11mo ago

An evidence-based and critical analysis of the Fediverse decentralization promises

Lemmy mentioned＼( °□° )／

5 comments

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.