[miguelmota]

A problem with federated networks is that it eventually leads to centralization of just a few providers. For example, email is federated but most users are on gmail. IRC is federated but most users are on freenode. Diaspora is federated but most users are join the server with already most users.

[zanny]

The only danger is there is the propensity for majority nodes to try to break federation. Normal people will still just use the most popular instance - the value of a decentralized protocol is in how it keeps all actors honest to keep participating, and except for in extreme circumstance of market dominance like when Google and Facebook broke their XMPP support due to their overwhelming control of their silos of communication generally works.

[sneak]

> email is federated but most users are on gmail. IRC is federated but most users are on freenode. Diaspora is federated but most users are join the server with already most users.

I think you underestimate the long tail in all of these cases. I don't think the first two statements are accurate.