
Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work - techmagus
https://www.wired.com/story/decentralized-social-networks-sound-great-too-bad-theyll-never-work/
======
nstart
Just in case any bright eyed hopeful person is reading this, please don't
think "ah shucks" and go away. Some of the biggest things in the internet
including the protocols the internet lives on were never envisioned as
something that would change the life of billions of people. They were
initially created to solve a problem for a small group and then grew into
something much bigger over time. Please please don't back away from this
problem just because some article says it's going to be challenging.

Solve it for yourself.

Post on your own blogs on your own servers.

Solve it for others.

Help others get set up with their own servers.

Create solutions for people

Make attempts at creating decentralized solutions. Even if a 1000 people use
it, someday we might crack the code to getting people off the walled gardens.

Basically, if that article sounded like a demotivating blow to your hopes,
please flip the bird at it, and keep working to solve this problem.

~~~
scandox
I'd like to add one remark to this: everything doesn't have to be huge. We
don't have to deal always in millions and billions. Small groups. Even
individuals. What they do is meaningful. What we do is not pointless just
because it doesn't create some massive impact.

~~~
amelius
Except in a winner-takes-all market. (This is not about making money, but
still needs a critical mass of users to become successful because of the
network effect).

~~~
pnutjam
Social media is only winner take all because the platforms are closed. If
enough people say no thanks, that will change. The social networks might not
need any one person, but they need all of us and a significant but small
percentage can make a difference.

------
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
"People do not want to operate their own servers" ... oh, how much I hate that
argument. There are so many baseless assumptions in there. What does "operate
a server" even mean? Is "loading a web page that accepts WebRTC requests"
"operating a server"?

Obviously, what people mean is some sort of "people don't want to learn how to
manage the installation and configuration of a linux distribution on the
command line". Which probably is true--but also completely irrelevant.

Arguably, home routers are servers. People routinely "operate" home routers.
So, people routinely operate their own servers.

Yes, usability might need to be improved. But obviously, the first generations
of new technological ideas are built by and for enthusiasts and thus require a
bit more motivation to get started. There is absolutely no reason to think
that that is therefore an inherent property of the idea itself.

~~~
csydas
> Arguably, home routers are servers. People routinely "operate" home routers.
> So, people routinely operate their own servers.

This is quite arguable, as most people plug in a router, or even more
commonly, have Comcast do it for them.

And you are closer to the mark with the "configuration of a linux distribution
on the command line" bit. Look at adoption rates for GPG and some of the blog
posts/comments on it. [1],[2]

If Security Professionals are giving up on what is not a wholly complex system
in general, it sets a fairly clear bar on what is acceptable anymore and what
isn't. Apple's Messages, Signal, Telegram, any of these chats with the built-
in End to End Encryption is what is mostly needs to be; you just open the
application, and the work is done. Of course, this means in some way
centralization and trusting a monolithic org to play nice.

Currently a lot of the social media alternatives fall victim either to the
lack of traction or the complexity of participation, and adhering to the
privacy and security ideals sometimes requries complexity.

Don't get me wrong, I'm firmly in the RTFM camp and protect your privacy by
whatever means, but that means concessions, and often concessions people don't
want to give. Malware would be cut in half if people just ran NoScript, but
that would break a lot and require some knowledge of what happens on the pages
they go to. People would probably be happier with alternative social media
platforms that are more communication focused, but that requires sometimes
more configuration than they're willing to bother with.

The ideas proposed by alternative systems typically aren't that new to begin
with and have been around for ages - when complexity is a requirement for the
technology, there isn't really a post-enthusiast era. Many tech leaps were
very simple on release; consider BitTorrent. Get client, download torrent, a
file appears. It was pretty magical, and new.

[1] -
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/giving_up_on_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/12/giving_up_on_pg.html)
(comment from Schneier on [2], agreeing) [2] -
[https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/op-
ed...](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/op-ed-im-giving-
up-on-pgp/)

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> This is quite arguable, as most people plug in a router, or even more
> commonly, have Comcast do it for them.

And yet, they are not limited to communicating with other comcast customers.

