Very fun and interesting read, I wonder how the distribution of users among instances is today.
Not much difference in distribution of users. There are a lot more instances to choose from. But a large number of users are on the main instance. For example in the case of mastodon, most of the user base is still on https://mastodon.online and mastodon.social.
https://matrix.org has the same problem. There are basically millions (I need to find the source for this number, I remember seeing it mentioned somewhere) of users on this instance and not even a number close to this on other servers.
No one wants to talk to an empty room. That’s why I joined this Lemmy instance.
Very clickbaity title. The article doesn’t conclude federation is bad, just that pursuing the ideal at all costs is a losing battle. Things naturally centralize, so we might as well make the big centre democratic. Wikipedia is fraught with problems and outside influence, but it’s a good example of democratic centralization I guess. Mastodon is still better for allowing federation with the big instances though.
Lots of good points here. I haven’t seen any successful federated platforms. One important thing the author forgets to mention is that these “centralized democratic systems” must be open source and self-hostable, which helps to keep their operators on their toes knowing that they are replaceable.
What I hoped for out of federation is the old internet paradigms in which platforms thereby power is fleeting. Regular revolution was expected in other words platforms had a short life expectancy. Trust really was thin as well. While we may have been rather naive in trusting the random guy running a forum out of his garage was nothing more than appearances. Even then there still held a tenuous level of trust in anybody. The userbase would all pack up and leave in an instant. Power used to be fragile and it was good.
In the latest example with Twitch being entirely compromised probably would have sunk the company in yesteryear. Today it’s but a momentary blip.
Btw Rosenzweig is some how mentally/intellectually 10 years older than she actually is. Incredible.
