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"Being at will of a server" is always a problem, but with federation you can choose which server you are at the will of. You still need trust, but that trust ca

by rtpg 2y ago

"Being at will of a server" is always a problem, but with federation you can choose which server you are at the will of. You still need trust, but that trust can be chosen by you based off of your needs (and that trust can be placed in yourself). You're on a different part of the trust gradient. Meanwhile there's a certain quality of service that can be obtained with "mere" federation that is much tougher for many decentralized strategies. The actual topology matters, but federation is a pretty decent model IMO! There's a reason that e-mail has been so useful as a system for so long!

lifthrasiir 2y ago
And the federation also made the spam email problem a lot worse ;-) Anyhow, federation should be seen as a part of specific strategy for decentralization; federation itself is not decentralization and cannot achieve it without more bits---like topological consideration. Many federated protocols tend to push those bits into the horizon and fail at scale when that horizon eventually approaches, while ATProto is at least explicitly constructed with eventual decentralization in the mind and seems to be fine for now. Mastodon will need to prove much more than ATProto in order to show that it's capable for eventual decentralization in contrast.
- davexunit 2y ago
  Saying the fediverse is not decentralized is a wild take.
  - lifthrasiir 2y ago
    My assumption is that the fediverse is seek to replicate what was already possible in the centralized manner---a large-scale social network in this case. Mastodon is of course decentralized by nature, but but it is not yet a decentralized social network under my assumption because it doesn't fully demonstrate a large-scale social network right now. To be clear, neither does ATProto/BlueSky right now! But scaling a social network is shown to be hard even without decentralization and it seems more likely that Mastodon would hit the scaling issue earlier than ATProto. That's what I meant by "capable for eventual decentralization". One particularly visible weakness of Mastodon is that there is no working and efficient mechanism to operate on the entire network. Searching and algorithmic feed [1] would be major features affected by this weakness. I know some consider this to be intentional, but if that's true then Mastodon can't be really said to replicate a social network at all. It is yet another matter whether such features are warranted or not, but if we believe that something like a worldwide social network should exist, then we don't yet have a clear answer that a social network without such features would be technically or socially scalable to that extent, so not being able to fully replicate an existing social network is important enough to consider. [1] This includes trivial feeds like all posts from my followers, because in my knowledge a large number of follows is not really scalable in Mastodon.
llm_trw 2y ago
We've gone from digital totalitarianism to digital feudalism. This does not seem like an improvement.
- Terr_ 2y ago
  Perhaps manorialism rather than feudalism, which implies certain bidirectional duties. It may not be a huge improvement when identities and posts can't be migrated, but it's still an incremental one.
  - rtpg 2y ago
    While I don't really know about posts being migrated, identities at least can be migrated in the common circumstance of someone simply wanting to change providers and the old host being willing to hold onto the "moved" record for long enough
- rtpg 2y ago
  I don't think that is correct? You can spin up your own instance and do stuff on it. The fact that some people want to share their resources isn't feudalism.

by rtpg 2y ago

lifthrasiir 2y ago

And the federation also made the spam email problem a lot worse ;-) Anyhow, federation should be seen as a part of specific strategy for decentralization; federation itself is not decentralization and cannot achieve it without more bits---like topological consideration. Many federated protocols tend to push those bits into the horizon and fail at scale when that horizon eventually approaches, while ATProto is at least explicitly constructed with eventual decentralization in the mind and seems to be fine for now. Mastodon will need to prove much more than ATProto in order to show that it's capable for eventual decentralization in contrast.

davexunit 2y ago
Saying the fediverse is not decentralized is a wild take.
- lifthrasiir 2y ago
  My assumption is that the fediverse is seek to replicate what was already possible in the centralized manner---a large-scale social network in this case. Mastodon is of course decentralized by nature, but but it is not yet a decentralized social network under my assumption because it doesn't fully demonstrate a large-scale social network right now. To be clear, neither does ATProto/BlueSky right now! But scaling a social network is shown to be hard even without decentralization and it seems more likely that Mastodon would hit the scaling issue earlier than ATProto. That's what I meant by "capable for eventual decentralization". One particularly visible weakness of Mastodon is that there is no working and efficient mechanism to operate on the entire network. Searching and algorithmic feed [1] would be major features affected by this weakness. I know some consider this to be intentional, but if that's true then Mastodon can't be really said to replicate a social network at all. It is yet another matter whether such features are warranted or not, but if we believe that something like a worldwide social network should exist, then we don't yet have a clear answer that a social network without such features would be technically or socially scalable to that extent, so not being able to fully replicate an existing social network is important enough to consider. [1] This includes trivial feeds like all posts from my followers, because in my knowledge a large number of follows is not really scalable in Mastodon.

llm_trw 2y ago

We've gone from digital totalitarianism to digital feudalism. This does not seem like an improvement.

Terr_ 2y ago
Perhaps manorialism rather than feudalism, which implies certain bidirectional duties. It may not be a huge improvement when identities and posts can't be migrated, but it's still an incremental one.
- rtpg 2y ago
  While I don't really know about posts being migrated, identities at least can be migrated in the common circumstance of someone simply wanting to change providers and the old host being willing to hold onto the "moved" record for long enough
rtpg 2y ago
I don't think that is correct? You can spin up your own instance and do stuff on it. The fact that some people want to share their resources isn't feudalism.