Why are all services centralised? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Hello,

There are loads of people who dislike centralised services, like facebook, twitter, dropbox and so on, yet still no one seems to be very curious about decentralised systems. How come?

Lemmy scratches the surface with lots of centralised servers, but pushing it, everyone could have their own soft that, for example, is their "user". A user having "facebook"/twitter/dropbox/sharing capabilities. Still no one seems to even pursue those kind of ideas. Even in theory.

Is it because the dopamine triggering algorithm wins everyone over? The fear of using a soft that communicated on an open port on your device? Or what might it be? But that doesn't make sense to me, because people don't even discuss it. Or am I not invited to those discussions 😁?

It should be trivial to spin up a sharing system, for example (harboring laws would protect you), or some "friends, and friends friends only" network a la facebook in tje early days.

It's not limited by technology, and people are smart and curious.

So where are they?

Edit: I know that even if the service existed, most people wouldn't use it and prefer Facebook et al. But that absolutely nobody has spun up one is what baffles me. Thousands work on the Linux kernel, where are the hardcore network nerds?

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[-] 4am@lemmy.zip 8 points 6 days ago

To add to what others have said; if everyone ran their own instance, it would be a security nightmare. A billion amateurs running Internet-routable servers? It’s a hacker’s wet dream

[-] mycodesucks@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

On paper. In practice most low-hanging fruit in almost all mature software has been thoroughly picked through, and most hackers are not coming with targeted resources and the backing of a well-funded state actor to break into your Jellyfin library. The sheer amount of paranoia people have about tech these days...

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

I would say it depends on the software being run.

We have p2p file sharing used a lot and it's not that bad.

Also there was a time when hosting your own multiplayer game server, or your own voice room chat was the norm.

It doesn't need to be follow the activity pub protocol, it could be something more secure and idiotproof.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago

This is what I actually suspect might be a big culprit. It's not correct however but the myth lives on for some reason.

this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026

35 points (90.7% liked)

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