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Im confused. You can already set up your own fediverse server, just as you can host your own personal blog. Decentralization is just a parameter of how many pe

Im confused. You can already set up your own fediverse server, just as you can host your own personal blog. Decentralization is just a parameter of how many people choose to join an existing server or create their own.

godelski 3y ago
The problem with fediverse style setups is that they tend to become highly centralized. Email being a great example. It's often pointed to as a perfect example of federation but naive because when highly centralized it only slightly reduces issues of full centralization. So the question is how you be federated while being highly decentralized. This of course isn't important for everything. Centralization can even be good at times. But an example might be like browsers. Technically anyone can run their own. But since the ecosystem is so Chrom{e,ium} based, Google can exert a lot of control over what standards are set on webpages and how to process data. You might have heard about them trying to destroy the cookie. Which in part I feel is great, but at the same time it's not like they aren't still tracking people. Either way, the point is that a singular (or even a few) compan{y,ies} shouldn't get to dictate critical infrastructure. This can actually even lead to fragmentation, especially when we consider that more than one country exists. So it has to be easy, near trivial, to run your own server, and must also be cheap, if you want a highly decentralized platform. If it isn't, there's always a strong pressure for centralization.
- lorean_victor 3y ago
  exactly.
- andoando 3y ago
  Sure, whats fundamentally difficult about setting up a federated instance? Its just a db, and backend/frontend service. You can put in a docker container and run it in minutes. Things tend to get centralized because users want to be where users are. Developing another platform doesn't change that. Even if that platform just straight up does not allow centralization, it doesn't stop people from using centralized platforms.
  - godelski 3y ago
    Try setting up a Matrix server[0]. Or Mastadon[1]. This isn't hard for people like you and me, or probably most of HN. But it is difficult for the public. It is hard to set up. It is hard to keep up. It's costly. I think maybe a good comparison is to PGP. PGP's greatest flaw was that you could reply back that you couldn't decrypt and the sender would resend the message decrypted. Encryption hasn't made its way into the mainstream until companies like Signal showed it could be easy, and then it was picked up by WhatsApp and iMessage. I'm with you that it isn't "hard", but you need to recognize that this is a comparative word and that not everyone is like us. [0] https://matrix.org/ecosystem/servers/ https://matrix.org/ecosystem/servers/ [1] https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/
    - lorean_victor 3y ago
      even for me, as a long time software engineer (who has worked devops before cloud and docker times), its not "hard" but it is "non-trivial" and can get "costly", while publishing my static blog is waay waaay easier (and hence doable). I mean look at email again. how many people, even technically proficient people, setup their own email server? we've mostly just accepted google's dominance in the area and are ok with them even leveraging it to impose sometimes ridiculous rules of who can send email to whom and how it will be presented. why should the fediverse end up differently, if the basics are quite similar (if not a bit more complicated)?
    - andoando 3y ago
      Those issues just seem like a matter of creating the tooling for it no? Setting up a blog was difficult when you had to get your own computer hardware, setup the networking, install the software and run it 24/7. Now its just hosted somewhere with a click of a button. Nothing about a federated instance is fundamentally any more challenging than setting up any other service. Looks like its available here as a managed instance https://elest.io/open-source/lemmy https://elest.io/open-source/lemmy Anyway, I think the bigger issue here is most users simply don't have the need to. I was big into this whole "lets decentralize the internet, screw these big corps". I setup a lemmy instance, then just forgot about it entirely. What the hell am I going to do with it?

godelski 3y ago

The problem with fediverse style setups is that they tend to become highly centralized. Email being a great example. It's often pointed to as a perfect example of federation but naive because when highly centralized it only slightly reduces issues of full centralization. So the question is how you be federated while being highly decentralized. This of course isn't important for everything. Centralization can even be good at times. But an example might be like browsers. Technically anyone can run their own. But since the ecosystem is so Chrom{e,ium} based, Google can exert a lot of control over what standards are set on webpages and how to process data. You might have heard about them trying to destroy the cookie. Which in part I feel is great, but at the same time it's not like they aren't still tracking people. Either way, the point is that a singular (or even a few) compan{y,ies} shouldn't get to dictate critical infrastructure. This can actually even lead to fragmentation, especially when we consider that more than one country exists. So it has to be easy, near trivial, to run your own server, and must also be cheap, if you want a highly decentralized platform. If it isn't, there's always a strong pressure for centralization.

lorean_victor 3y ago
exactly.
andoando 3y ago
Sure, whats fundamentally difficult about setting up a federated instance? Its just a db, and backend/frontend service. You can put in a docker container and run it in minutes. Things tend to get centralized because users want to be where users are. Developing another platform doesn't change that. Even if that platform just straight up does not allow centralization, it doesn't stop people from using centralized platforms.
- godelski 3y ago
  Try setting up a Matrix server[0]. Or Mastadon[1]. This isn't hard for people like you and me, or probably most of HN. But it is difficult for the public. It is hard to set up. It is hard to keep up. It's costly. I think maybe a good comparison is to PGP. PGP's greatest flaw was that you could reply back that you couldn't decrypt and the sender would resend the message decrypted. Encryption hasn't made its way into the mainstream until companies like Signal showed it could be easy, and then it was picked up by WhatsApp and iMessage. I'm with you that it isn't "hard", but you need to recognize that this is a comparative word and that not everyone is like us. [0] https://matrix.org/ecosystem/servers/ https://matrix.org/ecosystem/servers/ [1] https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/run-your-own/
  - lorean_victor 3y ago
    even for me, as a long time software engineer (who has worked devops before cloud and docker times), its not "hard" but it is "non-trivial" and can get "costly", while publishing my static blog is waay waaay easier (and hence doable). I mean look at email again. how many people, even technically proficient people, setup their own email server? we've mostly just accepted google's dominance in the area and are ok with them even leveraging it to impose sometimes ridiculous rules of who can send email to whom and how it will be presented. why should the fediverse end up differently, if the basics are quite similar (if not a bit more complicated)?
  - andoando 3y ago
    Those issues just seem like a matter of creating the tooling for it no? Setting up a blog was difficult when you had to get your own computer hardware, setup the networking, install the software and run it 24/7. Now its just hosted somewhere with a click of a button. Nothing about a federated instance is fundamentally any more challenging than setting up any other service. Looks like its available here as a managed instance https://elest.io/open-source/lemmy https://elest.io/open-source/lemmy Anyway, I think the bigger issue here is most users simply don't have the need to. I was big into this whole "lets decentralize the internet, screw these big corps". I setup a lemmy instance, then just forgot about it entirely. What the hell am I going to do with it?