* Pedro Lucas Porcellis <[email protected]> [2020-11-03 19:19]: > On Tue, Nov 03, 2020 at 11:03:07AM +0300, Jean Louis wrote: > > Mastodon, GNU Social, Pleroma or any federated social network can > > become centralized with a lot of money. Once user base is gained, the > > network can be centralized. Both Google and Facebook users could > > communicate back in time through their chat. They have used the XMPP > > in first time. Facebook user could send email to Google user. Google > > user could send email to Facebook user. They could chat between > > networks. People who did not subscribe neither to Google or to > > Facebook could chat to both of them by using XMPP network. > > > > So those large social networks DID start as pretty much federalized > > networks! If I remember well their pages were also pretty much open, > > and not closed to non-members. > > That centralization exists today. https://mastodon.social is the bigger > instance, filled with people all around the world and basically the > "default" instance people sign up for.
> The thing is, ActivityPub (i.e. the protocol) is a standard under > the W3C. Also, most of the implementations are licensed under AGPL > (Pleroma, Mastodon, PeerTube). So that sort of centralization > doesn't have much impact today. Not because of of activity pub or standards. It is because Fediverse is not (yet) commercialized to gather larger user base. Fediverse is also full of problems, they distribute among administrators on how to block specific instances. I do not agree with that. Exactly that path is leading again to whatever censorships and new centralizations. For example many instances want to block gab.com instance. On the other hand if we get many users in the Fediverse maybe this becomes significant for proprietary centralized networks and maybe they also start opening themselves. > > Exactly same thing can take place with Fediverse network. Any company > > is free to advertise and gain user base, once they gain large user > > base it becomes familiar to others and your friends and family will be > > telling you about that website. You will then listen to friends and > > family and despite having your fediverse account somewhere else, you > > may sign up for this or other special feature or reason on their > > network. And so will do millions of others. Sooner or later the > > company may block the outside Fediverse and centralize its users. > > Again, that can't happen. Even if a company so desire to enter the > competition, we're in a federated network, therefore I *can* use my > instance to talk with that company's instance. *That's* wy federation > is a really good take on those sort of problems. Some instances are blocking other instances that is open way to centralize. Then I gave example of Facebook using email, it happened that they abolished email. There was example with XMPP for Facebook and Google, both abolished XMPP. If Mastodon apps can start blocking some instance for nonsense reasons, then it can also happen that instance centralizes and block other instances. Even to change the protocol. Software is free, right? Finally those protocols were not specifically made for federation, they allow closed networks. I have been installing few instances. There are options for closed networks or for public networks. When company large enough gathers large user base they may decide to do what they want and large user base will remain with that company. Some will go, majority will stay. Facebook is good example and Google, although I think Google is failing with social networking. > > If company would be providing free software messenger and hosting free > > software servers with the transparent and safe peer to peer > > encryption, without abusing users' privacy and selling their > > information, I do not think that centralization itself would be > > problem there. > > A company would not do that. It's not profitable. And a basic thing for > a company to operate is to have some sort of profit. Profit would be from provision of service. Just as from provision of email and website hosting there are profits. Hosting companies are free to employ such let us say XMPP accounts or Fediverse accounts or anything. If demand becomes high you will see that taking place. They sell for example Wordpress, why? It became so popular that people are asking for it, hosting companies are following what became popular. They sell emails traditionally and webmail services. Before just few years it was not possible to open up VPS instance with major providers by providing my own image. Now it is possible, many providers allow us to upload any operating system we want. This is because people were asking for that. > There is only free software politics for GNU and no other > Any movement is somewhere down the line, political itself. The GNU > project cannot be apolitical, because it is confronting the common sense > and therefore posing questions that it doesn't exist or didn't matter > until them. Politics is way more than "regular good-old liberal > politics". It envolves acting, thinking, questioning, being critical > about what is being throw at us. > > What I'm trying to say is that the Free Software Mov. is a entrance to > question deeper and beyond. De-centralization *and* free software is bad > for companies that want to exploit users. They're holding hands, not > apart. To clarify it for GNU better, see: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html where it says: Please don't raise unrelated political issues in GNU Project discussions, because they are off-topic. The only political positions that the GNU Project endorses are (1) that users should have control of their own computing (for instance, through free software) and (2) supporting basic human rights in computing. We don't require you as a contributor to agree with these two points, but you do need to accept that our decisions will be based on them. and The GNU Project encourages contributions from anyone who wishes to advance the development of the GNU system, regardless of gender, race, ethnic group, physical appearance, religion, cultural background, and any other demographic characteristics, as well as personal political views. If GNU project would discuss politics beyond free software we would be dividing people for no good reason. That is beauty of it. Beyond GNU project there are sets of groups of free software and they may do different politics. I just give reference for GNU project. -- There are 43 messages yet in my incoming mailbox. _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
