An interesting article I saw (from 2019) describing the potential intrinsic tendency for decentralized platforms to collapse into de facto centralized ones.

Author identifies two extremes, “information dictatorship” and “information anarchy”, and the flaws of each, as well as a third option “information democracy” to try and capture the best aspects of decentralization while eschewing the worst.

Someone said the link is broken so here it is: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html

  • naura
    4•10 months ago

    Basically it said to be a true decentralized system people have to be spread equally through the system so the power distribution is equal and not concentrated on one part of the system.

    So mastodon is not truly decentralized because a lot of the users are on 3 instances. Also that’s where the fallacy lies - because people choose to be part of the larger instances

    As long as the technology is not accessible to everyone from old folks to 5 year olds, the power is concentrated to those who understand and maintain it.