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Are we decentralized yet?

(arewedecentralizedyet.online)
487 points Bogdanp | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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stebalien ◴[] No.45077820[source]
"Decentralization" isn't the end-goal so measuring it here isn't all that meaningful. Personally, I care about:

1. How hard is it to censor the network.

2. How hard would it be for some major player to enshittify the network.

Furthermore, while the fediverse has a single axis for decentralization, BlueSky has 3: number of "big index servers", number of PDSs, number of domain names (how many people own their handle):

1. Increasing the number of PDSs doesn't make it harder to censor the network when everyone still uses the same big index node.

2. BlueSky's primary defense against enshittification is user account portability. I'd love to see metrics on how many users have their own domain names. Having many PDSs is also a good defense here because it reduces the impact of BlueSky (the company) shutting off the firehose, but I still think account portability is the primary defense here.

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wmf ◴[] No.45077850[source]
BlueSky's primary defense against enshittification is user account portability.

I wonder if people would actually migrate or if they'd just get boiled.

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1. immibis ◴[] No.45078706[source]
I made a Bluesky account. I posted some pretty boring replies to pretty boring posts, and still got banned. They didn't tell me why I was banned. I didn't bother trying to make my account immune from banning; I just quit since it was pretty boring there anyway. That's one data point against the migration hypothesis.

Bluesky isn't decentralized, anyway, because of the PLC directory.