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We should not be optimising Mastodon so it can handle more people per server. We should be optimising Mastodon so it incentivises more serves with fewer people.

(And if you take that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, you arrive at the idea behind the Small Web: https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/)

#decentralisation #federation #fediverse #SmallWeb

What is the Small Web?

Today, I want to introduce you to a concept ā€“ and a vision for the future of our species in the digital and networked age ā€“ that Iā€™ve spoken about for a while but never specifically written about: The Small Web.
Aral Balkan
#fediverse #federation #SmallWeb #decentralisation
in reply to Aral Balkan

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
Food for thought: The bigger mastodon.social gets, the less successful the #fediverse is.

Sadly, the fundamental design of Mastodon mirrors the design of Big Tech (a server architecture that can support hundreds of thousands of ā€œusersā€) and thus inherits its success criteria.

I feel itā€™s time we at least started thinking about what the web would look like if we all had our own place on it and what it would take to get there from here.

#decentralisation #centralisation #fediverse #SmallWeb
#fediverse #SmallWeb #decentralisation #centralisation
in reply to Aral Balkan

Aral Balkan
Aral Balkan
• •
Optimising #Mastodon = designing flows that encourage people to leave mastodon.social for other instances, not accepting any more new members on mastodon.social, and making design changes that limit how much a single instance can scale.

A single instance that can scale to host hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people, is not a design success in decentralisation, itā€™s a design failure. (Itā€™s a design success in #BigTech.)

CC @Gargron

#decentralisation #centralisation #federation
@Eugen Rochko

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