> but they're still unusable by the average internet user yep that asymmetry is deep-seated. but decentralized serving does not need to be extreme. I can imagi

> but they're still unusable by the average internet user yep that asymmetry is deep-seated. but decentralized serving does not need to be extreme. I can imagine e.g. geographically local (e.g. city-level) infrastructure hosting - supported maybe by local taxes like a utility - and people using wordpress enhanced with activitypub. Between each user doing self-publishing and all users being captive in one gigantic data-mining and humiliatingly abusive platform there are literally billions of options. > most people don't care about their data, privacy, etc., and just want to consume content This is something that is repeated a lot (also here on HN) and of course at some very basic level it is true. If the negative impact of current designs was obvious we would not have the nightmare we drifted into. But it is a rather simplistic take on how things work with technology adoption, regulation of business behavior, markets etc. E.g. people didn't not care about ozone layer depletion, they were probably completely unaware of it. That's why we have experts and regulators and institutions to advise the general population about what is safe and in their interest. In the case of the ozone layer, laws were passed. Substances were banned. Substitutes invented. The planet and our skin was saved. We moved on to the next existential risk. The same playbook has repeated countless times. People generally assume that the system works to protect them and that is not a totally wrong assumption. If everybody moved fast and broke things modern society would quickly collapse. Yet notice that nobody of authority ever warned users not to use these platforms. In fact the opposite. In what is unthinkable and unprecedented collusion, most public sector entities actively advertise them, by being in these platforms, providing links to them etc. What has happened in this space is that a major social contract has been violated. Politicians, in a combination of ineptitude ("We run ads, senator") and capture have acquiesced to this drift. This has played out for so long that people who are aware of what is happening are exhausted and defeatist. We should not give up though. This is important stuff.