For those who do not see a problem when admins from the fediverse block entire instances from communicating with theirs, here's something: I have a Peertube and a Friendica instance. Thousands of users in total. If anyone decides to cut the connection with us (now or in the future) I will have no clue about that. The users will have no clue. Not those on my instances or on theirs. No one is notified of anything. We might be blocked already, I have no idea.
Let that sink in.
If you call this decentralization then you have to tune it down to: centralized and dispersed communications that are handled and managed by a few. We have multiple Facebooks with multiple Zuckys. It is better than FB by a lot, but this is not in any sense true decentralization, as long as a tiny fraction of people (the ones able and willing to have instances) are deciding for the rest of the users.
We need each user to be their own broadcaster without any middleman. No servers. No admins. You should be able to connect to whoever you want, and no one but you or the other part of the conversation, to interrupt that communication. Period.
And no, it is not viable for everyone to have their own Mastodon. Meaning a server, install and manage it, etc.. That's ridiculous. Will never happen.
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Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •The problem with pure peer to peer is that it means everyone needs to be an server admin. Few people want to deal with those headaches. Few people want to learn even basic beginner's server administration.
Web based client-server applications offload the server headaches onto someone else. Federated platforms offer at least some choice, by making it practical to choose a friendly server admin without somehow also convincing everyone else you care about to also switch.
The bottom line is that pure peer-to-peer systems remain a very obscure niche, while diaspora and Mastodon have demonstrated sustained popularity over time.
Tio
in reply to Isaac Kuo • •Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •There's no such thing as "magic happens". Someone has to be administering security on the device.
I'm not familiar with Jami or Manyverse, but Scuttlebutt is a great example of something that's been going nowhere fast.
People like using web based applications because they don't have to install anything. They don't have to worry about figuring out software updates, or managing firewall settings, or security keys. Someone else figures out certificates and identity authentication, and discovery.
And discovery is the real rub. Scuttlebutt isn't pure peer-to-peer, of course. Discovery needs to be handled by pub servers with permanent IP addresses and a more serious server admin and such.
A true peer-to-peer system wouldn't have pubs like that. But how do you make it work? And how do you make it something people will actually want to use?
When it comes right down to it, people are more comfortable with letting that server take care of things, like in diaspora or Mastodon. The half-hearted way Scuttlebutt does things gives you the headaches of both client-server and peer-to-peer.
Tio
in reply to Isaac Kuo • •You mean on your device? Yeah, that's the user :).
Actually most people use "apps" nowadays. Whatsapp, Instagram, FB, and so forth. They do insatll them and it is fast.
That's why you have to make the setup easy. Jami does a good job at it. Try it.
Yeah that's why these are not ready yet. But it can be solved with nodes and such.
Similar maybe to how the Bittorrent network works.
Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •"Most people use 'apps' nowadays. Whatsapp, Instagram, FB, and so forth."
Haha. Interesting that you list three commercial for profit centralized systems, all owned by the same person and all for profit for the same person.
The apps you speak of cost money, because they're put into for-profit closed gardens like iOS and Google Play. The ones administering the security on those devices are Apple and Google. It costs them a lot of money to do this. In return, they get lots of profits from their closed garden app stores.
This is a pay-for-play tradeoff, which people accept because they prefer someone else to handle that stuff even at the cost of money, freedom, privacy, and security.
And even if they didn't accept that tradeoff, what choice do they have? If you want to make and receive phone calls, you're basically forced into iOS or Android.
Anyway, you're never going to see a true peer-to-peer system on something like that. It's quintessentially part of a for-profit closed garden system, so anything that doesn't fit in with their centralized con
... Show more..."Most people use 'apps' nowadays. Whatsapp, Instagram, FB, and so forth."
Haha. Interesting that you list three commercial for profit centralized systems, all owned by the same person and all for profit for the same person.
The apps you speak of cost money, because they're put into for-profit closed gardens like iOS and Google Play. The ones administering the security on those devices are Apple and Google. It costs them a lot of money to do this. In return, they get lots of profits from their closed garden app stores.
This is a pay-for-play tradeoff, which people accept because they prefer someone else to handle that stuff even at the cost of money, freedom, privacy, and security.
And even if they didn't accept that tradeoff, what choice do they have? If you want to make and receive phone calls, you're basically forced into iOS or Android.
Anyway, you're never going to see a true peer-to-peer system on something like that. It's quintessentially part of a for-profit closed garden system, so anything that doesn't fit in with their centralized control and profit system gets pulled from the app store.
In contrast, Linux, Windows, and MacOS allow any third parties to run software completely outside of the control of a closed garden. It's possible to publish true open source freeware on these platforms, with anyone distributing their own software. But this comes at a price. For most people, who are only familiar with Windows and maybe MacOS, this means a lot of bizarre headaches trying to figure out software updates, as well as figuring out whose download site to trust. And you just have to trust that whatever mechanism is used for software updates, the ones in charge are on the ball with security updates. Hopefully. With the major Linux distributions, it's different, but bluntly most people aren't using Linux.
Tio
in reply to Isaac Kuo • •Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •I don't mean that commercial apps should be p2p.
I mean that an open source freeware p2p can't make it on iOS or Google Play because of the money Apple and Google demand to be in their closed gardens.
Anyway, Scuttlebutt isn't pure peer-to-peer as I noted. In order to actually find anyone else, you need to rely upon fixed IP servers just like diaspora or Mastodon pods. It's completely reliant on the same sort of servers and server admins as diaspora/Mastodon pod servers anyway, just with extra client install requirements.
So, there's not actually any benefit, and significant down side.
Surprise, surprise, Scuttlebutt is a tiny niche compared to diaspora or Mastodon's user base.
If you have some idea of how to make true peer-to-peer work within the existing way the internet works ... well, that would be amazing. As it is, the problem may be intractable.
Tio
in reply to Isaac Kuo • •Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •It is different, certainly, but in ways that are reasons why Mastodon is popular and Scuttlebutt is not.
People don't like hosting all the content locally. People don't like needing to have their own server connected 24/7 with bandwidth consumed by others (often costing them a lot of money). People don't like having their IP address published in public.
Tio
in reply to Isaac Kuo • •Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •Well, what can be done to make them popular?
I honestly don't know.
I remember that early on, diaspora was complex and confusing to people, who were largely using Facebook at the time. This complexity and confusion prevented a lot of people from switching over, but enough people gave it a shot anyway because of dissatisfaction with Facebook and a lack of other mature alternatives.
With Mastodon, its popularity was driven by ease of moving from Twitter to Mastodon. It had some interoperability, at least for a critical time for Mastodon to become popular enough on its own.
These two cases are pretty different, but a commonality is mass migration from a popular commercial platform.
Do you envision something similar?
Tio
in reply to Isaac Kuo • •