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Mastodon itself as a software product/project _may_ be "impossible" to "scale" (scale to what?), but decentralization of social networking is not only not "impo

Mastodon itself as a software product/project _may_ be "impossible" to "scale" (scale to what?), but decentralization of social networking is not only not "impossible", it's actually inevitable. We'll look back at the 2010s and wonder why anyone ever thought the discourse on the web could/should become dominated by a tiny number of corporate media platforms.

rainonmoon 4y ago
Does anyone really wonder why the current state of affairs has risen? Because that seems pretty naive, given how rich and influential it's made its progenitors.
CharlesW 4y ago
> …decentralization of social networking is not only not "impossible", it's actually inevitable. When has any medium gone from centralized → decentralized?
- markstos 4y ago
  AT&T was for a time the sole provider of telephone service throughout most of the United States. In the 80s it was broken up into competing companies due to anti-trust action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System The companies we now know as AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink all came from that.
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    That's a great example! Are there any mediums where this happened organically, or does this almost always happen as a result of regulatory actions? jaredcwhite: When you say decentralization is inevitable, were you talking about as a result of government intervention?
  - TchoBeer 4y ago
    It's a good thing this has lead to an increase in competition, especially local competition, and not the entire marketing being owned by a few companies instead of one and none of them treading on each other's monopolized turf.
  - 8bitsrule 4y ago
    Before the breakup long-distance calls cost about $1-2 a minute ($3-5 today). After the breakup, they dropped to a few cents a minute. That's one effect of decentralization everyone (alive then) understood. Totally revolutionized telephone-usage. Obviously some aspects can be more efficiently centralized. What matters is who controls the centralized part(s). E.g. There are still a few things to be re-learned from Usenet and Fido.
- jaredcwhite 4y ago
  Arguably, we're actually conversing on a "decentralized" medium right now. HN may be popular in the tech scene but it's "just" a website. There are many "just" a websites out there! Ultimately, that's what gets me about all these sorts of conversations. People will post articles on websites saying the web is dead or whatever…same thing happened 20 years ago, same thing will happen 20 years from now.
fortuna86 4y ago
No end user has ever cared about decentralization.

rainonmoon 4y ago

Does anyone really wonder why the current state of affairs has risen? Because that seems pretty naive, given how rich and influential it's made its progenitors.

CharlesW 4y ago

> …decentralization of social networking is not only not "impossible", it's actually inevitable. When has any medium gone from centralized → decentralized?

markstos 4y ago
AT&T was for a time the sole provider of telephone service throughout most of the United States. In the 80s it was broken up into competing companies due to anti-trust action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System The companies we now know as AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink all came from that.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  That's a great example! Are there any mediums where this happened organically, or does this almost always happen as a result of regulatory actions? jaredcwhite: When you say decentralization is inevitable, were you talking about as a result of government intervention?
- TchoBeer 4y ago
  It's a good thing this has lead to an increase in competition, especially local competition, and not the entire marketing being owned by a few companies instead of one and none of them treading on each other's monopolized turf.
- 8bitsrule 4y ago
  Before the breakup long-distance calls cost about $1-2 a minute ($3-5 today). After the breakup, they dropped to a few cents a minute. That's one effect of decentralization everyone (alive then) understood. Totally revolutionized telephone-usage. Obviously some aspects can be more efficiently centralized. What matters is who controls the centralized part(s). E.g. There are still a few things to be re-learned from Usenet and Fido.
jaredcwhite 4y ago
Arguably, we're actually conversing on a "decentralized" medium right now. HN may be popular in the tech scene but it's "just" a website. There are many "just" a websites out there! Ultimately, that's what gets me about all these sorts of conversations. People will post articles on websites saying the web is dead or whatever…same thing happened 20 years ago, same thing will happen 20 years from now.

fortuna86 4y ago

No end user has ever cared about decentralization.