Whether that would be the best model for social networks, I don't know, but I
think it is important to recognize that you do not need every individual to
build their "server" from scratch to achieve some meaningful benefits of
decentralization. If comcast doesn't like you, they cannot cut you off from
the internet, and that is already a pretty big advantage over walled gardens.

------
infinity0
I've never seen an actual well-thought out technical argument on why
decentralised social networks can't work. That's because there isn't one.
People who are familiar with the technical issues surrounding this are humble
and don't make bogus over-generalised statements like "X can't work [ever,
everywhere, in all contexts]".

This article is not a well-thought out argument either. It's a bunch of random
irrelevant anecdotes with some hand-waving tacked onto the end that the
writers though was good to write down here because the same words impressed
their friends.

The main barriers here actually are:

\- over-advertising and self-promotion of non-advanced stuff like Diaspora etc
that doesn't actually solve any inherently hard problems in this area, wasting
people's time especially that of interested people that want to enter the
field

\- lack of funding on solving the hard problems in this field

\- lack of structured educational material to get good new engineers onto
these topics

When people say this stuff "can't work", they really have no realistic concept
of the amount of _actual resources_ it takes to bring a great idea into
reality, and how little resources are being (and have been) fed into this
topic that they so over-confidently dismiss "can't work".

~~~
inanutshellus
What "advanced stuff" was/is Diaspora lacking for you?

The problems I had with it I can't imagine being able to solve technically. It
was merely not top-of-mind for the group I set it up for. They came for a
little while but weren't inherently invested (e.g. you're "inherently
invested" in your football team's communication mechanism. don't log in, and
you don't find out about a schedule change). Instead it was just a group of
friends I wanted to "facebook-verb-without-facebook-noun with".

Point is, Diaspora worked for me technically, just not socially. What was it
missing in your eyes?

~~~
infinity0
Global search. Diaspora might have worked for you technically in the limited
use-cases that you were using it for, but there are things Facebook can do
that Diaspora couldn't have done (with non-shitty performance).

> It was merely not top-of-mind for the group I set it up for.

Some people make a big deal out of the "network effect" but they totally
ignore how networks get going in the first place. It's the digital world,
networks come and go all the time, overcoming the network effect is not a
magical process. You offer more features than competitors and target people
that have greater influence in the network.

It's for sure an uphill battle and this is one of the motivations of creating
decentralised networks in the first place - to reduce network effects, to
avoid these barriers to entry and these influences that make society's
inequalities worse. But obviously if one has a depressing attitude about the
whole process of overcoming network effects, and talk shit about "it can't
work", then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

------
htormey
I think viable alternates to Facebook/Twitter have less to do with the
underlying technology and are more about attracting audiences not served by
these social networks. Hence I think the next viable alternative to
twitter/Facebook will probably be a centeralized one that caters to multiple
niche communities.

Mastodon was released in October 2016, it currently has about 800k users
spread across 2000+ servers.

Currently the maintainer of mastodon gets ~$2800 from Patreon to host one of
the main #mastodon servers & work on the project.

Mastodon is kind of like Wordpress for niche communities who want a twitter
like experience outside of twitter for 1 reason or other.

Right now one of the biggest use cases for mastodon is lolicon in Japan.

Here is how much it costs to host your own instance:

[https://masto.host/](https://masto.host/)

Let’s contrast mastodon with gab. Gab (centralized) was launched August 2016
has about ~270k users, 3,000+ customers and it just raised $1m. It also gets
mainstream media recognition.

The main use case for gab is people with political views that were booted off
of twitter. Aka free speech. Right now gabs community is not really my cup of
tea but I can see why you would use it.

I think something like gab has more of a chance of going mainstream by
collecting fringe communities effected by stuff like the adpocalypss than
mastodon does.

I think his mainly because of the problems around federated identity. A good
critique of this can be read here:

[https://medium.com/m/global-
identity?redirectUrl=https://hac...](https://medium.com/m/global-
identity?redirectUrl=https://hackernoon.com/mastodon-is-dead-in-the-
water-888c10e8abb1)

~~~
aryehof
Is there a need for a more closed group solution for families and immediate
friends? Perhaps one based on definable groups and encrypted posts and
comments only those members can see?

