[doute]

> The solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social media.

That is certainly a problem and something should be addressed. But I don't think it is the root cause. The real tragedy is the lack of understanding that reality happens between the mainstream and the fringe.

Most of the technology we like was created in the second half of the 20th century. We have been standing on the shoulders of giant and eventually the giants got old and were replaced by self-serving large tech companies. But since most people are making money, or get things for free, we don't want to recognize that we are their servants. There is no longer any urgency to create something different, because being different means missing out.

The reason you have to go to esoteric solutions when talking about something like decentralization is because the Internet is no longer built for it. From authentication, to networks and even the state of ip addresses is less than great. That you can avoid these problem by going to the fringe likely comes from the idea that hackers still have influence. We think that if something doesn't work it can't be our own fault, it most be some conspiracy or inherent limitation, rather a lack in our own understanding and ability to organize.

> Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own issues like the lack of network-wide content moderation and agreement on what content is acceptable.

Decentralization built on individualism rarely works. Because it leaves the unorganized powerless. It has to be built upon common features used by different cliques were the participants have choice. Maybe most importantly there has to be separation between the platform and the activity.

[Nextgrid]

> because the Internet is no longer built for it

I’d say the Internet is no longer optimised for it because the use-case is no longer possible for the majority of people.

You can’t run a server on a phone due to power constraints and yet more and more people are using phones as their only computing device.

[doute]

That is part of it. But the important point is that it is not inherent. There nothing saying that you can't be protocols for that. It is just beyond what the Internet was design for many years ago, and the de facto Internet today include proprietary infrastructure run by large tech companies. But it is generally even worse then that because today smart phone don't have external ip addresses so you can't connect to them even after the initial centralized wake up. So it is an absolute regression as well.

[Nextgrid]

Mobile networks are moving towards IPv6 now, so phones are uniquely addressable again. Making them reachable from outside (if they aren’t already) is a trivial problem to solve should there be demand for it.

But I don’t see any major use-case for that - the main issue of battery life remains for any significant usage, and frankly I wouldn’t want to have something running in the background that would deplete my battery in an hour because someone happened to connect and watch a video hosted on it.