Conversation

Notices

1. Aral Balkan (aral)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Sep-2018 12:16:35 CEST Aral Balkan

   Dear Fediverse,

   Soon, some venture capitalist will put $5 million into a startup that offers free fediverse accounts with unlimited storage, etc.

   Unless every other instance instantly blocks such a service from Day 1, you can kiss your fediverse goodbye and say hello to a new Gmail. Once network effects kick in, they will make the rules.

   It _can_ happen here but you have an opportunity to kill it before it does.

   #centralisation #fediverse

   • Aral Balkan (aral)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Sep-2018 12:20:59 CEST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Eugen

     Here’s an idea: form a voluntary “Fediverse Code” that limits the size of instances to a small number. Say 100 or, at most 1,000. Any instances larger than that size are blocked.

     The mega-instances we have today, like .social, voluntarily agree to cull their numbers over a period of time; aiding the migration to other instances.

     The fediverse is already hugely centralised and unless we do something about it, it will be ruled by a handful of feudal lords/Mini-Jacks.

     CC @Gargron

   • pinkprius (pinkprius)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Sep-2018 12:24:29 CEST pinkprius

     in reply to

     @aral if you are talking active users I agree.

   • Aral Balkan (aral)'s status on Tuesday, 04-Sep-2018 12:35:14 CEST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Eugen

     @Gargron Another problem with #MegaInstances is that development begins to favour their form, needs, and resources. Hence we have heavyweight components like Elastic Search that mega instances can implement but which are nigh-on impossible for individual instances to support. So we now have two classes of nodes and the feature disparity will further exasperate the trend towards centralised nodes. Remember that it was superior search + “free” hosting made Gmail what it is today.