4 ms·

> Federated systems just don't work in practice because of inherent problems with them that don't have good technical&social solutions yet. Everything on the In

> Federated systems just don't work in practice because of inherent problems with them that don't have good technical&social solutions yet. Everything on the Internet (including Internet itself) degenerated from federation into monopolistic centralized services for a reason, and somehow people keep ignoring the evidence, and just keep trying harder. Email would beg to differ. Google and Microsoft may have a lot of users, but interoperability is astoundingly high. Yes, there is a high barrier to sending emails from a new provider, and yes, Google/Microsoft have a large chunk of the market. Still, there's little barrier to using ProtonMail or Fastmail or whatever free host you want, and everything interoperates shockingly well. You don't typically have to think about "what if this person has gmail?" or "I don't know if I can send to that host from outlook".

clusterfish 6y ago
Email was already too big to fail by the time Facebook and Google got big enough to be able to kill it. Looking at stuff created in the last 10-15 years, are there any federation successes? I can't think of any. (Blockchain excluded for the reason stated in the article)
- lokedhs 6y ago
  What's the definition of success? I spend far too much time on the Fediverse (mastodon) and if success is measured by the amount of time I spend there, it's the most successful service I use. Of course, there are few if any political leaders or CEO's posting there, but that's not a definition of success to me. I have thought about what would happen if someone like, say, Musk would proclaim that they're quitting Twitter and setting up a Mastodon instance instead. I'm not sure the Fediverse would be better off if that happened.
  - clusterfish 6y ago
    Wide adoption. Especially for social network type apps, which are rather useless without my friends in them.
    - lokedhs 6y ago
      To each their own, clearly. I don't think I ever joined a social network because my friends used it (possible exception of FB, but I'm not actually using that one. There could be correlation there). I have met many new friends on all the networks that I have joined however.
thayne 6y ago
Well most people use one of a few big email providers, not small individual mail servers run by tech-savvy friends or family. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, but I think for federated services to catch on, you need big players that provide reliable service and a recognizable brand. The average person is not going to want to search through thousands of small federated servers to try and find one that works for them. And running a single server might be simple and inexpensive, but making it reliable and secure is not.
- gspr 6y ago
  > Well most people use one of a few big email providers, not small individual mail servers run by tech-savvy friends or family. Yes, but importantly, those few big providers federate. That means that the barrier to entry for the little guys is much lower. This situation, while not ideal, is vastly better than the non-federated alternative.
  - MaKey 6y ago
    While they do federate, it's a challenge to get them to accept mails from your own mail server. Microsoft's mail servers are notorious for accepting your mails with a "250 Queued for delivery" and then letting them vanish in a black hole. I've also ran into problems with mail servers of government agencies. So yes, while technically possible, self-hosting your mail server sadly isn't viable anymore for the little guy.
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  > Well most people use one of a few big email providers, not small individual mail servers run by tech-savvy friends or family. That's just because installing and maintaining your own email server is extremely complicated [1]. Lots of people maintained their own Kazaa/Limewire servers for their friends (and the bigger piracy community) back in the day, because it was as simple as double clicking setup.exe and installing the software, and then configuring it. Email does require higher reliability than Limewire. But I imagine if someone made a 100$ box that I could plug into my router, and so could 3 of my friends, and that had an email server installed on it or could be easily by clicking a installation file, and the 3 could act in concert to provide email services to the 50 people, maybe you would see more uptake. [1] I am a tech-savy user who has been looking for a simple solution for a decade now.

clusterfish 6y ago

Email was already too big to fail by the time Facebook and Google got big enough to be able to kill it. Looking at stuff created in the last 10-15 years, are there any federation successes? I can't think of any. (Blockchain excluded for the reason stated in the article)

lokedhs 6y ago
What's the definition of success? I spend far too much time on the Fediverse (mastodon) and if success is measured by the amount of time I spend there, it's the most successful service I use. Of course, there are few if any political leaders or CEO's posting there, but that's not a definition of success to me. I have thought about what would happen if someone like, say, Musk would proclaim that they're quitting Twitter and setting up a Mastodon instance instead. I'm not sure the Fediverse would be better off if that happened.
- clusterfish 6y ago
  Wide adoption. Especially for social network type apps, which are rather useless without my friends in them.
  - lokedhs 6y ago
    To each their own, clearly. I don't think I ever joined a social network because my friends used it (possible exception of FB, but I'm not actually using that one. There could be correlation there). I have met many new friends on all the networks that I have joined however.

thayne 6y ago

Well most people use one of a few big email providers, not small individual mail servers run by tech-savvy friends or family. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, but I think for federated services to catch on, you need big players that provide reliable service and a recognizable brand. The average person is not going to want to search through thousands of small federated servers to try and find one that works for them. And running a single server might be simple and inexpensive, but making it reliable and secure is not.

gspr 6y ago
> Well most people use one of a few big email providers, not small individual mail servers run by tech-savvy friends or family. Yes, but importantly, those few big providers federate. That means that the barrier to entry for the little guys is much lower. This situation, while not ideal, is vastly better than the non-federated alternative.
- MaKey 6y ago
  While they do federate, it's a challenge to get them to accept mails from your own mail server. Microsoft's mail servers are notorious for accepting your mails with a "250 Queued for delivery" and then letting them vanish in a black hole. I've also ran into problems with mail servers of government agencies. So yes, while technically possible, self-hosting your mail server sadly isn't viable anymore for the little guy.
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
> Well most people use one of a few big email providers, not small individual mail servers run by tech-savvy friends or family. That's just because installing and maintaining your own email server is extremely complicated [1]. Lots of people maintained their own Kazaa/Limewire servers for their friends (and the bigger piracy community) back in the day, because it was as simple as double clicking setup.exe and installing the software, and then configuring it. Email does require higher reliability than Limewire. But I imagine if someone made a 100$ box that I could plug into my router, and so could 3 of my friends, and that had an email server installed on it or could be easily by clicking a installation file, and the 3 could act in concert to provide email services to the 50 people, maybe you would see more uptake. [1] I am a tech-savy user who has been looking for a simple solution for a decade now.