[ngrilly]

> The major upside (for me) to federated systems is simple: choice. Choice over the client you use. Choice over the servers you use.

With a centralized system, you cannot choose the servers you use, but you can still choose the client, if the procotol is open and versioned.

As explained in Moxie's post, being able to choose the servers you use doesn't help if all servers use the exact same protocol with the exact same features, frozen in time.

> The reason I think that things like email and SMS are still so prevalent is how you don't need to care what service the other people are on, you don't need to worry about how other people are going to talk to you, it all just works.

You're right, people continue to use email and SMS because they are available everywhere. But people also use things like Facebook, Skype or WhatsApp because of email and SMS limitations.

[mcepl]

With Signal you cannot even choose a repository from which to download its client. You either give your credentials to Google, or you are out of luck.