There are so many different problems that come from decentralisation and I really don't think people are all that willing to put up with them. Specially not the kind of people that use social media.
It seems to me sometimes that a lot of these posts come from people that don't really interact with the average social media user very much. People are willingly giving all their data to Facebook, Tiktok, etc. They do that because in reality... they don't care all that much!
How do you expect these kind of people to care about decentralisation? I think the closest we are to a good middle point is stuff like mastodon, but federation is not perfect. Will it not be reasonable for people in the future (if mastodon becomes really popular) to simply default to the biggest server out there?
I think the best we can do is come up with standards for data-transfer between sites as well as basic communication tools... pretty much what activitypub has tried to do. This would go a long way to ensure people are actually capable of moving, not being locked in is I think the key to ensuring decentralisation.
In a few words: people don't care as much as we'd like them to and that's not really a technical problem. Because of this, it is not possible to solve this problem by adding any extra inch of complexity that doesn't come with substantial benefits to users. And I don't think adding blockchain-based market mechanics to it is really going to solve the problem as blockchains add a huge amount of overhead to the problem.
author here - you're right that the average user doesn't care about decentralization as a first order benefit. people typically use social networks to be entertained / informed or to increase their status. we've been building a new, decentralized social network and we've learned this first hand.
but if you've figured out a new social network, building it in a decentralized manner today might give you very strong second order benefits. and its now possible to do this in a way that doesn't compromise the user experience.
I also was reading your post with the mindset "how to regulate social networks". I strongly believe that all big organizations need regulation. It is not easy to regulate social networks, but heck maybe it wasn't easy to regulate telephony or energy.
It seems to me sometimes that a lot of these posts come from people that don't really interact with the average social media user very much. People are willingly giving all their data to Facebook, Tiktok, etc. They do that because in reality... they don't care all that much!
How do you expect these kind of people to care about decentralisation? I think the closest we are to a good middle point is stuff like mastodon, but federation is not perfect. Will it not be reasonable for people in the future (if mastodon becomes really popular) to simply default to the biggest server out there?
I think the best we can do is come up with standards for data-transfer between sites as well as basic communication tools... pretty much what activitypub has tried to do. This would go a long way to ensure people are actually capable of moving, not being locked in is I think the key to ensuring decentralisation.
In a few words: people don't care as much as we'd like them to and that's not really a technical problem. Because of this, it is not possible to solve this problem by adding any extra inch of complexity that doesn't come with substantial benefits to users. And I don't think adding blockchain-based market mechanics to it is really going to solve the problem as blockchains add a huge amount of overhead to the problem.