How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

Niello@kbin.social to Technology@beehaw.org – 192 points – How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)
ploum.net

A warning and a perspective from an insider who has been through this before.

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Well, isn't that sort of mentioned in the article?

If fediverse development slows down e.g. because adoption of inofficial Facebook extensions takes time it will harm the whole platform. Not by directly taking away users but by blocking progress.

I don't think the Fediverse is small enough for this to be a serious concern. Especially once multiple companies (Tumblr?) are invested in the fediverse I don't see this happening anymore.

Well, isn’t that sort of mentioned in the article?

It was the expressed purpose of the article. I don't know what they're on about. Maybe they didn't read it or just skimmed it.

I'm usually one who doesn't buy into conspiracy theories; however, at this point I believe the Reddit protests actually (I hate this meme) broke the internet.

Reddit was the "idiot cousin that causes minimum annoyance occasionally, that hasn't really hurt the advertising line much" for so long, that they all became dependent on the free, moderated, and literal fact checked by people it effects data for so long. That now, after the last weeks, of all the deleting, rewriting, restoring, rewriting, restoring, and rewriting again that all their cached data, and reddits "current" data is now worthless.

The super funny thing is, all the AI's are still pulling data from reddit, they are going to have to cull and sanitize all data and every connection to it, and can also never trust it again... Because many many many people actually care about being part of a community, and will continue to modify/poison their previous comments to keep corps and their mindless "AI" from their "OWNED CONTENT."

Yes I read that and explained why I don't think its relevant. Facebook can't slow down progress on the fediverse because:

  1. progress is already slow. The fediverse has been in development for 15 years and still is a clunky, niche network and likely will always be less polished than large corporate networks.
  2. Every developer on the fediverse is aware of the EEE playbook and next to none of them will try to remain compatible with any corporate extensions.
  1. What do you mean? Progress is already slow so any additional slow down will seriously harm the fediverse precisely because of the limited resources IMHO.
  2. I'm not quite as optimistic as you but yeah, I don't think it will be easy for Facebook and if they misjudge it they will end up making a competitor stronger by bringing more attention to it.

But #1 is predicated on #2. If developers are aware of the risk of EEE, then they won't try to remain compatible with Meta extensions, which means development of the open AP ecosystem will continue at the same pace.

Okay, sure. Still a bit skeptical about point 2 but we will see.