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> Federation is coming back into vogue particularly now as a reaction to the Facebook/Google problem where a single entity collects all the data about all users

> Federation is coming back into vogue particularly now as a reaction to the Facebook/Google problem where a single entity collects all the data about all users of the platform and can unilaterally ban a user with no recourse. In a federated network a node decides what other nodes it federates with and so self-regulates. But email is an example of federated technology everyone uses. I swear I read this exact sentence back in 2017 when Mastodon first came out with a splash and it has only gotten less relevant in the five years since.

indigochill 5y ago
> it has only gotten less relevant in the five years since What does "relevant" mean? Hacker News is irrelevant to people who aren't into the tech scene. Mastodon is irrelevant if someone doesn't care about federation, but for those of us who do, it's still as relevant as ever. Neither Hacker News nor federation (I expect) are going to take over the world, but they have their respective audiences.
- hannasanarion 5y ago
  > Neither Hacker News nor federation (I expect) are going to take over the world, but they have their respective audiences. You see how this is at odds with the claim that federation is "in vogue", right? Federation is a small and shrinking niche. It had a brief moment in 2017, and has been in recession ever since.
  - naasking 5y ago
    What is the evidence of this recession?
    - hannasanarion 5y ago
      What is the evidence that it's "in vogue"? The only major events in the fediverse from the last several years to have any cultural impact is the rise of federated porn after the Tumblr exodus, and the rise in federated white nationalist forums after Trump got banned from Twitter. The fact that federation is becoming popular among pornographers and fascists is certainly not backing up the assertion that federation is "in vogue".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - altantiprocrast 5y ago
    Is it really shrinking? Mastodon gained 950k users in 2021, combining with other platforms they probably gained over a million. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/12/mastodon-recap-2021/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/12/mastodon-recap-2021/ Projects like Matrix.org are also seeing huge growth. Of course these are nothing on FAANG scale, but still far from shrinking.
    - hannasanarion 5y ago
      Of those 950,000 sign-ups, only 814 users remained active according to the very same page you linked. That's not a cultural wave, that's a fad more swingy than gym memberships in January. "Vogue" technologies don't have a 99.93% churn rate.
      - dannyobrien 5y ago
        That's sort of a misreading of the figures though, isn't it? It's not that those 950K sign-ups have all disappeared; you just have a slightly higher replacement level of new entrants. What it describes have a fairly consistent monthly usage rate -- not leaping up, but not dropping either. That also seems to be what the more in-depth statistics here indicate: https://the-federation.info/mastodon https://the-federation.info/mastodon I'm not saying that you're any more wrong than the idea that federation is currently "in vogue", but it doesn't seem right to suggest that this is something that is in decline, either. Maybe you could argue that in the face of increasing numbers of adoption of social media more generally? Are we steady-stating there too, though?
imwillofficial 5y ago
Well you know, without the “back” part of “coming back”

indigochill 5y ago

> it has only gotten less relevant in the five years since What does "relevant" mean? Hacker News is irrelevant to people who aren't into the tech scene. Mastodon is irrelevant if someone doesn't care about federation, but for those of us who do, it's still as relevant as ever. Neither Hacker News nor federation (I expect) are going to take over the world, but they have their respective audiences.

hannasanarion 5y ago
> Neither Hacker News nor federation (I expect) are going to take over the world, but they have their respective audiences. You see how this is at odds with the claim that federation is "in vogue", right? Federation is a small and shrinking niche. It had a brief moment in 2017, and has been in recession ever since.
- naasking 5y ago
  What is the evidence of this recession?
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    What is the evidence that it's "in vogue"? The only major events in the fediverse from the last several years to have any cultural impact is the rise of federated porn after the Tumblr exodus, and the rise in federated white nationalist forums after Trump got banned from Twitter. The fact that federation is becoming popular among pornographers and fascists is certainly not backing up the assertion that federation is "in vogue".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- altantiprocrast 5y ago
  Is it really shrinking? Mastodon gained 950k users in 2021, combining with other platforms they probably gained over a million. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/12/mastodon-recap-2021/ https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2021/12/mastodon-recap-2021/ Projects like Matrix.org are also seeing huge growth. Of course these are nothing on FAANG scale, but still far from shrinking.
  - hannasanarion 5y ago
    Of those 950,000 sign-ups, only 814 users remained active according to the very same page you linked. That's not a cultural wave, that's a fad more swingy than gym memberships in January. "Vogue" technologies don't have a 99.93% churn rate.
    - dannyobrien 5y ago
      That's sort of a misreading of the figures though, isn't it? It's not that those 950K sign-ups have all disappeared; you just have a slightly higher replacement level of new entrants. What it describes have a fairly consistent monthly usage rate -- not leaping up, but not dropping either. That also seems to be what the more in-depth statistics here indicate: https://the-federation.info/mastodon https://the-federation.info/mastodon I'm not saying that you're any more wrong than the idea that federation is currently "in vogue", but it doesn't seem right to suggest that this is something that is in decline, either. Maybe you could argue that in the face of increasing numbers of adoption of social media more generally? Are we steady-stating there too, though?

imwillofficial 5y ago

Well you know, without the “back” part of “coming back”