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Element/Matrix/Gitter is a great IRC-replacement and public chat, Mastodon is great as a decentralized Twitter alternative, IPFS is great for decentralized publ

by ece 6y ago

Element/Matrix/Gitter is a great IRC-replacement and public chat, Mastodon is great as a decentralized Twitter alternative, IPFS is great for decentralized public file sharing. Default-public services like this probably have an easier time being decentralized. It'd actually be nice to see thoughtful integrations between these three IMO. The greatest advantage Signal has is probably doing same-day updates for all clients while being dead simple to use well. A decentralized protocol could achieve these things, but none have yet. Still I hope someday soon we can have everything be decentralized, but like the blog post says, we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

natchy 6y ago
> Mastodon is great as a decentralized Twitter Federated, not decentralized. Decentralized is peer2peer like torrents. Federated is like email where there are little fiefdoms like Gmail, yahoo, or self-hosted.
- kitkat_new 6y ago
  that definition seems like a bit of a stretch: decentralized does not mean anything more than not being centralized. Federation implies decentralization.
  - natchy 6y ago
    > Federation implies decentralization. No it doesn’t. Gmail is a centralized instance of a federated network. You can have a federated node that becomes so popular that it’s basically centralized. This federated/decentralized distinction is pretty common. You’re dwelling on literal definitions but there are more semantic differences those words have picked up in the communities involved.
    - klik99 6y ago
      Be kinder, these semantics differences are newer(ish) developments and not everyone knows the area. It's a bit confusing to say federation does imply decentralization point blank. For a long time, federated architecture was seen as special case of decentralized, for example in designing stuff for internal use. It still makes sense in that context. In the context of larger external facing systems, I've found it useful to think of federated as "partly decentralized", and "decentralized" is short-hand for "fully decentralized".
- orthecreedence 6y ago
  Federation is decentralized. Peer-to-peer is distributed.

by ece 6y ago

natchy 6y ago

> Mastodon is great as a decentralized Twitter Federated, not decentralized. Decentralized is peer2peer like torrents. Federated is like email where there are little fiefdoms like Gmail, yahoo, or self-hosted.

kitkat_new 6y ago
that definition seems like a bit of a stretch: decentralized does not mean anything more than not being centralized. Federation implies decentralization.
- natchy 6y ago
  > Federation implies decentralization. No it doesn’t. Gmail is a centralized instance of a federated network. You can have a federated node that becomes so popular that it’s basically centralized. This federated/decentralized distinction is pretty common. You’re dwelling on literal definitions but there are more semantic differences those words have picked up in the communities involved.
  - klik99 6y ago
    Be kinder, these semantics differences are newer(ish) developments and not everyone knows the area. It's a bit confusing to say federation does imply decentralization point blank. For a long time, federated architecture was seen as special case of decentralized, for example in designing stuff for internal use. It still makes sense in that context. In the context of larger external facing systems, I've found it useful to think of federated as "partly decentralized", and "decentralized" is short-hand for "fully decentralized".
orthecreedence 6y ago
Federation is decentralized. Peer-to-peer is distributed.