Scribe link: https://scribe.rip/@rossstalker_5939/web3-is-not-decentralisation-its-a-ploy-to-put-crypto-bros-in-charge-c791752e2bb6

You’ve written a good analysis, OP. Yes, treating email and mastodon as equal forces in the fight for decentralization is inappropriate. However, email is not as one-sided as you have made it out to be:

• Email does have a community element: mailing lists may be the most obvious example, but email does have the ability to drive community discussion. What is holding it back is obviously its age and ease of use.
• Organizations use email: Many organizations will self-host email simply to manage mailing lists as well as email notifications. Having an email address at a domain signifies your membership in some sort of community; perhaps your workplace or school.
• Ubiquity:
  • Email is still a more universal communication method than any other messaging protocol. You can probably reach anyone through email.
  • There are many organizations, communities, etc. offering email services. They must allow their users to communicate with other servers: no email provider is large enough to disregard all the other providers.
  • There is a widespread expectation that your email address will be able to reach any other email address. In this way it is the most federated, decentralized messaging protocol there is today.

I also have a point to make, both in reference to the blog post linked and your analysis: I would not dismiss federation because of some centralization of servers.

We have a case study in email to show us how a healthier (for all of its faults) federated system can survive without becoming wholly centralized. The best way to prevent centralization from dismantling federated systems is to build in an expectation that a server/service/offering in a federated system will always be able to communicate with another in the same system, like in email. As long as one federated server/service/offering/application does not become its own “brand” compared to the other servers and the base protocol/federated system is all the talk, all will be fine.

For example:

• Let’s chat with Element! vs Let’s chat with Matrix!
• Let’s join Lemmy.ml! vs Let’s join a Lemmy instance!
• What’s your Gmail? vs What’s your email?

Well, honestly a lot of FOSS software has been lacking in usability in general, not even accessibility. It’s to be expected, as lots of software has basically been born from hobby projects and there is no unifying entity creating everything or defining human interface guidelines, besides perhaps GNOME and KDE.

The thing is that there is a big emphasis in FOSS software to “implement yourself” the features needed because most work is volunteer driven. So unless someone or some organization were to fund a developer or two to implement accessibility features, they don’t magically come into being.

For me the systems I tested ran pretty slow, which I expected. Any ideas on how it works? Its FAQ simply states that they provide VMs of most operating systems, but how are they accessed? I did not expect seeing an actual GUI, only a CLI :D. Very cool.

Yes, I guess you could view “Local” if you wanted to only see posts from this instance. Alternatively you could subscribe to the communities you want to see posts from; that is the default view when you load up Lemmy for me so that is a plus.

“Apple has been opposing Right to Repair bills by claiming that their service network is the only safe repair option for consumers,” Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, told Motherboard. “But the only person that is totally guaranteed to be trustworthy to fix your iPhone is you. Any time you hand your data to another entity, you risk something like this. By withholding access to service tools and forcing customers to use their third party contractor, Apple is willfully compromising the security of their customers.”