cross-posted from: https://hachyderm.io/users/maegul/statuses/111820598712013429
Is decentralised federated social media over engineered?
Can’t get this brain fart out of my head.
What would the simplest, FOSS, alternative look like and would it be worth it?
Quick thoughts:
* FOSS platforms intended to be big single servers, but dedicated to …
* Shared/Single Sign On
* Easy cross posting
* Enabling and building universal Multi-platform clients.
* Unlike email, supporting small serversNo duplication/federation/protocol required, just software.
Usenet?
I do not know enough about how Usenet worked apart from picking up the impression that much of what was done there is being reinvented in the fedi (however accurate that is).
For me, the commitment to having good aggregating and unifying clients, and the commitment to open APIs that would necessitate, is pretty central to my suggestion. Not sure how much of that was in the usenet system (though probably more than I’m aware!).
Usenet servers had no web UI since the web was not yet invented. They ONLY provided an API and the presentation layer was done completely by the client. There were dozens of client programs people used, maybe 100s. Clients handled all features like subscriptions, tracking read articles, boosting or blocking topics or users, etc. So in that regard it was much more private for users. The servers were computers 1000x slower than a modern mobile phone. So yes, Lemmy seems overbuilt.
Well yea, part of my thinking here is whether all the work of federation, from building the software, debugging and testing it (which AFAICT is a huge pain in the ass) and then actually running it as a job … is actually worth it … when users could very well be happy with something much simpler and the mission of creating a more open, safe and “billionaire proof” social web easier to achieve with something more straightforward.
Usenet had a counterpart to federation in that posts got automatically propagated between servers. I haven’t read the Wikipedia article about it but that might be a good place to start if you want to learn about it. Being a server admin did require some ongoing effort, just like with Lemmy.