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Federation is a very weak form of decentralization. In practice, many federated platforms turn into cartels of giant centralized providers. It's better than Tw
by dist1ll 4y ago
Federation is a very weak form of decentralization.
In practice, many federated platforms turn into cartels of giant centralized providers. It's better than Twitter, but not something I'd call decentralization.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago> Federation is a very weak form of decentralization ... not something I'd call decentralization ... is not decentralized Uh, OK; this is not all the same claim. > In practice, many federated platforms turn into cartels of giant centralized providers Sure that's a worry; for example: email is global, so lets all use GMail. git is decentralized onto GitHub and a few other providers. I think that this tendency is not just a mastodon thing, and is a separate and wider concern though than "it is not decentralized".
- dist1ll 4y agoI thought a bit more about it. I stand by my statement that federation is not decentralization. Federation is a pre-requisite for decentralization, but not a sufficient criterion. (I said weaker form, what I meant to say was necessary condition) Federation gives you an opportunity to develop a decentralized ecosystem...but that depends entirely on how users use the platform, or what rules the platform enforces. Decentralized platforms are always federated, and on top of that have strong fault-tolerance, redundancy and democratic control mechanisms. This may be enforced by a protocol, or it may also be enforced by the people (the latter is highly unrealistic because human trust doesn't scale) So I'll revise my statement to: Mastodon is not decentralized by default, but at least it is federated.
- ceejayoz 4y agoIs there a form of decentralization not prone to this? Blockchain certainly seems to trend towards "cartels of giant centralized providers".