~~~
htormey
Maybe. I personally just use Whatsapp and messenger group chats to communicate
with my family/friends.

------
codewithcheese
What short sighted click bait. Steem has already solved or partially solved
most of these problems and we haven't even scratched the service. Read the
Steem white paper [1] if you want your mind blown.

[1] [https://steem.io](https://steem.io)

~~~
cetra3
It's decentralized but needs:

\- My Email Address

\- My Phone Number

Not really the sort of decentralized I was hoping for..

~~~
Kiro
You can spin up a node or use a wallet to create an account directly on the
Steem blockchain instead of doing it through the Steemit webpage.

~~~
cetra3
If that's an option I haven't found it from a quick glance on the website. I
just followed what was there without looking too deeply into it. Maybe if
that's something you can do, there should be a clear process written up
somewhere

~~~
Kiro
Steemit is not aimed at advanced users. Most probably don't even know that
it's powered by a blockchain other than on a buzzword level.

There are plenty of guides how to work with the Steem blockchain directly
posted as blog posts on the blockchain itself. :)

------
arkh
Here is the problem I have with most advertised decentralized social networks.
Their only added value is being decentralized. Decentralized twitter /
facebook / instagram. What do you gain from using those decentralized things?
Nothing aside from being a hipster. And you lose your current social
connections. Even worse, decentralized solutions existed before and are still
available: blog software, bulletin boards, IRC, even mails.

So if you want people to create their own hubs they should get something for
their effort. I don't have a solution there but something as stupid as being
able to watch some show with 6 or 8 participants all over the world could be a
start. Even the old Google Wave (I think it was), the mix of chat, code, wiki
which was too slow for a webapp at the time should be reconsidered. Maybe with
native clients.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
What do you gain from a democracy over a monarchy or a dictatorship? The only
added value is being decentralized.

Yes, the "only" added value of decentralized power structures is their
decentralization. And the absense of all the terrible effects that centralized
power structures tend to have in the long term.

~~~
always_good
I'll have to pop your analogy bubble and ask the question again: How are you
going to convince people that the decentralization of a platform they use to
get laid and keep up with friends/family is going to have a meaningful impact
on their lives? And how are you going to do it to the point where you can
cause an exodus large enough to cause any real change?

You're going to have to do better than draw some analogies to monarchies on
Hacker News. And things like "but they sell your data!" has had no impact
beyond desensitizing everyone with Chicken Little'ism.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
I don't know, nor did I claim to know? Though in the end it will have to boil
down to "because no dictatorship", just probably packaged in a way people
understand what that means. Potentially we'll have to live through it before
people do understand, though, just as we have with monarchies and
dictatorships.

------
panic
None of the reasons they give -- difficulty of user acquisition, conflict
between security and convenience, curation, or economies of scale -- are
fundamental obstacles to making a decentralized social network. Mastodon has
found some success despite facing the same problems.

~~~
lxrbst
Mastodon is not successful, at all. Apparently content that was not accepted
on twitter, such as lolicon, has found a new home on Mastodon.

The average user would never bother to migrate to decentralized services for
any other reason then necessity, lack of choice, or to escape rules/laws.

~~~
daveid
Reposting from Mastodon:
[https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/18213943](https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/18213943)

If you think the only reason to use a self-hosted social network is if you
want to circumvent the laws, you're making the same argument as only wanting
privacy if you've got something to hide. YouTube ran an algorithm to delete
"extremist videos" and accidentally irreversibly deleted a bunch of historical
evidence of destruction of Syrian historical sites. Shit like that happens all
the time when someone else is in charge.

~~~
lxrbst
Didn't bother reading your link, cause that's not what I said. I was talking
about the average user.

I also never said they don't have value, or that they're only there to
circumvent rules or laws.

Sidenote: Loss of privacy/centralization isn't a problem to be solved, it's a
reality that needs to be accepted. We lost already.

------
edhelas
Decentralized social networks aren't working for now because they reinvent
their own protocol each time which creates fragmentation and incompatibilities
between the platforms.

