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Global search. Diaspora might have worked for you technically in the limited use-cases that you were using it for, but there are things Facebook can do that Diaspora couldn't have done (with non-shitty performance).

> It was merely not top-of-mind for the group I set it up for.

Some people make a big deal out of the "network effect" but they totally ignore how networks get going in the first place. It's the digital world, networks come and go all the time, overcoming the network effect is not a magical process. You offer more features than competitors and target people that have greater influence in the network.

It's for sure an uphill battle and this is one of the motivations of creating decentralised networks in the first place - to reduce network effects, to avoid these barriers to entry and these influences that make society's inequalities worse. But obviously if one has a depressing attitude about the whole process of overcoming network effects, and talk shit about "it can't work", then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.