this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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How is mastodon not just a bunch of centralized platforms?
Sure the servers communicate with each other but the content is still just on one of them. Goes the server, so goes the content.
Or am I mistaking?
If it is like I say I feel it is more trading Hitler in for, potentially, a bunch of smaller Hitlers.
If something has hundreds of "centralised" platforms owned and run by a diversity of different people and spread all over the world geographically, then that's "decentralised".
I can't really think of another way in which something could be decentralised.
With ActivityPub, there's nothing stopping you hosting a server literally just for yourself. It wouldn't get much more decentralised than that.
IIRC the content is on multiple. If there's a single user on lemmy.world subscribing to content from somewhere.else's foo community, then foo will be synced to lemmy.world and if somewhere.else is taken down it will remain on lemmy.world.
But someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, it isn't just about servers going offline. If a single server does something bad, you can just switch to a different one and enjoy the same content you've been seeing.
Well, I am not a systems engineer to answer your question, in any case smaller Hitlers equals Hitlers with less power. Dividing power is not the definitive solution to authoritarianism, but it usually helps a lot, especially if the agents are also competitive. "If you are too Hitler, I'll go to this other server that is a little less so" is a valid incentive to avoid the Hitlerization of the admins.
I don't think I've ever used the name Hitler so much.
This is what decentralized means. If your home instance goes to shit, you can just move your account to another one.