I think that decentralized social network projects should relies on existing
standards and help with their development. That's why I'm working on Movim
([https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/)) for several years now, which is fully
based on XMPP and is de facto compatible with many other clients and services
out there.

~~~
leoc
> Decentralized social networks aren't working for now because they reinvent
> their own protocol each time which creates fragmentation and
> incompatibilities between the platforms.

Recall that all computing problems are solved by adding more abstraction ( ;)
) and not all problems yield to a direct attack with the current tools. Maybe
the point of maximum leverage here is actually the problem that interoperation
between different protocols is too difficult?

~~~
edhelas
The interoperability between the protocols is indeed difficult. But pushing a
standard protocol is, I think, the best way to promote this compatibility.

Imagine if we didn't have a standard protocol for emails (SMTP/IMAP/POP) but
instead several protocols built using JSON on top of HTTP. We would have to
take most of our time to work on broken transport libraries and fix
incompatibility issues between all those solutions. Hopefully we have a
standard (even if it's not the best one) and we can "just" build on top using
the many existing libraries and projects out there.

I think that such "social standard" should be build on Internet protocols
(TCP/TLS/DNS/IP…) and not Web only (HTTP), even if it's "easier". Also instead
of re-starting from scratch I prefer to improve something existing like XMPP
that have flaws but is already an industry standard with a strong community,
many libraries/clients and servers deployed all across the world.

------
techmagus
Made good points but missed the fact that social networks like Facebook and
Google started like decentralised networks today. In the Philippines, Facebook
wasn't popular at all when Friendster and MySpace were kicking. It was only
after the demise of Friendster, and the MySpace was forgotten, that Facebook
gained attention. It's similar for decentralised networks. Secondly,
decentralised networks are good as it is. It does not have to be the "next
Facebook" or the "next Twitter", although many such networks and writers
dubbed these as such. Slow growth and adoption is better than an explosive
one. These networks are being developed generally for free and offered for
free, with no ads whatsoever even. The developers are few and they do it
during their free time. Thus a slow adoption is to its advantage.

I use decentralized networks, even used to run my own instance.

------
rainbowmverse
Cross-posting from Mastodon:
[https://mastodon.social/web/statuses/18182566](https://mastodon.social/web/statuses/18182566)

Another tech media article misunderstanding Mastodon as a Twitter competitor.

They can't understand Mastodon because they can't imagine a technology that
doesn't cater to them.

Tech media personalities can't understand a world where their opinion means
less than that of a random furry.

------
vasilakisfil
The same could have been said 30 years ago for an open source OS.

~~~
beagle3
or that decentralized social network called 'email'.

~~~
threeseed
Email is not a social network.

It is equivalent to a text message or phone call.

~~~
DeepYogurt
You might call it a network of social connections.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Also, people call e.g. Snapchat a social network. But by this definition,
e-mail is _much_ more of a social network than Snapchat.

~~~
DeepYogurt
I guess that gets at the point that the term social network is poorly defined.

------
jswizzy
Just about everyone I know on Facebook would jump ship if they could. Not a
day goes by that I don't notice someone complaining or leaving over anger at
Google and Facebook supporting invading their privacy, promoting extremist
politics, and censorship of conservative and liberal ideas.

------
CalRobert
Except in one sense, it already does.

I have some friends with blogs. Those blogs have RSS feeds. Feeds of "news",
you might say.

I load up sageRSS in Firefox, see friends who have new content in bold, and
get their news. A "news feed", you might even say.

Admittedly I can't easily use that to deduce that x is friends with y is
friends with z, or (easily) get a map of where all of my friends went on
vacation last year, but I kind of think that's a good thing.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
this is kind of dying though, or at least flat in terms of growth overall

------
gwbas1c
I've experimented in this space. The biggest challenge, IMO, is that we don't
have good federated user authentication.

What do I mean? Pretty much all major social networks need to re-invent user
authentication, and then taking your profile from one social network to
another is a very inconsistent user experience. Can I "friend" a Linkedin user
via Facebook? If I sign into other sites via Facebook, they often demand that
I enter personal info that I don't want to enter.

A decentralized social network needs to be built upon a better authentication
system.

