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Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube. While it's true that there are multiple platforms, there are a small number of plat

Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube. While it's true that there are multiple platforms, there are a small number of platforms that are really widespread, and each one of them is centralized. I don't know that a federated social network (eg Mastadon) would solve the particular problem at hand. There would be other benefits though, and it's possible that a federated social network would at least mitigate some of the problems. It's idea at least worth consideration.

luckylion 6y ago
> Facebook is most definitely centralized. So is Twitter, and so is YouTube. I think it's not about technical centralized/decentralized but about who decides what can be read. Pre-social-media: journalists are selected by companies based on political alignment and are controlled by their editors, only journalists get published, average people cannot communicate with each other at scale, journalists/media companies have total control over information and thereby over the perception of reality. Social media changed that. You can no longer just put an embargo on a story and expect people not to learn about it, as was made very obvious in Germany at new year's eve 2015. The news will spread via social media and there's nothing you can do about it short of shutting down the communication networks. Federated social networks take that a step further by also removing Facebook's centralized control from the system, but that's a minor step, because Facebook doesn't interfere with their users that much. At least that was true, the Hunter Biden thing might be a taste of what's to come.