Yes!
#Fediverse is not fully decentralized; it's centralized around instances. Recentralized if you will.
This actually matters practically as it's caused issues, for example with the traffic surges as the centralized servers around the internet reach out for page previews to cache all at once.
And in the debates over defederation.
#ActivityPub is not a decentralized system design, although it could have been, and I think some opportunities were missed there.
@volkris @SrRochardBunson It's decentralized in the sense that not one single entity owns it. It's also decentralized in that it builds duplication of content across multiple servers.
It still depends on server/client architecture -- so it's not *completely* decentralized, and there's opportunities for recentralization.
Nevertheless, it's a step in the right direction.
It's a huge leap forward, IMO.
6 months ago I thought that I had to make a choice between a modern life and being beholden to #billionaires.
Chris, #JohnMastodon and the #Fediverse have shown that I don't have to make that choice.
Fediverse*: have your cake and eat it, too.
*billionaire-free
@SrRochardBunson @atomicpoet @volkris Hell yeah! Whenever I get a little frustrated with this place I remember that it's open source and I've gained the freedom of no being beholden to billionaires of any kind. I gave money to my admins to keep my instance running. It's...democracy in action. I love it.
@Tweetfiction @atomicpoet @volkris
Absolutely! 💯 %
No #billionaire control.
No #algorithms.
No ads.
Yes to the #Fediverse
!
@SrRochardBunson @Tweetfiction @atomicpoet The thing is, when you say Absolutely 100%.... Well, it's not actually absolute around here. That's just the marketing.
In reality, there IS an algorithm. "Show the firehose in chronological order" *is* an algorithm, just a particularly dumb one, for better or worse.
And it can be taken advantage of to, for example, show ads. Which this platform is happy to support.
This is not the absolute utopia it's being presented as, and it's kind of important not to paper over the major downsides of this platform, especially as it comes to privacy.
@zbecker @volkris @SrRochardBunson @Tweetfiction Like it or not, certain words take on different meanings over time. When people use the word "algo" or "algorithm", what they typically mean is "relevancy algorithm".
This happens with many words, in fact. "Crypto" is a good example of this.
@volkris @SrRochardBunson @Tweetfiction @atomicpoet
Tbf most non tech people assume the word algorithm means something special.
In reality it is just the implementation of something.
Or my personal favorite definition: the word a programmer uses when he can't be asked to explain (I am guilty of this)