What we really need is something like government-backed user profiles. Imagine
if the US government provided a government-backed user profile. Now imagine
that web sites had to allow interaction with government profiles without
registering, providing email addresses, ect.

That's the point where a decentralized social network could start working.
Otherwise, the social networks end up needing to perform services that really
are the government's job.

------
dest
I use Diaspora* as a blogging platform. The social interactions are a plus. It
works well

------
nippples
GNU Social is low traffic, but it's alive and well.

~~~
mattl
And GNU social and Mastodon are two different projects that speak OStatus. I'm
pleased to see Mastodon's success, and while I'm basically done with GNU these
days, I hope to see the two projects continue to cooperate on the OStatus
network.

------
ddevault
I think a major "innovation" from Mastodon was integrating with the GNUSocial
and ActivityPub networks. Mastodon is new and shiny, like many other attempted
decentralized social networks have been. But what's crazy is that it's new and
shiny and _built_ on the old social networks, so it inherits their communities
and reinvigorates the old communities. This novel approach to "make a new
social network" contributes greatly to Mastodon's success imo.

I think we should keep trying. All private internet services are doomed to
die. It's inevitable. Only decentralized services can live on and keep us
truly free.

------
maufl
I don't think it's a technical problem and I think the problems the articel
points out are social and economic problems. I once started to design a
protocol that could be used to build a decentralized social network. (FOSP
[https://github.com/maufl/fosp-specification](https://github.com/maufl/fosp-
specification)) However, I now think that a peer-to-peer solution would be
better, even if it is technically more challenging, as it would not require
anybody to run a server and untilize the resources the users already pay for
(storage, network connection).

------
Animats
So how would you launch a decentralized social network?

You could do what Zuckerberg did. Start with big-name colleges. Call it
FratNet. Get a few key fraternities and sororities on board. Each frat has
their own node, but it's probably in a data center and costs like a Wordpress
site. Offer it on mobile. Log in with face recognition. A key function is a
good events calendar and invite system.

Then roll it out to other groups which have lots of events, such as churches.

------
tyywebb
Decentralized anything will never work. Keep your trust in the banks and the
corporations and the gov. They would never do anything that wasn't in your
best interests.

------
librexpr
Let's not forget that just because a network is decentralized, doesn't mean
that you have to host your own server.

I use mastodon, but I don't host my own server. I just joined one of the many
already existing servers. Similarly, email is decentralized, but most people
don't host their own servers.

------
panglott
"Scuttlebutt is slang for gossip, particularly among sailors. It is also the
name of a peer-to-peer system ideal for social graphs, identity and messaging.
...Secure Scuttlebutt is also different to federated social networks like
Mastodon, Diaspora, GNU social, OStatus. Those technologies are not peer-to-
peer, because each component is either a server or a client, but not both."
[https://staltz.com/an-off-grid-social-network.html](https://staltz.com/an-
off-grid-social-network.html)

It's also a system with a clear, although niche, use case that adds value in a
way that FB wouldn't.

------
sharkhacks
The reason distributed/decentralized things fail isn't because of the BS
reasons this article gives. In my opinion it is about \- Usability: open
source UI and UX sucks for the most part... build an amazing UI and user
experience and users will come.

\- Do NOT expect people to download and setup software and run nodes... Can
you build it in the universal piece of software that everybody has today.. AKA
browser ? I think whoever nails these challenges will win.

\- I think somebody (maybe me) should build such a 'universal browser' that
allows all of these decentralized things to happen. I was thinking Brave would
be that browser.. but I'm not sure..

------
Dowwie
in other words, the MIT Media Lab is a business accelerator that hasn't
figured out the space that Mastadon is operating in and is afraid that
Mastadon will succeed

------
dannyrosen
This was discussed at length here [0] where the original link was the origin
paper [1] for this wired post.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15055522](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15055522)

[1]:
[http://dci.mit.edu/assets/papers/decentralized_web.pdf](http://dci.mit.edu/assets/papers/decentralized_web.pdf)

------
martindale
Reading the article now, but I can tell you that this is almost certainly
false.

------
mogpt
What a lazy and cynical article. Evil shit.

------
timwaagh
the benefits are non obvious. social media does not have bandwith issues and
few people want to share illegal text/images. so centralized platforms can
work almost just as well as decentralized ones. should social networks become
subject to a lot of censorship, this will change.

