[Sebb767]

> Decentralized means it's inevitably more cumbersome to use.

Which will lead to a lot of users being hosted on a single instance which provides convenient access, which completes the loop to centralized. See gmail.

> And if you actually do succeed in this you'll inevitably end up with a platform where highly immoral content is just a wrong click away.

I don't think that is necessarily a problem for most users.

> It'll be this cycle of a new platform being fresh and trendy, then they become bigger, care about being taken seriously by traditional media, for getting ad deals with the big players, then a new platform pops up, cycle repeats.

This is, though. See Reddit :(

[robjan]

How many people (outside of the HN circle) actually use Gmail for personal email now? It's mostly been killed by Facebook, WhatsApp or their alternatives.

[Sebb767]

And most of these alternatives still need an E-Mail to sign up, which loops back to gmail. Statista puts the number of its users at 1.5 billion in 2018[0]. There are some alternatives, yes, but if you ever tried to run your own mailserver you'll quickly find out that gmail users not receiving your mail is very much a problem.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/432390/active-gmail-user...

[mauvehaus]

Fastmail? Protonmail? Others? It's not as though the only options are gmail and running your own mail server. They aren't free, but neither is your time to run a mail server and gmail is only gratis, not libre.

[Sebb767]

I've never said its the only option. I use a rather unknown hoster myself. But the majority of the users are with very few companies; for the US and EU gmail probably dominates the private user market.

Or, let's say it this way: If someone selfhosting his mail server doesn't receive your mail, it's his problem. If gmail users don't receive your mail, it's your problem. And that's not a sign of decentralisation.