An evidence-based and critical analysis of the Fediverse decentralization promises
An evidence-based and critical analysis of the Fediverse decentralization promises
This paper examines the potential of the Fediverse, a federated network of social media and content platforms, to counter the centralization and dominance of commercial platforms on the social Web. We gather evidence from the technology powering the Fediverse (especially the ActivityPub protocol), c...
Lemmy mentioned＼( °□° )／
Tl;dr - fediverse probably won't do too much, and it does have discoverability issues, along with migration issues
Another paper that equates not changing the world with being a complete failure.
A valid viewpoint, I suppose, but some Fedi-things have certainly improved my life, which really, is how these things work: you improve people's lives incrementally, and not by the hundreds of millions at once.
Of course, that means this is a complete failure because we won't accept anything other than massive global success as success anymore because... reasons?
Not only that but ... here we are. 🤷♂️
pretty brief paper though ngl, it doesn't do much
They define decentralisation as an even distribution of users? Or did I get that wrong skimming the paper?
This seems arbitrary. Mastodon is a decentralised network, no matter how big Mastodon.social is. Lemmy is equally decentralised, even though there's a dominant actor.
The other hubs in the network don't revolve around mastodon.social/lemmy.world. they connect to each other bilaterally - if the central hubs disappeared over night it wouldn't affect them all that much.
I think the notion that decentralised networks can't have hubs of varying sizes is plain wrong, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what decentralized means.