Genuine inquiry . Maybe I am not experienced enough with the various federated platforms but I am an avid user of matrix, and have dabbled in lemmy. From what I have seen is federation is on the path to decentralization but not fully there. It creates fiefdom, little kingdoms . Great yes you may find one that suites you better, but users now can end up isolated to their island, switch island sure but now you are isolated for the previous island and maybe others. Its stupid. On matrix you need to know the other island(server) to even find its rooms(communities). Some rooms block users from one server while others block users of other servers. You either have to run multiple accounts or accept the limits. Add in you are at the mercy of your home server, you can lose your account have it immitated, and more. The performance is horrible not sure why, but content is slow to update and spread. Matrix has the problem because of its design most people are on the matrix.org server and so the point of federation is largely lost. They are moving to p2p where it seems the solutions for federation now dont apply.

Anyway why is federation not stupid? Are these problems only with Matrix? Cause I look at lemmy and it seems far worse.

  • stackexterior
    12·
    3 years ago

    Y’all know the problem with the current shill, for-profit, centralized spy internet.

    Why was the internet in the past good, you ask? Because it was free. It had the good, bad and ugly, but it was free. Fediverse had everything to create a good Internet 2.0, but it failed. Rather than relying on users’ freedom to choose which instances they want to join, they listened to those who believe in censorship and limited freedom of speech.

    Now that the culture wars of those who believe in censorship have won and more people are using matrix.org will have the filtered experience, the isolated islands you’re talking about. Tearing apart the unique reason for federation. It may take several decades for a more mature platform to emerge without the same problems.

    At least it’s better than privacy alternatives, but it doesn’t scale in a free and ethical way.

    I bet my chips on the Gemini protocol, to be honest. Federation is not stupid. It was killed.

    Edit: Gemini