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This is a weird take. It’s not practical for everyone to self host and if you don’t do that you’re not really decentralized (eg. Gmail account lockouts). Socia

This is a weird take. It’s not practical for everyone to self host and if you don’t do that you’re not really decentralized (eg. Gmail account lockouts). Social media handle ownership is normally pretty stable and reliable because otherwise they wouldn’t be able retain users. The odd account repossession is a very low probability event compared to ATO or other type of lockout. What makes this case unique is that the rebranding of Twitter was random and shockingly brand destructive. I happen to know Gene X (he’s a well known and beloved photographer in SF) and as soon the announcement was made we all immediately guessed this would be the outcome. Annoying yes, but also not a failure mode to optimize against.

_aavaa_ 3y ago
> It’s not practical for everyone to self host It's not practical given the current state of the software stack. > Annoying yes, but also not a failure mode to optimize against. The failure mode in question is being a digital sharecropper and not owning anything, even your persona. And that is a failure mode very much worth optimising against.
kalleboo 3y ago
It's an inconvenient take, but [Stallman(strikeout)]/[Corey Doctorow] was right, the shittification is real. It's been really nice letting VC funding pay for people with no money or technical knowledge participate, and I don't want to be an "Eternal September" gatekeeper, but every platform like this has it's glory day when it's happiness and rainbows, and then one day, we need to maximize profits, and it all goes to shit when we need to MONETIZE MONETIZE MONETIZE. We need to figure out some model where people have ownership of their identity instead of selling it to some "free as in beer" corporation. This also goes for all the "Google deleted my gmail which I use for 2FA because I uploaded a video of my kids birthday party with copyright music in the background" type worries Back in the late 90's in my European country, the post office had a vision of giving everyone their e-mail identity (verified by sending a post card to their address). Then the post office got privatized. We need more non-VC, non-Unicorn thinking like these (not necessarily giving power to governments...)

_aavaa_ 3y ago

> It’s not practical for everyone to self host It's not practical given the current state of the software stack. > Annoying yes, but also not a failure mode to optimize against. The failure mode in question is being a digital sharecropper and not owning anything, even your persona. And that is a failure mode very much worth optimising against.

kalleboo 3y ago

It's an inconvenient take, but [Stallman(strikeout)]/[Corey Doctorow] was right, the shittification is real. It's been really nice letting VC funding pay for people with no money or technical knowledge participate, and I don't want to be an "Eternal September" gatekeeper, but every platform like this has it's glory day when it's happiness and rainbows, and then one day, we need to maximize profits, and it all goes to shit when we need to MONETIZE MONETIZE MONETIZE. We need to figure out some model where people have ownership of their identity instead of selling it to some "free as in beer" corporation. This also goes for all the "Google deleted my gmail which I use for 2FA because I uploaded a video of my kids birthday party with copyright music in the background" type worries Back in the late 90's in my European country, the post office had a vision of giving everyone their e-mail identity (verified by sending a post card to their address). Then the post office got privatized. We need more non-VC, non-Unicorn thinking like these (not necessarily giving power to governments...)