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Are we decentralized yet?

(arewedecentralizedyet.online)
487 points Bogdanp | 2 comments | 30 Aug 25 19:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.399s | source
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jcims ◴[30 Aug 25 19:44 UTC] No.45077447[source]▶
How would one measure old school federated contexts like IRC and NNTP in this way? I wonder would they would fare.
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agilob ◴[30 Aug 25 20:03 UTC] No.45077568[source]▶
Remember how freenode changed owner and pretty much everyone moved away from it in less than 1 week? It was easy and possible.
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1. Retr0id ◴[30 Aug 25 20:29 UTC] No.45077752[source]▶
Perhaps "frictionless migration" is the real metric to optimize for, rather than decentralization at any given point in time.
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2. jauntywundrkind ◴[31 Aug 25 01:56 UTC] No.45079642[source]▶
I tend to agree. Having tried the Fediverse twice & each time had my server shut down, had a pretty jank sad partial migration forward path (my old replies kind of being cast into limbo), it just doesn't feel like the fediverse actually has "credible exit" at this point. Decentralized but still semi trapped.

Where-as with Bluesky/ at protocol, most folks are on Bluesky servers, yes. But there's a very strong credible exit case where you can leave the Bluesky servers & just do your own thing. And follow whomever you want to follow.

Bluesky / at proto creates a trust mechanism beyond DNS, creates an identity that can be moved around between hosts or replicated outwards in a verifiable way. I dig ActivityPub, and have been a long time http enjoyer, but it's not ideal imo for social media to need to be so coupled to such strongly DNS based client-server systems.