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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[-] lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

A server is measured by its availability. To read content from it, it has to be available. While everyone could use a dedicated always-on device, thats not really the situation you are describing. So you would run the software on your phone/notebook/PC. Those are not always available on the internet.

If you post something to your 50 recipients (as you stated in another comment), they can only read it, if both of you are online. For asynchronous communication (like a post typically is), that is a lot to ask. Especially, if you want to have features like comments, that all your recipients can see.

If you move away from the typical social media principle, then you can have truly decentralized messengers. I think, that already exists.

Another problem with any decentralized approach is how to handle content moderation. It is necessary, since humans are messy. The more decentralized a system is, the harder it becomes to moderate. For example: How would you stop CSAM to be proliferated through it? Or even stop it to being send to you? If the software has some automatic replication feature to enhance availability, then this problem gets worse. Lemmy has had its own attacks with CSAM being posted to many servers. That can get you into legal trouble very fast.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This is a misconception, and only valid if you go with the centralized concept of a central server (on each users phone).

Check this out for a distributed acces of data for example.

Truly decentralization is a quite powerful paradigm IMO, but badly understood.

Edit: link error fixed

this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026

35 points (90.7% liked)

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