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by danabramov
42 days ago
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This isn't about "average user". Relays have nothing to do with using atproto as a user. They're about developers making new apps. By "most people" it's implied we're talking about most people who want to run a web app in their spare time. Do you mean a different definition? If you want to run a web app (which is the only reason you'd want a relay) and you're able to pool with ten other developers who want to do the same, you can make the cost to $3/mo. Is that feasible? What do you normally pay for web app hosting? And again, if you're a hobbyist developer, you'd just use a community relay that already exists and is free. I assume that, if you want to run your own, you have a specific reason to do so. |
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And to be clear, I'm talking about the push back towards protocols and decentralization as the solution to enshittification and lock in. I fully believe decentralized protocols and the ability for us to run federated instances for our communities is valuable in and of itself. What I'm arguing against here is the degree to which the pro-social tech community has coalesced around this push as the one and only solution to the problems of enshittification.
And in that context, the average user is everything. And the push fundamentally misunderstands both how enshittification works (email is fully decentralized but still enshittified to a large degree) and the capabilities of the average user (not just their technical capabilities but their cognitive load capacity).
If you want, s/relay/pds/ and my point may become clearer. Or, even, s/relay+pds/app/. The point is pds+relay+app functions as instance for the average user. And the average user doesn't have the time, energy, or cognitive capacity to pick an instance that would be the right fit for them. Which means these decentralized networks are still heavily centralized. And if they remain heavily centralized, those central players still exercise an enormous amount of power over the network.
Including the power to enshittify it.
We can't solve enshittification if we're not cognizant of what the average user is capable of. And that capability extends to more than just "technical understanding". So far, I don't think the protocols push, in so far as it is being pushed as the solution to enshittification, is grappling with that adequately.