~~~
zeratax
But that's already happening? I constantly on Twitter see "7 replies", but I'm
only able to see 2. Lots of users get shadowbanned.

Now with perspective ai it looks like this will only increase and all of this
is never a user choice, it's always the platform deciding for me what level of
toxicity I'm able to handle. And it often plain fails. Lots of false
positives.

I see this on every platfrom, nontransparent moderation and algorithm
filtering everything without my knowledge nor any control.

I personally use mastodon daily, I don't know what a platform needs to reach
to be successful, but when I use it daily it's successful enough for me.

Even the pawoo drama makes it sound like the only reason people in japan use
it, is to see lolicon content, but the whole pixiv platform is far more than
just lolicon. It's like deviantart full of talented artists that don't draw
any lolicon content. This platform just doesn't think of lolicon as taboo.
Mastodon is constantly growing and it's not just the pawoo instance.

~~~
rainbowmverse
>> _But that 's already happening? I constantly on Twitter see "7 replies",
but I'm only able to see 2. Lots of users get shadowbanned._

Those are probably locked accounts.

------
stuaxo
They do in real life.

------
mogpt
what a lazy and pessimistic article. evil shit.

------
soufron
Like email or Google Docs? LOL.

~~~
HugoDaniel
Google Docs is centralized. Maybe you meant Google Reader ?

------
Animats
The anonymity and spam problem is really tough. Facebook has a "real name"
policy for good reasons.

------
ojr
decentralized social networks won't work because in order to keep a business
running you need profits or the expectation of profits to acquire the talent
needed to provide a nice user experience. Solutions motivated by capitalism
will not disappear anytime soon.

"But email is decentralized". Actually not true, it is heavily centralized
around gmail. Same true with bitcoin, it is centralized around exchanges.

~~~
egypturnash
Decentralize the funding; rely on users rather than advertising or VC.
Developing Mastodon is now the full-time job of he guy who wrote it, thanks to
Patreon. I think he's starting to hire a few people, too.

And a lot of Mastodon servers also have their own Patreons to help out with
the hosting costs.

~~~
ojr
To be an accredited investor in the United States, you need to make at least
$200,000 a year or have $1,000,000 in assets. Would you rather be funded by
users of your app or accredited investors? I think in a free market, the most
competitive companies will prefer the second option.

~~~
egypturnash
Would you rather be in charge of a machine designed to make money, no matter
what the cost to the humans who use it, or would you rather be in charge of
something designed to foster useful connections between people?

Would you be happier building a social network designed to keep people on it
as long as possible, so that it looks like a good way to get a lot of eyeballs
in front of the ads posted by your real customers, or would you be happier
building one that people interact with for a small portion of their day in
ways that generally leave them happier, and then get on with doing whatever
else they're gonna do?

Not everything needs to be about making as much money as possible. And so far
Mastodon has been doing okay by taking a more distributed approach:
development is partially funded by users who care to pay something, and
partially a volunteer effort by people with enough time to spare; hosting is
funded by people spinning up a Mastodon instance for their friends or their
community, and if it starts to get to be more than they can handle they close
off new signups and/or start asking their users for a few bucks here and
there.

Mastodon is, thus, not obligated to anyone but Gargron's vision of what it
should be, and what the users of his software are willing to support. Sure,
it's not gonna make any lists of "ten hottest unicorns in Silicon Valley". Who
gives a shit?

Would you rather lie there on your deathbed thinking "I sure generated a ton
of value for shareholders and helped a racist con-man get elected president",
or "I sure helped a ton of people have a lot of conversations and
connections"?

~~~
ojr
I use instagram, twitter, and snapchat because the user interface is sleek and
the influencers of the network, not because of engagement growth hacks that
are not sustainable long term.

Yes I would rather have a billion dollars than have a billion users with a
dollar each. One is capitalism and the other is socialism, I think capitalism
is just more natural.

