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> I want a world where people have actual ownership over their computing, but federated system designs like Mastodon will not get us that and we have thirty yea

> I want a world where people have actual ownership over their computing, but federated system designs like Mastodon will not get us that and we have thirty years of failure to prove it. Counterpoint: email has been working great for the past 30 years. The reason why email works over centralized schemes is because it has tiered decentralized controls - sending server, relays (when they were a thing), receiving servers and the client each have an opportunity to accept, reject or drop a message. Mastodon has a great chance of succeeding. All it needs is an easy-to-use client,decent discovery and giving users control of what they see. It does not have to be a constellation of mini-Twitters.

gonehome 4y ago
Replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496458 Email is an example of a federated system failure.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  That's very strange definition of failure: many non-homogenous systems have Pareto distributions. That in itself is not indicative of failure. 30 years ago, AOL may have been most popular email provider, it was displaced by Hotmail, then Yahoo, now GMail. Having different leaders over time is evidence of the resounding success of email federation, those domains still exist and can still send/receive emails universally. If email had hypothetically been non-federated and proprietary to AOL, it would be dead today (or as close to it as gopher)
  - gonehome 4y ago
    You can’t run your own node and majority of users are on one system - that’s failure to me.
    - sangnoir 4y ago
      I do run my own mail server on my own domain - so thank you for affirming that email is not a failure.
crazygringo 4y ago
> email has been working great for the past 30 years When spam means you're either flooded with garbage or are forced to just totally block potentially innocent senders (like people running private mail servers)... ...and probably 95%+ of people I know use Gmail for their personal accounts... ...I'm not sure e-mail is the best example of federation working great.
- dzikimarian 4y ago
  Still you can pick any server you want, any client you want, move your data freely if you are not happy with provider. And there's no corporation that can say that tomorrow you are going to pay $5/month more or you can kiss your contacts goodbye (sure you can loose your address if you don't have own domain, but you still can access the network). I will gladly take it over closed protocol, even if it has reaction gifs built in.

gonehome 4y ago

Replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496458 Email is an example of a federated system failure.

sangnoir 4y ago
That's very strange definition of failure: many non-homogenous systems have Pareto distributions. That in itself is not indicative of failure. 30 years ago, AOL may have been most popular email provider, it was displaced by Hotmail, then Yahoo, now GMail. Having different leaders over time is evidence of the resounding success of email federation, those domains still exist and can still send/receive emails universally. If email had hypothetically been non-federated and proprietary to AOL, it would be dead today (or as close to it as gopher)
- gonehome 4y ago
  You can’t run your own node and majority of users are on one system - that’s failure to me.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    I do run my own mail server on my own domain - so thank you for affirming that email is not a failure.

crazygringo 4y ago

> email has been working great for the past 30 years When spam means you're either flooded with garbage or are forced to just totally block potentially innocent senders (like people running private mail servers)... ...and probably 95%+ of people I know use Gmail for their personal accounts... ...I'm not sure e-mail is the best example of federation working great.

dzikimarian 4y ago
Still you can pick any server you want, any client you want, move your data freely if you are not happy with provider. And there's no corporation that can say that tomorrow you are going to pay $5/month more or you can kiss your contacts goodbye (sure you can loose your address if you don't have own domain, but you still can access the network). I will gladly take it over closed protocol, even if it has reaction gifs built in.