing new (and for the most part good) features at an impressive clip. Diaspora not so much. Which is a significant concern of itself. Failure to sustain development is a concern. Diaspora has on the order of a million users (w/in an order of magnitude), and ... wants for love. More generally, my sense has been that both platforms have some magical thinking about scaling and what dynamics will or won't appear, which may eventually collide with reality. Mastodon's had somewhat more experience with this to my knowledge, notably with an extreme and intolerant political group adopting the platform (and being promptly defederated by most of the rest of it). But I've seen pretty regrettable behaviour by others, including numerous (mostly small) instance admins. The Wil Wheaton incident, in which the actor was harassed and bullied by a small but hyperactive set, was quite regrettable. Lessons were learned from that. Ownership, control, and continuity of larger instances has been iffy. I don't think "everyone rolling their own instance" will happen for quite some time. Which means that some level of multi-user tenancy, at scale, will have to be a norm for the forseable future. That's another issue, crossing numerous concerns.

dredmorbius 7y ago

It's mostly a sense that advocates of radical decentralisation seem to be operating a bit more on hopium than a solid rational basis, and that the actual goals and mechanisms aren't clearly or coherently articulated and reasoned. Both Mastodon and Diaspora are mostly working out quite well, and have done far better than numerous other platforms or services. Mastodon has active development and generally has been implementing new (and for the most part good) features at an impressive clip. Diaspora not so much. Which is a significant concern of itself. Failure to sustain development is a concern. Diaspora has on the order of a million users (w/in an order of magnitude), and ... wants for love. More generally, my sense has been that both platforms have some magical thinking about scaling and what dynamics will or won't appear, which may eventually collide with reality. Mastodon's had somewhat more experience with this to my knowledge, notably with an extreme and intolerant political group adopting the platform (and being promptly defederated by most of the rest of it). But I've seen pretty regrettable behaviour by others, including numerous (mostly small) instance admins. The Wil Wheaton incident, in which the actor was harassed and bullied by a small but hyperactive set, was quite regrettable. Lessons were learned from that. Ownership, control, and continuity of larger instances has been iffy. I don't think "everyone rolling their own instance" will happen for quite some time. Which means that some level of multi-user tenancy, at scale, will have to be a norm for the forseable future. That's another issue, crossing numerous concerns.