Re: Are we rebuilding the centralized web, minus tracking?

"Are we rebuilding the centralized web, minus tracking?" by Bacardi55

What beautiful and spicy discussion Bacardi55 rose up, one those we haven't seen for a while so far! 👍

One of my favorite "Capsuler" in the Geminispace has raised personal worries about a current polarization trend of the Geminispace into few centralized spaces such as, for instance, "Antenna" and the brand-new Skyjake — for the record Lagrange's creator — project: Bubble; which really pushes the Geminispace a in total different level (although I haven't check that out personally).

If I was totally unaware about the history or the development of Gemini I would totally agreed that centralization is bad, always! To reiterate the concept centralization is what makes the WWW ugly, for instance the ActivityPub protocol is under attack due the centralization push that is leveraging the (biggest) instance of Mastodon.social.

Decentralization is always good and we are all agreed with that! 👌

Honestly I am not even a big fan of decentralization, I am still a big fan of "distributed networks", however the defamation campaign moved against the P2P was so successful that P2P is now relegate as niche for eternal proof-of-concept projects… 😩

Why does Gemini promote such a degree of centralization then?

I believe that, since the protocol was designed with simplicity in mind, one of its positive side-effect is that promotes do-ocracy as main leverage. "Do-ocracy" is a neologism that I learned in Debian, and it means that people willing "to do" decide the path!

And I believe this is fine, if we watch ourselves as community, than we need to rely on other people skills. I don't have any coding skill thus I have to rely on the others, I can only write and draw but none of those skills will ever create Antenna or Bubbles.

If we want observe this situation in a negative fashion, then it is a miniature scale of what I defines Technocracy: a society or a group of individuals where only the technocrats (people that can manipulate technology) really rule, and the more productive and more skilled rule all over the others.

Either way I don't feel any risks and I don't believe Skyjake is planning to rule the world as GAFAM actually does.

Beyond the biases

I consider the Geminispace a fun place and low technology ground that stimulates a lot of creativity in all directions, and when I see people creating new tools I believe they are doing it for the sake of the community and not because any mischievous intention. And since we are in a do-ocracy environment, then it is unavoidable to create centralized service, because one has an idea and it realizes it, it doesn't need, and it is not even necessary, to ask for consensus or permission.

I believe that we still are in a comfort zone of trust, and we trust each others enough to be unworried, even though the excess of trust often is an easy target for bad actors; however there is still practically nothing to exploit in the Geminispace that I feel pity for any nasty (and potential) GAFAMIZATOR.

In short words I don't see any bad actors here… 😇

Are we fine with centralization thus?

I don't believe there is a clear answer without considering the context. I am glad that we have tools to enhance our ways to interact each others, I am glad that people are exploring and inventing stuff! I believe this is part of the process, however centralization is weak, and extremely fragile… We are at such a minuscule scale that a power surge or an expired credit-card can bring down half Gemini, I guess.

The next step of the process should be therefore to create redundancy and promote decentralization as much as possible, if people are willing to do so of course, cause we can't force anyone. So welcome to opensource, open discussion, constructive criticism and anything that promote an active and positive growth!

As a matter of fact I am recently watching Gemini more and more to find information, Gemini search engines are way more rationale than WWW ones, and if you like tech stuff it has plenty to offer. For me is becoming a reliable source and a better one.

Wrapping this up

I thank Bacardi55 because he pointed the Geminispace in the right direction, and perhaps next projects will search for more cooperation or will integrate the bases for a better decentralization. I really hope so. 🙏

It is clear now that for Gemini to growth, decentralization is now the right path to pursue!

For comments or suggestion write me at:

freezr AT disroot DOT org

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